Posted 21 July 2026 (Tue)
All plied up, wound and washed. Used the smaller niddy-noddy since I expected the length to be manageable.
Pre-wash length...
109 rounds x 73cm x 2 = 159.14m
I think it's pretty good! Initially I tried to ply to match the sample's angle, but figured it was compressing the yarn too much, so I loosened it until it was just sort of holding itself together. Plying went relatively quickly as a result - I turned the speed way down low and was still feeding it in about twice as quick as usual. The bobbins were not even, but the plying bracelets were manageable to make. It only broke once when both the plies on one of the doubles were too underspun so I carefully put them back in. Then when one of the plying bracelets ran out (it was really bad managing 2 bracelets at the same time, too) I made a plying bracelet of the remaining plying bracelet to get the whole 8 plies...but it was more fiddly to join, so I ended up tying a knot in one of the plies. This was thankfully close enough to the end that I can probably just start knitting after that knot.
Colour alignment-wise, I think the blues look pretty good, but extended really far into the yellow that it almost touched the part where it started turning orange, so a lot of the yellow is slightly greenish. Quite glad that I started with the blue end first, though. With 8 plies, the marling looks more like the colours are heathered.
Tried fulling it afterwards - alternating hot/cold water a couple of times, smacked it around a bit (in addition to the usual snapping). I'm not sure if it worked, but I...tried? Currently drying. This one held sooooooo much water, my yarn towel was almost totally drenched.
Overall, happy with how it turned out. Off the niddy-noddy, it was soft and fluffy and width-wise, pretty close to the sample yarn. Surprisingly it didn't have a whole lot of excess twist - just a pretty normal amount. It was also kind of stretchy although it stopped being stretchy when wet. This also came out less dense than the sample yarn while being more consistently thick. I think it's actually a very fun way to spin an 8-ply, trying to see how much I can get the singles to fluff up at each stage...and I also definitely see why this is more suitable for machines. It feels ideal to do with mathematical calculations on optimum twist...but, I think I understand the concept. I'd consider doing this again, but it would definitely have to be colours I like a lot.
I should note that back when I did the BFL gradient, I think I measured the stretched length rather than relaxed length...I'm pretty sure that was denser...
Posted 21 July 2026 (Tue)
Plied up the other 2-plies (doubles, even) and rewound them. Once again the singles weren't way too off from each other - one was even just a few cm apart, so short that the difference was less than a handspan and I could barely loop it back on itself. One did have quite a fair bit more dark/light blue marling - I think one of the plies was from the bobbin that had more red than the others.
I'm a little worried the plying is uneven, though, and perhaps different from the previous 2 bobbins...it's a bit hard to tell what's appropriate here. I'll probably try doing the 4-ply from a greater distance to even out the twist, but I'll do it probably tomorrow so the bobbins can rest a little (and I can do something else today).
On the whole I think the gradient will be fine...I'm still deciding where to split the yarn for the 4 stripe colours but I'm thinking red, orange-yellow, turquoise-blue, dark blue...starting from bits where it's fairly close to the main colour block, so that there'll definitely be a bit of colour transition. Will see how much yarn there is in these sections first though, of course. It really should be enough either way...
Spun the last single today. I realised that while I have to let that single rest, I could already start 2-plying the first 2 bobbins, so I went and did those. The lengths were fairly close (reasonable enough to bracelet ply) and I think the marling wasn't super extreme - but I realised that it's better to have the lighter end marl than the darker end, so in the 4-ply it'd be better to have as much of the dark end align as possible. Which means: rewinding. So I rewound those 2 bobbins and will rewind the next 2 as well. I'm not too sure if I have to let the 2-plies rest much too...I think it's tempting to just jump into the 4-ply. Technically the only thing that would stop me is managing plies with active twist, which is more of a problem with singles than 2-plies...
For what it's worth, I think the 2-ply is doing what it's supposed to do - make the singles looser/thicker while preserving structure. I know these singles get really, really thin at some points that I was afraid it'd break while plying but none of these ones have broken so far. The 2-ply bobbins are fuller than the singles bobbins, which is expected, and they're softer.
I keep forgetting to wind up the Mushroom Hunt braid though, so those bobbins are still kinda occupied...
