sock porn for knitting voyeurs.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

fiber to yarn...

I was a little excited this time to document the different steps and changes these fibers took to get to a finished yarn...

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...so lots of pics :) Apologies in advance!

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I started with about a little over 2 oz each of 2 different fiber blends, dyed at the same time by me (when dyeing for my shop)-- a 70/30 superwash merino/seacell blend and an 80/10/10 sw merino/cashmere/nylon blend. The cashmere blend took the dye much more like a straight superwash merino does-- striking fast and brilliantly where the effect of the seacell blend was more muted, more even across the fibers. Perhaps it was cancelled out with the seacell not taking the dye when spinning...

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sw merino/seacell blend

The seacell blend is quite fun to spin-- I enjoy the *cel fiber blends, the slip and the shine are really interesting and feel good in the hand. At this point I enjoy the way it looks but don't really like the idea of knitting with a 2-ply of this blend... it looks to have too much drape for my desire to knit this into socks, and I just am not really drawn to yarns with shine. This seems to have less shine than other tencel blends I've spun-- but those were 50/50 and this is 70/30, so... :)

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sw merino/cashmere/nylon (left) and sw merino/seacell singles

Surprisingly, the singles don't look that much different. I thought they would be vastly different looking, but apart from the mild sheen of the seacell blend they are a bit hard to tell apart at a glance. The seacell blend still looks slightly more muted and even in color compared to the cashmere blend, but spun at this fineness it is less of an issue than it would be if I spun this into thicker weight singles.

The bright cherry red of the original fiber can be seen to have drafted to pink in both the seacell and cashmere blends; I usually don't like this, but in this yarn I like the effect with the grey (that had drafted from black).

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sw merino/cashmere/nylon (left), plied singles (middle), and sw merino/seacell singles (right)

Plying them together was noneventful; my seacell singles may have been slightly finer, but it really didn't make a difference in the finished yarn overall.

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75 superwash merino, 15 seacell, 5 cashmere, 5 nylon
2-ply yarn, spun from zero.etsy.com roving-- "mercutio"
approx 440 yd, 110 gm-- fingering weight

I'm really happy with how these turned out. There is still a lot of bounce in the yarn, and while there is shine (these finished pics were taken outdoors under sunlight), the effect of plying helps it not look as jarring as I usually find it. It's really interesting how well the plies look together, despite being different fibers-- I thought it would have been more dissonant looking, but I don't think so. Dissonant's not bad, but this is better.

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The seacell ply does stand out when under direct light like this, but it's not as pronounced under natural ambient light. I can't wait to see what this yarn looks like knit up... I think I want to use a pattern-- pomatomus? :)

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Have a good one, welcome back :)

14 comments:

Micki said...

Awesome! I love seeing the progress pics too.

Anonymous said...

you know what i find intresting? is how the heck does that fiber create such amazingly beautiful yarn! I see the bobbin and i'm like wtf? you got that from that (points to picture) fluff? no waaaaaay!


yes way!

amazing as per usual. Another reason i don't spin...it's so amazing.

Anonymous said...

'Seashell' fiber has

subtle color variance

soft to gentle eyes


p.s. Nice pics of spin and unspun.

lexa said...

Lovely pictures! Very pretty. I just got back from Knit Nite where one of the girls brought her first handspun to show. She started a course last Saturday on spinning and had a few things done on a drop spindle.

I would naturally agree with Pomatomus since it's one of my favorite patterns, too. :)

Margaret said...

Beautiful! Thanks for the photos of your process. The two blends really do work well plied together.

Emily Cole said...

Wow, that's really cool! I think it's beautiful in the end! Great job - I'm VERY jealous... Em

Anonymous said...

Gorgeous! I loved seeing your process from roving to yarn. The yarn will make gorgeous socks, I can't wait to see it!

Stacey said...

I'm always amazed looking at the roving, then the finished yarn - I could never picture one turning into the other!

KT said...

It's really cool to see the process pics, especially as a non-spinner. The end result is so pretty!

Xuskagg said...

Beautiful! Simply beautiful.

Karen said...

It's gorgeous yarn. I'm sorry I missed out on the other colorways in the shop. As always, a day late and a dollar short. :)

hillary said...

I really love having the collection of progress shots to compare the fibers at different stages. It makes the final, gorgeous product even more amazing.

Josette said...

I love going on spinning adventures with you!

Lisa said...

What a great way to use up smaller amounts of 2 different fibers. Beautiful yarn. I can't wait to see the socks!

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