Spinning some John Arbon fibre - Wooden Bobbin - multicoloured version

As I mentioned in my last post I had bought some fibre in May 2022 from another spinner that was de-stashing.  

This is an interesting blend, both in in terms of fibre content and colour combination.  The fibre content is 40% Corriedale, 30% Merino, 10% Exmoor Blueface, 10% Zwartbles, 5% Bluefaced Leicester, 5% Wensleydale.

Having spun up the first braid and whilst being happy with that yarn I decided that I would spin up the second braid in a completely different way.  There are a few options available to me. 1) Pull apart the colours and create some kind of gradient yarn but I can't see this working as I can probably isolate the green and the white but the rest, nope. 2) Fibonacci Spin, this has potential as I can isolate the green and the white and then the rest would probably have to be blended together to make one browny-grey shade.  I don't think I want to make a Fibonacci Yarn. 3) Pull off chunks and spin-over-the-fold to keep the colours together and then I have two options: a) spin two singles like this and ply them together for a barber-pole yarn or b) spin one long single and then chain ply to make a 3 ply yarn but pay attention to the colours coming through and adjust the loop lengths each time to try and keep the colours clean and together. 

For this braid I decided to spin it over-the-fold, as per option 3, but I didn't initially decide on which option to take for the plying so I halved the braid in length to give me options and started with the first smaller length.  Once I saw how it spun up I was able to make a decision on the next step.

I liked the way the colours were isolating and into various shades of the brown so I decided to continue and spin one long single and then chain ply it.  I spun it quite finely, like the first yarn, but as I was making a chain ply 3ply this yarn was going to spin up thicker than the first yarn.  I had to adjust the length of the loops when plying to accommodate the colour changes as best as I could.

The finished yarn is double knit weight, 106g/262m, and it's nice and soft.  It has turned out really nice and interesting with lots of colour blocks but there are also some sections that are a bit barber-poled but this couldn't be helped and I don't mind it.  I am glad I went this way and not with the option of spinning it over-the-fold and then making a 2ply barber-pole yarn.

Spinning some John Arbon fibre - Wooden Bobbin - blended version

I bought some fibre in May 2022 from another spinner that was de-stashing.  She had got this fibre from an Open Mill Weekend event held in June 2020 by John Arbon Textiles who are based in South Molton, Devon, which is about 180 miles away from where I live.  They hold this event every year and they also sell online, I've bought some fibres directly from them, most are still waiting to be spun but I have spun a couple of them.

This is an interesting blend, both in in terms of fibre content and colour combination.  The fibre content is 40% Corriedale, 30% Merino, 10% Exmoor Blueface, 10% Zwartbles, 5% Bluefaced Leicester, 5% Wensleydale.

Before I started spinning I had an idea that I may want to spin each of the braids in a different way, handle the colours in a different way for each yarn, but I wanted to see how the first one turned out before I made a final decision on making two different yarns or making them both in the same way and having a larger amount of yarn that could be used on one project.

For this first one I undone one of the braids and put the two ends together and run it through my hands to find the middle and broke the length at this point to make two shorter lengths. I pre-drafted each of these shorter lengths before spinning and I tried to make sure that a little bit of each colour was pulled into the draft each time I pulled on it.  I forgot to take photos of my basket full of pre-drafted fluff but it was a kind of mousey grey-brown with a hint of green, the colours have blended together and the white has completely disappeared.

I spun each single from the end of the pre-drafted fibre using the short forward draw/short backward draw method, spinning quite finely, and I plied the two singles together. A simple and straight forward spin.

The finished yarn is sport weight, 106g/410m, and it's nice and soft.  It has turned out quite a drab mousey-brown-grey colour, lifted by the tinges of green.  I do like it but I have decided that I want to try and make something a little more exciting, colourful, different with the second braid of fibre.  I have a few options and I need to think about which way to go with the second braid.

