summer swatching plans, part three (spinning)

Sometimes one post becomes four. While I didn’t initially plan to make this a four part series (part one, part two), it turned into one! In addition to the yarns I’m swatching primarily for knitting and crochet, I am also working on my spinning and weaving this summer too. Today I’ll discuss the spinning plans, next week weaving.

Anzula

I have a plan for pairing this braid of Australian Superfine Merino Top (in colourway Earth) with Squishy in Aqua.

First I need to spin a sample and then work up a swatch.

Before that can happen, I need to decide how I want to prepare the fiber and spin it. I have already pulled out Jillian‘s Yarnitecture book to help me work out my spinning strategy for this project! Can you guess what I’m designing? I’ll provide a big hint, I’ll be writing about this combination next week too.

more sampling

I want to better understand how different fibers behave when spun with small changes made to process all along the way. What happens if I draft differently? How does this fiber behave as a two ply or a three ply or a chain ply? Sure I can read about it, but I will learn by doing.

I picked up this ball of Suri alpaca and CVM (California Variegated Mutant) through a friend a while ago. I think it will be interesting to use for this experiment.

Yes, there will be a notebook involved!

something for me

I bought this braid of Merino/Yak when Happy Fuzzy Yarn was going out of business earlier this year. It seems appropriate to spin this summer for a variety of reasons.

From past experience I know that I adore the fiber. The hydrangea colourway make me happy and I am smitten with how it works on this fiber combination. I need to spend some time to first decide what it will be after it’s spun and the best way to get there.

daily practice

This isn’t really swatching, but I’ve mostly only been spinning once a week when my task list reminds me to post #tuesdaysareforspinning to instagram. I really want to move on from the red section of this beautiful Elemental Fibers (it’s a rainbow spectrum) and eventually free up the Akerworks mini spindle for other projects.

My goal is to try for 5 minutes of spinning each day.