Jaded Hulk of the Jeweled Seas

One of my favorite ways to spin is to make combinations – sometimes 2-ply, but more often 3-ply yarns.  3-ply yarns always seem to come out so nice and round and bouncy.  Combos are also nice because it means I’ll have a nice big skein at the end of the spinning that is generally large enough for a garment (other than socks 😉 )  While I do seem to have a penchant for collecting sweaterlots, I do have a lot of bumps of fiber that are just 4oz (110-115g) – some of them I intend to just spin up for sock yarn – or even for weaving…but since I rarely spin with a specific project in mind, I do prefer having the option to churn something off with more yardage – you know…just in case.  The other benefit to a 3-way combo is that my jumbo bobbins hold 12 oz of fiber perfectly 😉

Most recently off the wheel, I combined these three fibers from Southern Cross Fibre – Rusted Hulk on Blue Faced Leicester (club offering August 2012), Jaded on Blue Faced Leicester (club offering August 2012), and Jewelled Seas on Falkland (club offering November 2012).  In order to break up the browns, I spun this semi-fractally.  Rusted Hulk was spun end to end with no splitting, resulting in really long color runs.  Jewelled Seas was split in half lengthwise then spun for slightly shorter color repeats – and finally Jaded was split lengthwise into 4 pieces and then spun.  Behold, the bobbins:

If I’m remembering correctly, it’s Rusted Hulk in the front, followed by Jewelled Seas and Jaded.  Singles were spun on my Kromski Minstrel (I’d forgotten what a pleasure it is to spin on a traditional wheel) on one of the faster whorls (12:1).  I didn’t take time to get WPI measured on the singles while spinning – and I also failed to do so before I plied it all up.  The three bobbins were fairly well balanced.  Lucikly for me, I seem to have a naturally set treadling:drafting ratio that results in fairly consistent singles.

After a little bit of time languishing, I finally got out the shoebox kate (it works better for me than my arched kate) and the Roberta and plied and plied and plied….the finished result was a very round bobbin loaded with 12oz of yarn.  Once reeled off, I had 1056 yards of sport to dk weight yarn 🙂  not too bad!  I’m very pleased with the resulting yarn which poufed and rounded up quite nicely after its bath.

and in case you’d like to see a progression of the yarn in progress, here’s a slideshow for your enjoyment: