Posted 28 March 2026 (Sat)
I'm in the habit of writing notes in Obsidian but can't get in the habit of posting regularly, so here are all my notes at once I guess LOL
Plied up the bobbins, forgot to take a photo before starting. I'm actually unsure which one was the longest...I THINK it was the short colour changes one but not sure. It ended up taking a really long time because I attempted to wind a plying ball instead of the usual plying bracelet and that got badly tangled, to the point where I had to remove a couple of little bits that got stuck together, and because of the fiddling, one of the singles drifted apart, etc. and I belatedly realised that I'd put one of the singles in the wrong slot of the plying tool, which I guess is why it wasn't plying as neatly as it usually does, though at least it doesn't seem to show too badly? I hope?
So in essence it was really fraught even though I enjoyed watching the colour changes happen. I really wanted to get as much 3-ply as I could out of it so after one ran out I doubled one single over and when that ran out I chain plied the rest, which was awkward and badly done but still a 3-ply nonetheless.
What surprised me is that the entire yarn occupied almost all of the bobbin. The BFL braid in contrast still had a fair amount of space left. Given there's not much variance in weight - the BFL weighs more, in fact - I can say there's a good deal more air in this spin, but I don't know how much variance in length there is yet. It certainly feels squishy though...I haven't done a WPI check yet, but somehow I feel it might come out thicker than a DK weight even though I thought I was going excessively fine in the singles. Will see when I wind it up...which is also when I get to see the full range of colour changes so I'm excited.
Update:
Sooo got this wound up and measured, still dry so it might shrink post-finishing and also possibly fluff up a bit.
Numbers:
153 wraps x 84cm x 2 = 257.04m
11-13 wpi, dk to sport weight
110g based on initial fibre weight, but somehow is 113g in the hank (with just a bit of cotton to tie it)
I will re-measure post-finishing and calculate the grist then. Since it's heavier than 100g, it's fallen a little short of the 250g/100m I was aiming for, but I did see that the singles were denser than the sample so it's not surprising.
It took forever to wind, but the colour changes were quite trippy. I think it'd make a fun scarf...might also be nice to work up together with a white yarn in a 2-colour pattern. It's even long enough to make an ABS kerchief if I so desire (which is my ballpark measurement for a skein of DK yarn...).
Most importantly, though...the length! 🎉 It's not commercial yarn density, but it's so much longer than the BFL. I think BFL tends to be denser, in any case, but not by as much as I made it...anyway, this came pretty close to a commercial DK weight. It's not remotely close to worsted grist, either, so I think it will behave like a heavy DK weight. It's so squishy in the hank, too. Love rubbing my face on it. And pretty consistent as far as overall width goes...the twist is a little messy because of my struggles with plying, but I expect it to even out a bit in finishing. I'm just really relieved/happy that the grist did get better and my efforts were worth something.
I have washed it and it's now drying. The water seemed...dirty? Well, it seemed darker, so it's possible that the dye ran a little, but I don't see any difference in the colour so it's probably fine.
Did the rest of the last bobbin using the diz-off-the-carder method. I think the only problems were neps (I tried not to force myself to use the bits that looked potentially neppy) and slightly inconsistent drafting while dizzing the top...and I think maybe a fair bit of this came out at a finer weight than I intended. The bobbin is roughly as filled as the second one. Uncertain if it's softer, but the texture is still rather different from the first bobbin's top layer, somehow.
Well...hopefully the plying reveals some insight because I really have no idea what I did differently, but if not, I hope it will at least be fun to look at. It should be pretty, I'm just concerned about how much yarn I'm going to get out of it...it would be disappointing if it ended up being no less dense than the BFL...
Tried a couple of prep options.
Given the length, this wasn't great but I think I've done this enough times to the point where it's just business as usual. It did fluff up quite a fair bit, but got neppy, so this drafted quite unevenly. Didn't like it.
This was actually really good - I think it made a very fluffy and loose prep while still preserving the gradient transition. Possibly a bit annoying when starting, because the last bits of fibre attached to the carder are more tangled. A little neppy during those bits; I should discard them but I don't want to waste that wool. For the rest of it, the drafting is really smooth and nice, though because I can't make a very wide top like this, the twist tends to go down a bit too fast and I have to pause every now and then to draft it out a little. But I do feel the singles made from this are closer to the first bobbin's. It'd be nice to be able to prep more of this at once to reduce joins, but it's kind of fiddly because of carder size and I also don't have anything to prevent the carder from moving around while I'm pulling...
But I'm really happy with this prep; it's smoothed out the combined top and made it more consistent to draft. Unsure if it's just me but it feels like this colour section has been going on for very long too...
Finished the thinner section on Sat, it turned out less squishy than the first bobbin and also possibly finer and with more twist...it occupies less space on the bobbin so I'm worried I ended up making it too dense again. Kind of disappointed but can't do anything about it really, just got to finish it and see. There's maybe a gram's difference between both bobbins, but I kind of doubt it would've made such a massive difference in volume...
Now working on the last section of the braid. Trying to keep an eye on how much fibre is going in, but again it feels more compact/defined than I'd like it to be...I do plybacks and even though the WPI and twist angle is roughly there, it just looks like there's more fibre than in my target sample. The bobbin feels about as tightly packed as the second one. I'm trying to not overtwist, but the less twist there is, the higher the tendency for the single to get thinner because there isn't enough twist to pull on the fibres, and then I have to pinch hard to draft because it isn't drafting very easily.
The drafting is also a pain for this specific section (which is the doubled-over section) - I tried to combine the two separate sections together so they would draft as one, but sometimes getting the drafting section to move across the top doesn't work (a problem when it starts pulling out the next colour), sometimes it just tightens and I have to pull harder to get it to draft. I'm holding it way too tightly in order to try and guide the drafting zone into the correct place, so the drafting is really uneven. It definitely feels a little tight when I try to pull it more open horizontally.
In hindsight, I think it would've been smoother if I'd separated out the colour sections for both bits and spun them sequentially instead of trying to combine them. If it's still possible to separate them cleanly I'll try that, I guess. I could, alternatively, separate by colour sections and card lightly to blend them/open them up...
My running theory is that the top in its original form (not stripped down or combined) is about the right size to manage twist - the stripped down one is too thin to really draft across the top, and the combined one has problems because it's not blended together evenly. Because of that, it got the best out of being fluffed up. The problem is that if I want to be able to spin more fractals, I'll have to try and figure out ways to work with tops of different widths...I suppose there's also the possible explanation that I didn't move the hooks too much so the winding on the first bobbin ended up looser than the second bobbin did. I won't know until I ply...
I guess for now I'll just try and see what I can do to open it up/blend it better. At least I have carders on hand if I need to get aggressive about it. It does make me curious about how a batt would handle, but I have no way of getting one without missing the point (it would probably get compacted) and I don't want a drum carder.
Debating if I'd like to do the same distribution for the other BR braids as well. I'll decide after I ply, but as far as the spinning experience goes (aside from being perpetually worried about the grist) I like seeing the colours work up in the singles...if the result isn't too homogeneous I think I wouldn't mind doing this repeatedly. I think I should also label my bobbin weights since I keep thinking of measuring dry weight of singles...
I've been spinning only long draw from the fold or rolags lately, and just really wanted to spin something with clear colour changes and some measure of control. The braid I've been carding into rolags has been blended too much to get anything more than a vague gradient, and the Polwarth I tried sampling from the fold is uneven and difficult to pay attention to the grist. I also thought about it a little more and I think it would be nice if I practiced enough that my default spin has higher grist so that I can consider it for projects. So...now I'm default spinning this braid, starting from the normal colour length one. The goal remains unchanged; I'm shooting for more than 200m of yarn, hopefully more.
Just doing a little bit of prep in that I'm fluffing up the fibre as much as possible before I start spinning it - hopefully that introduces more air into the yarn. I'm also checking against the card a lot. It feels like it's taking rather a lot longer to spin than before...maybe...? So possibly, I am making longer yarn. Possibly. I might actually have succeeded, because despite the fibre used weighing about as much as 1 singles for the BFL, the bobbin is nearly full up and it's noticeably squishy.
The colour changes were fun to work with - nice seeing them layer onto the bobbin. Looking forward to working with the rest of it and plying...feel like I should do more fibre with short colour changes because it brings me joy...
Divided braid up. The amounts didn't quite match up so I did a little bit of shifting around especially on the ends where there was a tiny bit of colour change.
The braid is nice and soft and not particularly compacted even in the darker bits. I keep petting it. Some tiny bits didn't get dye due to the folding, though. I expect it shouldn't be particularly noticeable in the spin (I like these pops of nonstandard colour anyway).
Waiting to do concrete measurements before I spin. The as-is 1/3 of the braid is slightly heavier than the other two so I can take samples from it. I don't think it particularly matters which braid I start from, but maybe I'll do the thinnest one first and work my way up...