Spinning Malabrigo

I've been spinning lately and really enjoying it.

I bought the following two braids at Red Purl a few weeks or months apart. I think I bought the second one with the gift certificate I got for Christmas from my boss. (We get to chose our own certificates. I think you're "supposed" to get a restaurant certificate, but I get yarn.)

 Both braids are merino from malabrigo.

I thought the colours had enough overlapping tones that I could maybe combine them.

So far I have spun half of the second braid pictured.

 With the supported spindle, I am much better at getting thinner yarn.

For those of you interested, I pulled the braid into two halves (the long way) and then spun the colour as it presented. Theoretically I will get two spools of yarn that have close to matching colour progressions.

The purples don't come through very well in the photograph, but I think you can see a little of how the colour progresses through the length of the yarn in the picture above.

After watching the Craftsy class "Ply to Knit: Spin the Yarn You Really Want", I really wanted to make some 3-ply yarn. So that was my goal with these two braids. But I haven't been able to think how to combine two colours into three plies. (If you have any ideas, please let me know.)

Hmm...I just thought of an easier solution. Buy one more braid that will coordinate. Good plan!

Ravel It, Twist It, Ply It--All to Knit It

So once there was this sweater that I picked up from Goodwill. It was orange and I liked to wear it. Especially in the fall.

But then I was tired of it, and there was a spot on the cuff I couldn't wash out. And in a fit of decisiveness, I took it downstairs, sat on my couch and ripped the sweater apart. In a very organized way, of course.

I got 230 grams of very lightweight 40% merino/30% viscose/20% angora/10% cashmere. When I entered the yarn in my Ravelry stash, I discovered I had unraveled the same sweater in pink! (You can see a picture in this post.)

I got a hankering to knit socks out of this yarn so I decided to ply it. In order to ply it, I decided to twist it. You twist in one direction and then ply in the other. Then the yarn wants to stay put. You could just ply it and block it, but I didn't want to in this case.

Here is one sleeve twisted on the spindle next to the yarn from the other sleeve:

I had a funny moment getting started. I twisted the yarn the "regular" way (clockwise or Z-twist), letting the spindle spin and spin. Then I stopped to inspect the yarn and it was utterly not twisted--in fact, I thought it was less than before I started. So I examined the wool straight from the sweater a little more closely and realized it already had some twist in it (very unusual for yarn from a commercial sweater), and it was going the other way! So I twisted it in the other direction and things went fine from there. (There's no advantage to one direction or the other; it's just a convention to twist the one way and ply the other.)

Once the yarn was all twisted, I was eager to ply it. Not only was it the final step, it also would go a lot easier and quicker than the first step! But I had to do some other stuff, get ready for a trip, etc., and my spindle sat on my table for a couple days.

But finally I had a few minutes. I put the spindle in my "super fancy" lazy Kate (yup, that's what they're called):

Constrained by the holes in the side of the box, the spindle
can spin freely, making it easy to unwind.

and wound up a cake of yarn:

Once I had a cake of yarn, I put it in my project bag to take on the trip.

I tried out a double strand, triple strand and quadruple strand and decided that the triple strand gave the thickness I wanted. That meant chain plying (aka Navaho plying). It's basically a long crochet chain done with your fingers while you ply.

When my fingers got sore from knitting socks during the drive, I pulled out the ball of yarn and my spindle, and got to plying.

It was easy work as the yarn practically plies itself since it was twisted already.

With just a little more time once I got to my destination, I had the whole ball done.

The yarn has nothing to do with my trip to the Netherlands, but I feel like they will make nice souvenir socks of the trip anyway. I did purchase a sock yarn while there that I optimistically called orange, but it's really yellow. It was the best I could do at the time, but I have admitted to myself that it's not orange.

I am happy with this result and can't wait to cast on a new pair of socks. My first plan was to knit one sock with the plied yarn and the other with the yarn from the other sleeve unplied, just to experiment, but I've since decided to use the plied stuff for the toe, foot and heel of the pair and use the unplied for the leg. The wear parts will be stronger and I won't have to ply everything. We'll see how it goes...

Making Four Into One

I saw a little baby hat pattern on the Ravelry Unravellers group a while ago and got an urge to make it recently. I considered my stash and decided to make it with some pale blue cashmere I have.

I dyed the sleeves from this sweater red, but I still had plenty of blue left. But it was very, very thin, even for a pattern calling for two strands of lace weight.

So I decided to ply a few strands together to get a thicker yarn.

Yes, I could have just held the strands together and knit with them that way. I often do. But I didn't want to in this case and considering I'm the only one in charge of my knitting, I do what I want. So after making a centre-pull ball from one of the hanks, I pulled the strand from the centre and the strand from the outside and twisted them together onto the drop spindle.

I did the calculations and thought 16 grams would finish the hat, so that's what I spun. (Or plied. I don't know if you're allowed to use the word "spin" when you're just plying.) Once I had two strands twisted together on the spindle, I wound it onto my niddy noddy (pictured above) and then wound the hank into a centre-pull ball.

Then I took the strand from the centre and the strand from the outside and twisted them together in the opposite direction. That way the twist stays put. I soaked it and let it dry and I had this:

It looked ok to me but as I worked with it, it seemed too loosely spun. I'm basing this on the fact that it would untwist as it ran through my fingers as I was knitting. I don't know for sure.

But it was still very enjoyable to knit with. The design has yarn-overs which often leave exposed yarn not caught up in a stitch and it looks better to be spun than individual strands.

I got close to finishing the hat, but I did run out of yarn. So I got out the drop spindle and did another 9 grams.

As I worked on it, I thought I gave it more twist than the first one (although I didn't want to make it too different) but it looks about the same in the picture. I'll see if there's any difference as I knit with it.

And here's a little look at the cap:

It's very sweet and I can't wait to get to the interesting edge stitch. I hope mine works up as well as the one in the pattern pictures!