Working On Our Fiber Exchange Project

It's almost time for the U-Spin Umpqua Valley Spinning Guild meeting when we will all show what we made from the fibers we exchanged. I can't believed I finished with a week to spare. Here is an overview of my project:

These are the fibers I brought home with me.

I pinched off a sample of each one:

I divided them up into groups. These six fibers were all a certain type of spongy wool, possibly Romney. Some were soft and some were coarse. Two of the white ones were exactly alike, so I combined them as one.

These three fibers were a lot softer than the rest. The brown fiber is a really nice alpaca. The white ball is roving from Brown Sheep Woolen Mills. The white rolag is a mixture of wool from a long-hair sheep and angora.

The last two fibers are a little more coarse than the rest. The grey fiber is mohair and the pink one is a novelty combination of unknown fibers.

After playing with several different ideas about how to combine these various fibers into yarn, I decided to make three separate skeins. I started by separating out four of the softest fibers to make a natural colored, navajo plied yarn.

Since each fiber sample was already carded I was able to go right into combining the different fibers on my drum carder. I wanted to keep the different colors distinct, so I only put them through the carder one time. This is how the batts turned out. You can see distinct layers of the different colored fibers.

I split the batt into fat roving, trying to keep the colors fairly even throughout.

I spun a thin singles with a high twist. It took a little bit of maneuvering to keep the colors drafting evenly because they were of several different lengths. The long-wool wanted to sneak out of the roving, leaving the short spongy yarn behind, so I kept bringing up the spongy wool and letting it twist with the long-wool to keep the colors even.

I made a three-ply yarn using the navajo plying method, which basically means you make large slip knots and pull the fiber through with your hand as you are spinning the yarn in the direction opposite to the one you spun the singles yarn. I remember making yards and yards of yarn chains like that when I was a kid, thinking that I was crocheting.

This is the finished skein. It's a soft, bulky yarn.

I'll show you the next yarn tomorrow.