I think I may have fallen in love. 🙂 I’m madly trying to get some samples made up of the fibre I’m now carrying and I decided that I’d like to try plying. Since I have plied the traditional way before and found it time consuming getting two bobbins spun up, and wasteful cause I can never get two bobbins with the same yardage on them, thought I’d try Navaho plying.
Since I’d never done it before I only had a rudimentary grasp of what was required so I did a bit of a rummage on the internet and found a video tutorial here: http://3.ly/9SK
It looked simple enough.
I started spinning the merino/nylon blend fibre that I’d carded last night and done a bit of a hash job on, so I carded one more batt on the Wild Card tonight sandwiching the nylon between two layers of merino and spun that, too. That did indeed work somewhat better, but I’m sure there must be a simpler way to do blends. When Loralee gets back from her cruise I’ll see if she can walk me through the process. Maybe I need to alternate the two fibres throughout, except I’m trying to do a 10-12% nylon content.
Anyway, I finished spinning the singles at guild meeting tonight and having an empty bobbin with me, got that on and the full bobbin on the kate and started plying. (Typo originally was playing, which I suppose I didn’t really need to correct!)
Perhaps tomorrow I’ll wet finish it, and then next dye day I’ll try dyeing it. Nylon is supposedly good with acid dyes – one way to find out is to toss it into the dye pot.
There isn’t really enough yardage to do anything with so I’ll card up some more and do at least one more skein. I think this yarn would make a good toque so I may look for a knitting pattern. It may take two more skeins – will have to figure out yardage and if I can replicate – within reason, given I’m a non-spinner – and find a pattern that appeals to me.
On the weaving front I did weave two more towels with one left on the loom. Decided to save it for tomorrow or else both looms will be empty and I have colour gamp kits to make up tomorrow, too. After all that is done I will slam that silk warp on the Fanny loom for another scarf and think about the next warp for the AVL. Still some single 24 nm linen left – my goodness do you ever get a lot of play value with fine threads!!!!
Doc put me back on another week’s worth of anti-biotics and between that and getting a good night’s sleep last night my energy lasted much better today. 🙂