Coopworth - Nightshade
LiveJournal Tags: spinning,fiber,pictures,coopworth
After I spun the Merino, I picked up another colorway from Spunky Eclectic -- this time a sliver of Coopworth in the colorway Nightshade. While the fiber itself was perhaps a bit coarse and scratchy, I love the colorway and am sad she isn't still producing it.
For this I went back to my 'default' spinning -- short-forward draw/inch-worm style, a relatively fine 2-ply. Since there wasn't a discernible 'pattern' to the colors (it looked kettle-dyed rather than space-dyed), instead of splitting the entire roving lengthwise, I opted to fold it in half, and literally split across the middle of the length. My hope was that I would get reasonably close to the same lengths on the two bobbins (though that didn't occur) but I wasn't trying for a consistent color. I packed both bobbins pretty full.
Since I was spinning finer, and often in short bursts, it was about 10-12 days from start to finish. I overfilled the first plied bobbin, continuing to ply until it refused to wind-on. The remainder was plied normally until one of the bobbins was finished, and than I opted to chain-single ply the last of it. I find plying from a center pull ball to be difficult with fine singles, as it likes to collapse and tangle. Unfortunately, my skill with chain-singles isn't that much better, plus it frankly is not as strong a yarn due to being a 'fake' 3ply. Still, it has the advantage of preserving the colors in the singles, so I enjoy doing it with the 'leftovers' -- I figure they can be used for an edging on whatever I end up making, as the resulting yarn is obviously related, yet not really the same color 'look' as the 2ply
The 2-ply is in the top in the above picture, and the left-hand picture below. I'm especially happy with the main skein -- it softened up considerably in the wash, and it looks really good. The quasi-3ply isn't especially even in my opinion, but I do like the appearance and am basically satisfied with it.
I enjoyed spinning this -- it did have more matted places than I've ever encountered in one of Amy's fibers before. It also bled like crazy -- I always had bluish/purple fingers while spinning and plying, and a good bit of blue dye went down the sink (I tried adding vinegar to the wash water, but I doubt it helped). I am assuming that both were a side effect of the much-darker than usual colorway. Regardless, I would definitely spin this again!