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Sunday, September 10, 2017

Soft as a Bunny

Another skein of yarn is fresh of my wheel; I finished plying Friday night and skeined and washed it yesterday. I'm glad to see this one done!


This yarn was spun from some 80% merino/20% angora fiber that I won earlier this year as part of the yearlong knitalong happening in the 90% Knitting Ravelry group. The colors weren't really me, but generally I find that even if the fiber doesn't appeal, the finished yarn often does. That was certainly the case with this spin. The colors softened and blended as I drafted the fiber, and they're very attractively autumnal in the finished yarn. The finished skein ended up being in the range of sport to DK weight and 308 yards of two ply.


I didn't entirely enjoy spinning this, in part because of the angora content. While the fiber was extremely soft, as you would expect, I found it tricky to draft at first and during the whole spin had to deal with those angora fibers coming off on me and occasionally getting up my nose. I tried to encourage a bit of a halo when I finished the skein, doing some hot/cold dunks and then snapping and beating it a bit, but there's only the slightest of halos in the dry yarn; I suspect my usual high amount of twist is to blame. I would run the yarn back through the wheel to remove some of the ply twist, but it seems to be pretty well balanced and isn't really kinking up on itself, so I will likely leave it as it is. The lack of halo may also be an indication that this won't pill up as badly as it might if it were more loosely plied, too.

Given my feelings toward the angora content, I'm pretty confident in saying that this yarn will be available for sale in the Fluvial Fibers booth at Indie Knit and Spin in November, so if you love it and will be there, it could be yours.

I received some fiber in the mail earlier in the week after finally succumbing to something that had been tempting me for quite a while. One of the cool things that Ginny of FatCatKnits offers is a braid/batt combo. She dyes up 4 oz. of combed top. Half of it she leaves as is, but the other half she throws on her drum carder along with add-ins like sparkles and silk noil. So you end up with two preparations of the same colorway. I've been wanting to spin up one of these combo for months, and I finally splurged and bought one in a colorway called Arcadia, which, as someone on Instagram pointed out, looks a lot like a Monet painting.


I couldn't wait to dig into this package, so I started to spin the combed top yesterday while I was washing the finished skein. It really did not disappoint.


I've decided to spin the braid from end to end as a thin single and then chain ply it. For the batt, I'll work from one side to the other by tearing off thin strips and spin it more or less the same way. I'd like to use both skeins together so that the subtle differences in the preparations are apparent. These colors are so gorgeous that I have a feeling it will be hard to tear myself away from the wheel to work on my Rhinebeck sweater!

1 comment:

  1. Perhaps the lack of halo on that yarn will also keep it from "shedding" on everything. I had that issue with an angora blend yarn - it shed on everything. And, wow, I just love that fiber! I like your plan of spinning, but I think I might ply them together! Regardless, the colors are so gorgeous!

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