More Spinning

So, after finishing my best yarn ever, I spun up a braid of luscious BFL/Silk/Sparkle from Woolgatherings in mostly hot pink to make a sock yarn. Because I wanted to use this yarn for socks, I planned a 3-ply, so I divided the braid into three by pulling it apart in approximate thirds. I used my food scale to get the weights of the three sections the same. Since the braid was tonal, I didn’t have to plan for color placement.

I spun each third on a bobbin, then plied the three singles together to make a fingering-weight 3-ply sock yarn.

The singles are being plied.

The bobbin on the lower left holds leftover singles from my best yarn ever.

Since the yarn contains some Nylon content in the form of Sparkle, it should make a nice, strong, long-wearing sock.

The 3-ply yarn on the bobbin

The finished yarn in a skein

The final tally: 120g/440 yds

Now that I have established that I can spin consistent fine singles that I can ply to become lovely 2-ply lace-weight yarn and 3-ply fingering-weight yarn, I thought I would try my hand at spinning a singles that isn’t quite so thin. I started with this braid from Woolgatherings.

I call this colorway “Sunset” because it reminds me of a colorful sunset.

I love the color combination–yellow, orange, and pink. I had originally planned to use this fiber to make sock yarn because it is 30% Nylon (Sparkle), but I changed my mind. The colors were telling me they didn’t want to hide in shoes. They wanted to be out where the whole world could see them. So I decided to make a 2-ply. But since I have a lot of lace-weight 2-ply handspun in my stash, I thought I’d try my hand at making a thicker 2-ply, something in the DK to worsted-weight range.

I changed the settings on my Ladybug. I moved the drive band to the larger setting on the “fast” pulley for the spinning and increased the brake tension for a faster bobbin pull-on. When plying, I used the smaller setting on the “medium” pulley and adjusted the Scotch tension until it just felt right.

The plied yarn is on its way from the bobbin to the niddy noddy.

I did pretty well with the singles. Although they weren’t as consistent as I would have liked, the inconsistencies evened out in the plying for the most part.

There are a few places in the skein where thicker is plied with thicker, and thinner with thinner,