Another year has flown by and brought me to one of my favourite events of the year - Tour de Fleece 2018. We've got lots of challenges planned again in Team DIY and Dye, and I've chosen to start with a tweed yarn using some merino I dyed in the spring with woad from the garden.
The preparation for tweed yarn can be quite time-consuming. I tried putting the unprepared fleece through the drum carder, but it came out a bit rough and "neppy" (lots of little balls of fluff mixed in with the nice straight fibres), so I hand-carded the lot into rolags first. Then I put the rolags through the drum carder which meant an extra step, but it was much smoother that way.
The blue was carded three times, then I added lots of colours (naturally-dyed leftovers from 5 (I think) years ago.
The whole lot was then carded another 3 times to integrate the colours with the blue.
I think this was the second pass through the drum carder, but it's looking pretty good.
After the final pass, the resulting batts didn't look too promising and I began to think I'd mixed it too much,
but once I started spinning the colours just started to pop out. This is as far as I got today, but I have carded more for tomorrow and will hopefully finish this bobbin then.
Jacey Boggs from PLY Magazine is running a series of challenges this year - one a week - the prize for some lucky spinner is a year's subscription to PLY Magazine. Very nice and very worth having! This week's challenge is tweed yarn, so I'll be submitting my final photo for a chance to win (not that that matters, because the whole idea is to challenge yourself to spin something you might not otherwise try).
Roll on tomorrow!!
That is looking gorgeous!
ReplyDeleteThank you. I was very happy with the way it turned out.
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