Split the fibre - not perfect because the more tiny bits there are, the harder it is to be consistent especially since it's a gradient. Some of these already have quite a few tiny bits in them...one ply also has a lot of extra red in it. Yesterday's sample didn't fluff up to the size of the target yarn, so for working on the first single I drafted a bit more than I was technically supposed to. I don't think I'll have any issues with the amount of yarn I'll get out of this so it's fine, and it's pretty finely-spun as it is anyway.
Incidentally, the sample yarn after mostly drying:
5 rounds x 76cm = 4.4m in 3.6g
~106m in 100g. It definitely feels as dense as it sounds.
The principle of it is that the single is spun just enough to be able to fluff up when plied, but the first ply removes only a little of the twist, and the second gives it the rest. So I spun it quite loose, just enough that it won't pull itself apart under tension. I hope it comes out well...in any case, it should be close enough to the target yarn that it shouldn't be an issue knitted in. I'm just unable to know if the thicker drafting will cause it to be significantly denser but...I'm just kind of inclined to be optimistic about this spin. With this number of plies it should at least turn out fairly consistent-looking...
Also, the gradient is very pretty. The bit where the light green blends with the blue fibres is such a nice turquoise...
Posted 21 July 2026 (Tue)
Cabled 8-ply:
7 rounds x 86cm = 6.02m in 4.1g
~147m in 100g
It definitely feels denser. It also doesn't look/feel like the reference yarn, which I think is definitely less spun...pre-wash, I think it's around the thickness of yesterday's sample. Doesn't have much elasticity but yesterday's didn't either and it's now bouncier.
I think I did a good job in the spinning - all the singles were fairly consistent in length and so were the 2-plies. I'm just kind of disappointed it still looks far off from the target yarn. If there's anything I'd have tried differently that I only observed after I spun a couple of singles, it's that the 2-plies in the target yarn seem to be underspun compared to the 4-ply, so it's technically not balanced. Mine will probably turn out balanced. I don't know if I have it in me to do another sample of 8 plies...that took a really long time.
Maybe I should've accounted for twists per inch rather than purely the fibre density...this is 10 bumps, 5 TPI for the 2-ply and 8 bumps, 2 TPI for the 4-ply.
In comparison, mine's 15 bumps, about 7.5 TPI for the 2-ply and about 9 bumps, 2.25 TPI for the 4-ply...the 4-ply is more or less there, but the 2-plies are more spun than they should be. Assuming that the unplied singles are reliable. I suspect that plying the 2-ply to be balanced instead of overspun might be the right call, and then...maybe fulling the 4-ply so that it sticks.
I can definitely afford to take out more fibre for sampling it's just kind of tiring. Having to swap out the bobbins so many times... I thought about putting 2 singles on a single bobbin, but I'd need to be able to secure the end of the first one. And, I will definitely run out of bobbins if I do all 8 singles first.
...Actually, I just realised...the target yarn is cabled the "wrong" way. It's actually S-twist. Singles are Z-twist, 2-plies are S-twist, cable is S-twist (Z -> S -> S). I'm doing S -> Z -> S. Maybe that's why it looks so different...?? I can try putting my yarn through again to reverse the twist, but I suspect it'll look bad because my 2-plies are too twisted. In this case...the 2-plies should be close to balanced, or even slightly underplied if I don't want it to be splitty; it should be as fluffy as possible so possibly balanced instead of slightly overplied as I usually do... Honestly a little fascinated and wondering if I can replicate it, also S-twist singles are really annoying to spin with my muscle memory so I suppose that's ideal. Ugh, 3rd time's the charm probably...the normal cable ply's too smooth so I don't want to do that. Underspun 4-ply is still better than that, but the 2-plies were a lot easier to ply (less risk of breakage). Really, I don't mind the spinning 8 plies, I mostly mind the bobbin management...
--
Yesterday's skein is now shorter, so it's:
9 rounds x 74cm = 6.66m (bro) in 4.3g
~154m in 100g
Which is denser than the reference yarn, but only about half as thick on average.
--
Ok...I did the ZSS sample...I tried to spin the singles with a little more fibre to see if I could bulk it up and it turned denser. I'm not too worried since I can tone it down - the main thing for me was figuring out how to get the yarn to look similar and tend towards fluffing up.
