Studio 49 Retreat 2017 Challenge part 2

See this post for the beginning of this story.

I have finished spinning my yarn for the Studio 49 Retreat 2017 challenge. Yay! I scaled down my vasty many oz. project idea from last year. I decided that finishing it without undue stress and last minute spinning/knitting was going to be better for my health and for my family.

So the new project idea is to spin just the original 2oz. of creamy white Polwarth and 2oz. of lovely natural grey BFL (BlueFaced Leicester) I have in my stash. I will finish two separate yarns and knit a 2-color Mosaic Sampler Hat. A new technique and a small doable project! Sort of unusual for me. But smart this time around.

My singles.

I wanted a 2 ply yarn so I needed to divide the singles into two sections to ply. I didn't want to ply from a single ball for some mysterious reason. Here is my set up. I weighed an empty bobbin then weighed the full bobbin and did some calculations to figure out what my end half bobbin should weigh so I had two close to even singles ready to ply.

The red box is my homemade shoe-box lazy kate with tension device. I made her when I first started spinning in 2003 and she is still my go-to kate. Almost there with the divided singles.

Two pairs of singles!

Plying set up.

I used my 1970's Ashford Traditional spinning wheel with the jumbo bobbin set up to ply both yarns into big skeins. I added a couple extra treadle pushes to get the tighter twist I wanted.

My two finished skeins and a close up of the lovely yarn. The grey BFL is a wee bit thicker than the Polwarth.

The yarns wet finished nicely. Both are soft and squishy. The Polwarth in particular is stretchy and the creamy white just glows. It's going to be fun to knit the hat. But first...must knit a swatch!

Bloo Bamboo

Referencing my 2nd blog post Spinning in Madrid, I have finished spinning the indigo-dyed merino bamboo fiber I’ve been working on for more than a year. A UFO (UnFinished Object) no longer!

 The stats:

• 60/40 Merino Bamboo blend - 4 oz.
• 573 yards of 3-ply yarn
• 18 wpi (wraps per inch) - lace weight
• singles spun on Ashford Traditional single drive/treadle standard bobbins
• plied using jumbo bobbin accessory
• the fiber was very easy to spin fine

The yarn is squishy and super soft to touch.

I had always planned on plying from 3 bobbins to see how the colors blended. This is my shoebox Lazy Kate set up at a 45 degree angle. The yarn comes off the bobbins smoothly as long as I keep my guide hand straight up from the kate. No tension line required on the bobbins (although I do have 2 pushpins and an elastic cord ready for tension if I so desire).

Two bobbins had yarn left over so I chain plied the singles for a variation of the straight 3-ply yarn. The colors in the chain plied yarn are more delineated while the straight 3-ply color blended to a lighter blue throughout the skein.

31 yards of chain ply.

I find the color gradation more interesting in the chain plied yarn. But I would still be plying. As it is, it took a week to ply 500+ yards of straight 3-ply.

A 2 year long project is finally finished. Whew!