A couple of posts ago... well, okay, a couple of months ago... I wrote about practicing blending colors using undyed natural commercial Corriedale top in white and medium brown. I was curious to see if I could do it by hand (I could, though I did not try for very fine blending).
I tried different ratios of color, and laid them out in different ways. Some broken into patches and gently drafted to join the patches. Some laid out side by side lengthwise. Some with just a little of the light color, followed by a little more. I found the process fascinating. Now I want to get (or make) a blending hackle.
I was also using the Corriedale to practice making thicker yarn. It is an axiom that it is easier to spin thin yarn evenly than it is to make thick yarn even. Though it may seem counter-intuitive, it is true. You can see some of the variations in thickness in the yarn. As I proceeded, I got better at keeping the yarn even. If you look closely at the jumble of skeins of various attempts, you may be able to see this happening.
During this time, I switched from double-drive to single drive using Scotch tension (my wheel accommodates either). If you're not a spinner, don't worry about it. If you are a spinner, you may already have found what I did: that Scotch tension makes it easier to spin fat yarn. Though, as in all things having to do with doing things with our hands, we each seem to develop our own personal techniques that work just fine.
The Whole Jumble
...except for a large skein of white I used for the hat and for another project. That's the rest of it lying snuggled in there.
The reddish "cake" of yarn (a cake is just a ball with a flat top and a hole in the middle) in the upper left corner is actually the remainder of some burgundy colorway Corriedale top. I'd spindle spun a skein to send a friend. The rest I also spindle spun finer, chain-plied it, then cabled two sets of plies to see how it would turn out. In the photo below, you can see how cabling added texture to the yarn. It is now 6 plies total, and would be described as Corriedale 2-3 cabled (or 3-2, depending on where you are), meaning 2 strands of 3 ply yarn have been plyed in the opposite direction of the original ply. Cabling can be carried through several layers.
Cabled Corriedale 3-2
Now here's a series of pictures of the blended Corriedale, most of which is two-ply. A couple are three-ply. Three-ply yarn looks rounder than two-ply. The white at upper left and the brown at far right are the colors I used. The black bits are simply yarn scraps I use to tie up the skeins.
And finally, a closeup of some of the blended yarn:
