It’s been a while since I talked about my “Track 2” sweater project! I’ve finally had the big reveal of this yarn on the Wool Circle: Episode 115 this month. These are all progressive yarns, made of several combo spins that change and shift through the length of the yarn, so there’s only so much you can find out about that aspect from looking at the yarn in a skein. But… it’s handspun! So of course I took lots of pretty pictures of it for you to enjoy.
For the lowdown on the fiber and prep that made these complex, colourful skeins, check out part 1.
11a – common element
Short version explaining how these spins worked: each column was spun together.
This yarn ended up less red than I expected. The bright colours jump out, but the base common element is a split complement, which will desaturate.
Winding the yarn into the cake, you can start to see how the different colour groupings will separate.
There was only a small margin of error among my four skeins, but this was the thickest yarn and shortest yardage. It seemed happy knit up on a US 6 / 4mm.
11b – common element
I expected more analogous blue-greens from this set, and was not disappointed.
This happily knit up around the same gauge on US 6s.
12a – progression
I spun these columns starting on the left, and as you look at each column, you can see one fiber changed at a time. This is the skein in which the progression is most visible, without even balling it up!
This was the yarn that spun up slightly finer than the others, and had the most yardage. I was a little concerned that it wouldn’t work up quite right at the same gauge as the others. So I knit this up on a US 6 / 4mm and US 4 / 3.25 mm. The US4 would have suited the fabric a little better. , but the 6 wasn’t totally floppy.
12b – progression
I looked at these columns of colour and thought, “red.” What I didn’t see, which is more clear in the yarn, is “dark.” Again, while red catches my eye most in the grouping, all the other colours are there too, and bright! Whether red even stayed a serious undertone depended on how much support it got. For a lot of this skein, it looks more purple.
This one spun up more like the first two, but I knit it up on 4s and 6s anyway. It would have worked on either one.
Here are all four swatches, along with the contrast white I am using to stretch these four skeins into a sweater quantity. I have a little over 800 yards of all four combo spins, all told, and another 400 yards or so of the white. How do you think these will come together to form a garment?
Osborn Fiber Studio 