Batts, Roving, and Spinning Styles
I’ve been experimenting with different types of fiber, different preparations, and using worsted and woolen spinning techniques. One great way I’ve found to try out these many different fiber options is to play with combining samples or to swap things I have plenty of (hand-dyed yarn) for things I don’t (batts!). Of course, there is always the option to buy fiber!
I love the way different fiber samples combine into roving when I spin up the samples from the Phat Fiber boxes. This yarn from Farmer’s Market themed samples is going to make a hat that compliments my winter coat and my hair perfectly! I took the samples, divided them into 3 balls based on their colors, and then spun each ball up and plied the 3 singles together.
Next I worked up a set of batts that I got in a swap group on Ravelry. I wanted to try something besides the standard merino wool, and these batts were full of odd goodies! They have Polwarth, Romney lamb, Alpaca, and Bamboo as well as a kiss of sparkle. The Romney made them the perfect candidate for woolen spinning, and the yarn came out as a squooshy and soft worsted weight that fits the name of the colorway, “Night Sky,” perfectly.
Finally, my current ongoing spinning project is to spin enough yarn for a sweater that I’m designing. I purchased the fiber in stages based on a Rose Garden color theme. There is fiber in the form of combed top from 3 different dyers here: Creatively Dyed Yarns (wool/seacell), The Critter Ranch (merino/tencel), and Fiber Fancy (merino/tencel).
I’ve found that merino/tencel is much nicer to spin than pure merino. I don’t like pure merino because it tends to stick to itself and the singles are a it blobby when I spin them. It’s difficult to get a consistent weight single. The tencel alleviates a lot of that problem by making the fiber a little more slippery. I know some people who don’t like slippery fiber, but I actually prefer it. Here’s what the finished yarn looks like:
I love the way the dark ply accents the two lighter plies! I’m halfway through my fiber at this point, and I am taking a break to spin a few other things before continuing. It’s been a lot of fun experimenting with different kinds of fibers and preps!
Dyet Yarns blog posts by Adrian "Nuri" Steinhauer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Tags: batts, fiber, lessons, merino, phatfiber, roving, spinning, top, yarn
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