Recently in Pre-drafting Colored Fiber Category

Thanks to everyone who helped me destash!

Let's talk about sampling.

It's akin to yarn swatching, where a knitted swatch of a specific yarn determines if you "got gauge" or not. You knit with a specific size needle, and switch to a lower or higher needle size to get your gauge. It's no exception with colored fiber. Sure, you can tear off a hank and spin away, but are you spinning to show off all the colors, or to make a muted mixture?

Case in point: I wanted to make a 3-ply yarn with Adrian's lovely merino/silk. I tore off a small section for sampling. I didn't take into consideration that said section had equal parts olive green, purple, and white. I just wanted to sample for the ply. I should have taken into consideration the color as well, because predictably, when I spun such a short section, the colors blended into each other and I got mud. Granted, a very lovely mud, but still mud. So.

Adrian's fiber was dyed in lengths: long strips of purple and short strips of olive green. The bits of white are where the two colors were *supposed* to mix but didn't; the bits of "mud" are where they did. So if you look at your fiber that's been dyed in lengths and see where colors run into each other, that's what you'll get in the end if you don't plan ahead.

You want to minimize mud. You can do a few things:
◊ Tear off longer sections. Ideally, in between the long strips of color and not in the muddy areas. I'm talking 3-6 foot sections. Of course, you'll have to pre-draft all of it, but at least it won't be muddy.
◊ Try navajo-plying instead of your standard two-ply. That way, you can control the amount of color mixing.

A little adjustment in how I prepared my fiber, and I ended up with nice sections of color in my singles. On to plying!

Linky that doesn't currently work, for reason #bX-v2vqfh, but you should bookmark it anyway, so that when it works you can go see! This site has been on my list of feeds for a while because of the eclectic collection of photography: Thrilling Wonder.

Perhaps Adrian was thinking of the Blue Hen Chicken when she dyed this colorway as part of my gift order last year. It's mostly reds: brick and brownish and pinkish reds; some smudges of green; flashes of brilliant blue. I wish you could see this up close, as the spun-up yarn is a tantalizing palette of faded, but at the same time still achingly vibrant, colors.

I firmly believe in pre-drafting. When I first started spindling, pre-drafting was just a formality; the spinning was what made yarn! Well, yes, but pre-drafting holds the key to a lofty, consistent single. By not attenuating the fibers, you don't encourage air to flow in and out, your fibers remain compressed, and when you spin, those compressed fibers clump up. My first few handspuns were clumpy; there's a market for that, but my goal was consistency.

At a meetup, I had the pleasure of pre-drafting roving for Julia and Lori while they spun on my wheel. Julia told Marnie, and Marnie emailed me and.... Well, nothing happened for a while. If you think about all the different ways of coloring fiber, either through dyeing or carding, it's apparent that there isn't one solid way to pre-draft to get the results you're looking for in a final handspun. So with this entry I start my series on how I pre-draft colored fiber. Please feel free to add your thoughts at the end of this!

Yarn in three stages: as unspun roving, singles on the bobbins, and plied and skeined yarn. Whenever I spin, I divide my fiber into manageable quantities that I can easily remember. Therefore, you see one ounce of roving. Two ounces of singles, one on each bobbin. Four ounces, or four single-ounce skeins of yarn.

It also depends on what weight you're planning on spinning. I'm still doing my exercise on spinning for softness, so thick and thin yarn will fill up a bobbin much faster than laceweight or sportweight. I've been able to get 4 ounces of merino/tussah singles on one bobbin.