"Shopping" My Handspun — FLORA & FIBER

I love handspun yarn! The rhythm of spinning is relaxing while the interplay of colors and textures equally imparts joy. Like many hand spinners, the result of my passion produces an abundant and ever growing handspun stash. Although these skeins are pleasing eye candy on their own merits, my practical side prods me to find a project that befits them.

Typically, at least in my case, handspun yarns are skeins of one in quantities that are often too small for most project requirements. Hmmmm . . . . . . but could I use several different skeins in a project meant for that very purpose?

Andrea Mowry’s popular Nightshift shawl is just such a project. The pattern calls for 6 colors of worsted weight yarn, 150 yards of each. Now the Nightshift kit by Spincycle Yarns is spectacular, but my primary objective in choosing this pattern was to find a good home for some of my handspun skeins. So I went stash “shopping” looking for worsted weight yarns of at least 150 yards or so.

Here were the five contenders. I ruled out the gray/black (second from the right) because it contained spirals and beehives (art yarn techniques) that are pretty, but not well suited to this shawl project. Although I really endeavored to include the turquoise/black/white skein (second from the left), it just didn’t seem to harmonize with the others; the blues didn’t work.

So these three skeins were the winners.

I would need to spin three more yarns to round out the project’s requirements, but more on that later.

First I’ll tell you a little bit about my yarn selections thus far.

Color A

This one goes back to the Fall of 2016, one of my first forays into spinning (and by the quality of the pictures, one of my early attempts at photography). It is a 2-ply yarn spun from 18.5 micron count Merino wool top. 249 yards/5 ounces.

I used a technique called fractal spinning which means that the braid of top was split in half lengthwise. One of those halves was spun ‘as is’ from one end to the other end. The other half was further divided lengthwise into smaller segments (fractals) and then spun. The two singles were then plied together. Because the original fiber braid was a gradient progressing from an electric royal blue to an inky, almost black blue, the resulting yarn had many variations in color gradient.

Color B

I can’t tell you much about this skein. It is also an early spinning project and at the beginning I just didn’t keep good notes. It is a 2-ply commercial dyed wool with some sparkle blended in; 108 yards/2.1 ounces.

Although it is less than the 150 yard amount needed for a color, I think it works well with the other choices. Besides I have extra of some of my other colors that I can use to make up the difference.

Color E

This yarn was plied on itself to create a beautiful marled or barber pole effect. Because it contains so many color variations and I have plenty of it, this will be the yarn I use if I fall short in the other color amounts. 450 yards/5.8 ounces.

I started with white merino wool top and hand dyed it with Cushings Perfection Dyes in Egyptian Red, Old Gold, and Blue.

Colors A, B, and E were assigned, but I needed three more to round out the project requirements.

Evaluating what I had thus far, I thought I was missing two hues in particular - yellow and green. I also needed some brightness. So back to my stash, this time “shopping” in the fiber department to select for the yarns I needed to spin.

Color C

It turns out that in addition to green, purple complemented the palette very nicely. 150 yards/104 grams.

I spun singles of equal amounts (56 grams) of merino/silk top (Lichen green) and merino top (Ultraviolet from Paradise Fibers).

I plied those singles together to create yarn Color C.

Yarn D

Yarn D is the bright pop of color! The yellow/orange and the pinks tie in well with Colors B & E. 176 yards/112 grams.

Last Fall I was delighted to win these four rolags of blended Blue Faced Leicester (BFL), silk waste, and Stellina. Bah Bah Fibers named their colorway ‘Halloween Fun’; my thoughts were orange/raspberry sherbet!

I chose two rolags for each single. The first single was spun from 22 gm and 35 gm rolags (total 57 gm) which I spun from the orange to the pink end. The second single was 25 gm and 28 gm (total 53 gm) which was spun from the pink to the orange. My thinking was that when plied together there would be more marling of pinks and oranges. It worked as I had hoped.

Color F

Yarn F came together beautifully by combining three different fiber remnants from other spinning projects. It pulled in more green, this time a dark pine green, as well as more purples and red. 145 yards/103 grams.

I used 56 grams of the ultraviolet merino top remaining from Yarn C. When I spun the single in yarn C, I found the darker purples seemed to overpower the other shades of purple in the single. So this time I separated short segments of the top into darker and lighter strips in an attempt to achieve more variation. It worked well.

The second single was spun from two different remnants. The red is 29 grams of 100% merino wool. I alternated spinning this with chunks of mostly green 80% merino/20% silk top (18 grams).

As an aside, here is a photo of the original braid from Abstract Fiber. The dark green is what I used for this project.

I previously removed the blues and violets to spin the yarn for another weaving project. Also, you might notice that the green weft is more of the Lichen merino/silk I used in my Color C.

But back to the topic at hand, here are the two singles that were plied together for Color F (ignore the small amount of light green, it was a leftover on the bobbin.)