What we missed on last episode

Airport Spin ♪ spinning ♪ knitting

I’ve been wanting to attempt a more organized fractal spin, and have 4oz of this cornflower blue Corriedale in my fiber stash. I’m also looking to use up some bright magenta I already have. I ordered a few more colors to pair—black, a bright blue, and purple.

Up to now, I did some math to divide up the colors, and planned each ply. If you’re not familiar with fractal spins, here’s a rough explanation. The final yarn will be made up of two strands (plies). The first ply will have a 1:1 ratio of these color in order: cornflower, raven, rasberry, cornflower (again), amethyst, and then royal.

The second ply, I will divide everything into thirds. I will keep the same order, but the runs of color will be 1/3 as long. And then, I will ply the two strands together to create variegation. Here is a literal box of hair that might give you a sense of this.

Before

After

How the yarn looks as wool roving, and then as yarn

A swatch of handspun Corriedale yarn

Here’s the knitted up sample of the yarn I created with these colors. I did remove the blurple color you see for the actual spin, as I don’t have much left and I didn’t love how it muddied up the colors. Also the gauge looks perhaps a little tight, so I might go with US7 size needles next time around.

It’s honestly the airport carpet/80s bus seat variegation of my dreams. I am hoping to spin enough to make a small vest. This batch of Corriedale is extremely easy to spin, but I would not define it as next to skin soft.

I am planning to make this Pelica vest by Rosa Pomar once I’m done! Oh, gosh. Buttons. I haven’t even thought about buttons.

A brown garter stitch vest, Pelica, by Rosa Pomar. Photo by Agata Xavier

I’ve started with the first ply of the first skein. This is the long color runs ply. When I do have time to work on it, it goes by pretty quick. I think I could be done with ply 1 in about two more hours of spinning.