Spinning Experiment

I got a package the other day. It was some wool I bought from Skeinwinder 123 on Etsy. It is so nice and pretty.

This one is BFL in a colorway called Rainbow Soup.

And this one is merino in the colorway Midnight Zephyr (I like these names).

My original plan when I bought them was to simply spin the two together into a 2-ply. Probably sock weight or worsted weight. But when I laid the two big braids or wool next to each other I was starting to have doubts about whether I'd like the result.

Time to spin and swatch...

It was super overcast when I took these photos so the colors are weird but you can at least get an idea...

The 1st swatch (on the left) is a single of each wool spun in to a 2-ply yarn. It's okay but I don't love it.

The middle swatch is a 2-ply made with one strand of the Rainbow Soup BFL and one strand of wool in a Lemon-Lime color. This one looked really cool as yarn but when I knit it up I really didn't like the resulting fabric. Too much contrast.

And lastly, the swatch on the right, one strand of the Rainbow BFL Navajo-plied (making it a 3-ply yarn). This one was the winner! This method involves spinning one extra thin yarn and then sort of hand crocheting it. It takes quite a bit longer that a normal 2-ply, which explains why this swatch is so much smaller, but the result is that you get to see more crisp color transitions.

So I spun and spun and spun and I'm not done yet but here's a taste of the prettiness.

See how certain colors really pop? Like the yellow and red? That's why navajo-plying is so neat. You really get to see those colors.

I think this yarn might end up as a pair of mittens. And I'll think of something to do with that big lump of merino later.

Do you spin yarn? Do you like reading about the process I use to decide what I make? Let me know what you think!