A Mermaids Tale - my own blend

I had a crazy idea, quite some time ago now, to spin a yarn that was lime green and turquoise with sparkles and texture going on and to use some of the left over bits and pieces of Twilley's Goldfingering in the yarn if I could as one time I accidentally miscounted and cut far too many lengths for the fringing on one of the shawls and I don't want to just throw it away.  It just so happens to be turquoise.  I get lots of left overs of Goldfingering that can't really be used to make anything much so if I can incorporate it into my own handspun yarns that means less wastage and less going into landfill.

I already had a braid of merino fibre that was mostly lime green with a bit of turquoise but I bought a braid of turquoise merino fibre from the Wool Show that I went to just before Christmas.  I also had some Trilobal Nylon in Colbalt and Tussah Silk in a lime green that I bought in years ago and then some Tussah Silk Noil in pale blue and Hemp in Tropical Green that I dyed myself a couple of years ago.  I put these 6 fibres through my blending hackle in 4 equal lots, one lot for each ply of a skein and I am making 2 skeins.  I can't put the lengths of Twilley's Goldfingering through the blending hackle, they will have to be added in as I go.  My fingers did turn blue though and this was to do with excess dye in the turquoise merino braid, which was also ever so slightly felted in parts, not enough to throw anything away, it did all come loose eventually, but it was harder work putting it on the blending hackle than it should have been.  I didn't have any problems with the other braid of merino, that just pulled apart as easily as would be expected.

The blue goldfingering was already cut into lengths and there was 15g of that.  I then cut the lime green goldfingering into the same sized lengths but because there was only 6g of it I didn't get many pieces so what I did with the lime green was to then cut those lengths in half to give me more instances of when the green will be in the yarn.  I split the number of the lengths of each colour into two, for each skein, and then split them again into two for each ply.  I then put them into pairs of one blue and one green and then when I ran out of green I made pairs of the remaining blue.  In total I had 30 pairs

I worked out that the total length of Goldfingering for each ply was around 60ft.  The first fibre that I dizzed off the blending hackle measured roughly 30ft in length and the ones I dizzed off after that didn't quite measure that length but all I had to do was to work my way along pulling it out a bit thinner to get it up to 30ft in length.  The reason for doing this is that I can then break off lengths that match the longer blue pieces and I can add in the two lengths of Goldfingering, whatever colours they may be, randomly whilst spinning the woolly blend and at least they will then be distributed throughout the yarn as evenly as possible whilst still being random, if that makes sense. 

I did have a little trouble getting the ends of the Goldfingering to embed themselves into the fibres so that they wouldn't stick out or unravel but there were a few times that I had to go back and add a bit of fibre specifically over the join to try to help keep the ends in place.  Plying has helped this even more but I have noticed that there are still one or two that are sticking out.  I will leave them alone until I actually use the finished yarn to make something and assess what is happening with the those ends at the time of making something, because knitting or crocheting may bury any stray ends in anyway.  It was a bit tricky and a little time consuming but I love the finished yarn.

My fingers kept turning blue throughout the spinning process due to the excess dye having not been washed out thoroughly enough from the braid of blue Merino that I purchased.  When I soaked the finished yarn the water turned blue because of this and the finished skeins are now not as bright turquoise as I had hoped for but they are still nice.  I was initially a little disappointed but these things happen sometimes, especially with blues and reds, you can rinse and rinse and rinse and think its all done but then someone with a different water supply with different salts and minerals in the water and a different pH level comes along and puts your fibre or yarn in their water and it can start leaking dye again.  The vendors at the Wool Show had come from all over the UK so this is a possible reason, although it still shouldn't have gotten all over my hands.

So, the finished yarn?  It is Double Knit weight with one skein being 119g/313m and the other being 114g/270m.  The final fibre contents, rounded to the nearest half a percent is 79.5% Merino, 6.5% Metallised Polyester, 3.5% Trilobal Nylon, 3.5% Tussah Silk, 3.5% Hemp, 2% Tussah Silk Noil, 1.5% Viscose.