Dear Jan,
Perhaps you ate burgers and brats over the holiday weekend, but I had a diet very high in fiber.? It featured a mixed blend in a (nearly) finished object, a lovely mousse of fiber puffs, and some silky smooth iced Tee.
Have I mentioned how wonderful Berroco Blackstone Tweed is between your fingers?? The blend of wool, mohair, and angora is super soft.? You’d think I would have finished Hazelnuss long ago.? Well, she is all done except the weaving in of ends and adding of buttons.? Here is her neckline – I added a row of crab stitch (single crochet done from left to right, backwards kind of) to the recommended row of single crochet.? I think the improvised edge (shown on the right side) is much nicer.? The fit is fine on this sweater, but the photos I took to show the fit were not.? I’ll make sure and get some better ones when I have her really truly complete.
For an airy little confection, feast your eyes on those fibers I was washing the other day, now all combed up and ready to be spun.? The Suffolk (grey) really could have used another wash to get a bit more grease out – it is kind of sticky and resisted combing, but oh, is it spinning up nicely to a super-fine singles.? I’m still deciding on whether it wants to be 2 or 3 ply.? The Welsh Mountain (black) is sturdy but silky, softer than I expected, and the Dorset Horn combed out so easily, with very little waste.
Next on the menu was some Teeswater roving – what smooth and silky stuff this was!? And can you believe that luster?? I spun a fairly fine single planning to use a chain-plying method to make a 3-ply.? In this method, also known as Navajo-plying, you make what amounts to a chain of loops like slip stitch in crochet except each loop is as long as you can make it. This allows you to get 3 plies off a single bobbin and works great – except that this time the yarn didn’t want to bend!? Instead of disappearing into the yarn, each chain intersection popped apart.
I switched to 2-ply, winding some of the singles off onto a spare bobbin and then plying them back on each other.? The 2-ply is on the left and the 3-ply on the right – you can see how much rounder the 3-ply is and how the 2-ply doesn’t control the singles as well so there is more halo.? Each has their own charm.
Have a productive and short week!
Love,
Ellen