5 rounds x 88cm = 4.4m in 3.6g
~122m in 100g
I'd call this a fair success - the yarn actually does look similar to the target yarn. Pre-wash, it's already at 9-10-ish WPI, and I'm going to try fulling it a little, so it might bulk up a bit more. I...think it's also more elastic? I'm not too sure, but it definitely has more of the marshmallowy feel. A little unfortunate that plying is still kind of annoying at the joined bits; I lost a little bit of fibre because it got tangled. But the double S-ply was less difficult to pull off than I hoped. Aside from it sometimes not winding on too well; I think it needs much more takeup than usual. The sample yarn stays together, at least, except for the ends. I also didn't do the 2-ply as tightly as the dissected yarn, because I felt it wasn't quite right when 4-plied. Looser seems more correct...pulling the ply off perpendicular to the sample yarn gives a looser angle than the one I wound off and I think that's a more accurate way of getting the twist angle. I think around 20 degrees is right. I kept it going until the 2-ply seemed the fluffiest it'd be before winding on. If anything can be improved, it'd probably be to make the singles a little looser/fluffier...but I'll wash these new yarns up and see how they turn out tomorrow. In any case I think I'll be spinning with this method because it matches the target yarn the best visually and should behave similarly.
As an aside - I managed to pull this off spinning all singles before doing all the plying, by putting 2 singles on each of 4 bobbins, plying the singles on 2 adjacent bobbins 2 times, then plying the remaining singles on the freed bobbins. In theory, it's possible for me to stack 2 singles on the same bobbin to do the same thing for the actual spin - the bobbins should have more than enough space to accommodate 2 separate singles (it's only 25-30g for 2 singles), but I wonder if there's a downside to this? I mean...it's just continuously spinning 2 singles end to end, I could do a join and it would still be fairly easy to separate...I might try this. It seems a lot more efficient and consistent to do all the singles + all the plying consecutively.
So, despite my sampling efforts...and efforts to spin thicker...the sample I made is around 14wpi-ish. I just washed it and it's drying, so there's the possibility it'll fluff up, but honestly it seems unlikely to puff up enough to hit the desired 8wpi.
Immediately after spinning:
9 rounds x 84cm = 7.56m in 4.3g
~176m in 100g
To my credit, it's close to the target grist (I'm surprised because I was convinced I messed that up) even if the WPI isn't right. I didn't do anything wrong in the drafting; it's only slightly finer than expected, and I think it's comparable to the amount of fibre in the commercial yarn. But it doesn't have elasticity - the final plied yarn doesn't curl quite as much as the Daruma Falkland Wool and I don't think plying any tighter would've helped. With a little bit of research...it seems that cable-plying adds elasticity, so maybe I should give that a shot. The main issue is that I don't have any spare Falkland left. If I sample any more, I'll have to take it out of the gradient braid. (Also, this was a pain to do even 4 x 1g bobbins of.)
I guess I do have more of it than I need, even beyond the amount of fibre I expected to receive in the purchase. I have 1 extra day but I was going to do half a ply of this spin per day...maybe I should just slow down a little. Also, a thought occurs to me that if I was going to do half-plies AND cabled yarn anyway, I could just...reconstruct the entire 4 x 2 plies. It's just a matter of splitting it vertically instead of horizontally. The main thing is that I'd be plying an extra 4 times, but seeing how plying 4 singles was so annoying (worried about breaking if I spun loosely, and working them through a button was difficult), perhaps plying with 2-ply cables might be better...but then the singles would have to be basically frog hair. Ok, maybe lace. I'm looking at 56 WPI-ish in the Falkland Wool. I suppose I've been spinning thinner and thinner lately so it wouldn't be as hard as it seems, but...yeah. I guess if nothing else it'd help bulk up the yarn, and maybe it'd look less weird than if the yarn was too fine...and any misalignments in the gradient would probably blend better like this...and cabled yarns are supposed to be more pill-resistant...
Would I even have enough bobbins though? I have 5 spare Nano bobbins right now. All of the 2-plies need to be on Nano bobbins, or I'll have issues fitting the bobbins SOMEWHERE in order to do the 4-ply. I suppose I could spin 4 singles, ply 2 x 2-ply, spin 2 singles, ply 1 x 2-ply, spin the last 2 singles, ply the last 2-ply...but I think it's easier to be consistent if I spin/ply in batches, so maybe I should ball up the singles occupying my 6th bobbin (or just chain ply it, whatever, I don't really want to woollen spin the rest of that braid) and then do 2 batches x (4 singles -> 2 x 2-ply). I didn't think I'd need more than 6 bobbins at a time, but uh...hm. Maybe this is just an uncommon situation...
