Colour portions
The first day of the Tour de Fleece, I didn't actually do any spinning. But I spent about three hours preparing fibre to be spun, which counts. The time was spent dividing the merino/cashmere/silk into packets, which will be individually carded and spun for the weft. I did it this way in order to design long colour gradations. There are seven colours-dark green, bright green, gold, yellow, pink, maroon and light orange-brown-combined in different proportions, usually two colours per packet but occasionally three. Altogether there are 300g of fibre for the weft.
Yesterday I wasn't sure about the warp. Last night I tried spinning a sample from a combination of the dark green merino/cashmere and some dark brown alpaca. I used a more worsted preparation and gave it more twist for strength and smoothness. I was pretty happy with it, and it will show off the brighter colours of the cashmere nicely. It will end up being alpaca/merino/cashmere/silk (60/37.5/7.5/5). I don't have a photo of the sample, but these are the fibres I'll use (the dark brown alpaca in the top right predominating).
Now I'm ready to start spinning, just in time to leave on vacation.
Yesterday I wasn't sure about the warp. Last night I tried spinning a sample from a combination of the dark green merino/cashmere and some dark brown alpaca. I used a more worsted preparation and gave it more twist for strength and smoothness. I was pretty happy with it, and it will show off the brighter colours of the cashmere nicely. It will end up being alpaca/merino/cashmere/silk (60/37.5/7.5/5). I don't have a photo of the sample, but these are the fibres I'll use (the dark brown alpaca in the top right predominating).
Now I'm ready to start spinning, just in time to leave on vacation.