Osborn Fiber Studio

I get to share about sock spins today! This spin started as a bundle of undyed mystery wool, which I dyed in two different analogous-esque colourways. I spun the black-bean dyed very light-colored wool first, but I’ll come back to that later.

For the bubblegum-colored food-coloring-dyed yarn, I wanted to try something different structurally. So far, all my sock yarns have been traditional 3-ply in structure. (There was some chain-plying too, but in terms of fabric, that’s pretty much the same.) For this yarn, I spun it as a 2-ply. Specifically as a 2-ply spun from a centre-pull ball.

I split the 2.5 oz in half. One half had two tidy color repeats in it. This I spun across the top and plied from a centre-pull ball, so the colours would line up for as long as possible.

The other half I stripped down and spun randomly for maximum barber-pole effect.

I’ve been spinning these sock yarns pretty thin. I’ve ended up with final yarns in the 16-19 WPI. I tried to spin one notch thicker for these singles, in my muscle-memory’s personal gearshift. Well, my gearshift has some big gaps in it, because my final 2-ply yarn was around 14 WPI. Still in the fingering-weight family, but thicker! On the plus side, it spun fast. That was fun.

I did manage to spin and ply pretty tightly. The twist angle matches or exceeds the tightly-twisted 3-ply yarns I’ve been making. We’ll just have to see how it holds up.

It’s hard to tell the two skeins apart by color. One has more barber poling, the other lines up more. The proof will be in the knitting.

Now for the black bean yarn.

I was very thoughtful in handling this visually delicate colourway. I chose two color handling methods. I spun to my desire. Then, when the time came to block the yarn, I put it in water and forgot it overnight.

Yeah, there’s no more color on that yarn. Oops. Live and learn.

I decided to make lemonade, and put the same colourway on this finished yarn that I had put on the bubblegum 2-ply. I figure it’ll be interesting to see what the same dyeing pattern does when you add it after spinning. I replicated the colours pretty well, I think. I dyed one skein with a longer repeat of color, and one with a shorter.

For some reason, I plied one skein a bit tighter than the other. You can see above that the skein on the left has a higher twist angle. It’s not denser by the numbers, but it looks and feels denser. This will make a great comparison in wear between the two skeins, and this pair will also be a great comparison with the 2-ply yarn in the same wool.

With yarns this colour, though, I will not be the one to make that comparison. I will probably knit up two pairs for Stringbean, and we can make an experiment of changing socks every day until one gets a hole. She also needs socks pretty desperately, still wearing the same boughten wool socks from last year even though they are full of holes!

I haven’t been writing because my mom is in town, and we’ve been busy having fun. I’ll tell you all about it soon. I can’t believe this month is nearly over already.