A different spin on the Olympics

The Olympics in Sochi are finally here, and I have begun my self-imposed Olympic Spinning Challenge!  It will be a fun thing to do and after this weird winter that we have had so far throughout the country, I am ready for some self-imposed fun, aren't you?!

If you will recall, I picked out my fiber and colors a number of weeks ago...before Christmas, and after much deliberation, as usual, on my part.  I chose a nice dark brown alpaca roving, and some merino top in four colorways.  Three of the colorways were multicolored blends, and one a solid, and I saw a common factor of brown in their shade or shadings.  

My chosen fibers for the Olympic Spinning Challenge

 I must confess right here and now that I used to think of brown as drab, uninteresting, and only existing when one mixed the wrong colors together, and thus creating a "mistake".  That was more than forty years ago. My opinion began to change when I began to really "see" the various shades of brown surrounding me, beginning with the feathers of the female Cardinal.  

Female Cardinal

As I began to notice more and more of the browns around me, I also began to really see and have a greater appreciation for all of the colors of the world around me, something I had taken for granted up until that point.  What a beautiful world we live in!

Weeks ago I had chosen exactly which fibers in my stash I wanted to work with while watching the Olympics on TV, and how I wanted to spin them and ply them.  I had also decided that I would experiment with learning "entrelac," a knitting technique I have only, so far, admired from a distance.  I am fascinated with the way basic entrelac mimics the over and under of weaving, yet it is knitting!  Remember, I am a weaver as well as a spinner and knitter.  And fellow knitters all say that entrelac looks more complicated than it really is. So I will be ready to find out for myself as soon as I spin up my selected fibers during the next 2 weeks while watching the 2014 Winter Olympics.

I also needed to decide how I would ply the singles once they were spun up.  Did I want to ply them only with themselves, each only with the brown alpaca, some with the brown alpaca and some with each other, etc.?  So many considerations and decisions that it made my normally indecisive head spin!  I took a deep breath and over the next several hours I considered every possible angle and decided that I probably really couldn't make a mistake with the beauty of what I had assigned myself to work with, and then I made my decision.

Next, I decided that I would split each of the four colorways of merino top into five strips and spin them "from the fold" using a modified short draw.  The brown alpaca roving, however, would be pre-drafted and spun from the end, using a modified short draw. By doing this I would, hopefully, end up with a nice balanced semi-worsted yarn for knitting.  This is not important for non-spinners to understand, but it is important for the outcome of the yarns created.  Take my word for it!  

Spinning fiber from the fold

Brown alpaca roving pre-drafted

I began by pre-drafting the alpaca into a diameter about the size of a pencil.  Then I turned to the merino top and realized that the colors in the blend were not consistent across the width of the strips, and if I wanted to include all of the lovely colors in all of my yarns, which I most certainly did, I could not merely strip the top down its length into five pieces as I had originally thought.  I would have to make my "strips" by dividing the fiber into five equal sections across its width.   And that is what I decided to do, because I really did want the consistency of including all the colors in each of the yarns I would be creating.

Light multi-colored merino roving up close

Red merino roving up close

Blue merino colorway up close

Lastly, I decided to go ahead and spin up a full bobbin of the brown since I had 4 ounces of it and only 1 ounce (split into five fairly equal sections) of each of the 4 merino colorways.  And so that is where the spinning is at the moment....all brown, but what a lovely brown it is!  It is dark, luxurious, with hints of natural maroon (it was labeled "Black Cherry" when I purchased it) that I can see as it slips through my fingers to twist and wind onto the bobbin of my Ashford Joy spinning wheel.  It is spinning up quickly thanks to the pre-drafting, and I believe that by tonight I will have my bobbin full of this first leg of spinning, and be ready to decide which of the merino I will spin first.  Oh no, another decision!  HELP!

Brown alpaca roving on the bobbin

Sometimes life has me spinning here on HeartSong Farm!