Alt plan, wind 2 of the singles onto 6.1 bobbins. Then I can do all of the 2-plies at the same time. I'm a little leery of rewinding my singles though since the last time I did that, I had issues in the plying where the joins weren't so stable...and I'd have to spin from the opposite end to get the colours to match up with the other plies. (I guess I could just attempt to spin those singles on the 6.1 though?) I think I most want the red end to match up correctly, so singles would have to be...starting from the red end (except for the 6.1 bobbin ones)...2-plied from the dark blue end...and then 4-plied from the red end again.
Swapping out the bobbins was such a pain with 4 plies...sampling with 8 plies is going to be SUCH a pain. I still don't need a huge sample, so I'm thinking 0.5g per ply...at least I don't have a separate bunch of spinning work to do, so hopefully it won't eat too much into the rest of my time. I may have to make a new sample card though (maybe I could just draft half of what's on the card??)...what a pain...I really just want to dive into spinning the singles, but I really don't want to mess this up because it's going into a garment and I want to wear it and say I made it.
--
After drying for a bit - the sample has a little more elasticity now, but definitely not the diameter I need. Praying for the chain ply.
Posted 21 July 2026 (Tue)
Fibre received.
120g Ironic Grooves - expected 113g
As expected, it's a very nice gradient. I'm thinking of using the red-orange, yellow, teal and dark blue for stripes. The pattern only requires about 10g of each colour, so even accounting for any variance in grist, I should have way more than enough here.
Got Daruma's Falkland Wool - it's very nice and soft. The white isn't as white as I expected it to be, probably because of the alpaca blend - but the greys are very nice, very heathered. Which one I choose to use will depend on the exact colours of the spun gradient I think, but for now I can just swatch all of them. I'm quite fond of the middle grey, though...it might also be nice that the white isn't super bright because I was worried that it might be too...clean-looking. Dark grey would be lovely with the blue gradient I was thinking, though it could also make good contrast against the rainbow gradient. But anyway I love how this yarn feels and am trying to hold back from starting on the swatch immediately because I have stuff to do.
The yarn construction is a cabled 4-ply (4 x 2 plies). Not what I was expecting and I don't think I will be spinning 8 whole plies, that's a bit much and is likely to get pretty dense, but I can consider matching the 4-ply part of it. Twist angle is pretty high, around 30-40 degrees? Don't know for sure but it looks worsted. The 2-plies look to be around 20 degrees.
Been planning this a while - I've never knit a full garment before and I'm drawn to this one in particular. I thought I'd try spinning the entire thing in Polwarth, but with how my grist and consistency is looking, I think it would end up being a really heavy piece if it's fully handspun...
So I'm considering a couple of other options:
This would be manageable and less boring/time-consuming than spinning a whole lot of the same colour, plus more consistent/lighter overall...with the tradeoff being that I wouldn't have the bragging rights of spinning the entire cardigan...and this would also be more expensive than an excess amount of fibre...I'm inclined to do this if I find I'm more occupied with other things when it comes time to work on this project.
The commercial yarn I'm eyeing is Daruma's Falkland Wool. I've ordered a few balls for colour samples from Rakuten. I'd have to match this grist and possibly spinning method...I picked this one specifically because it's possible for me to order the stripe fibre in Falkland though.
I had this thought before, but as I've never knitted a garment, I don't know how difficult it would be to translate these measurements. Hypothetically, I could calculate this with a swatch in the desired weight...which I would put as a DK weight maybe, because it's easiest for me to spin and not too thick. Though, another problem that would arise here is that I don't know how much yarn the knit would use in that case. Theoretically it would use less fibre in total...
It doesn't feel like it would be difficult, at least for the parts that are just flat, but I don't know how it would work for the shaping. As it's my first garment, if I'm going to do this, I would rather knit it in commercial yarn at the specified weight first to understand how it works before I try to do a lighter version...I guess that's one reason for me to consider an alternate colour version.