Rainbow of Yarn

I was playing around with blending coloured fibres the past few days.  Starting with 3 primaries, I blended the colours to make 3 secondary and 6 tertiary colours.  It is so cool to see the colours changing while carding them.   I carded them with hand carders first but the blue fibres were pretty sketchy; shorter than either the red or yellow fibres and with a different texture.  They didn't blend easily at all.   In the end, I had to run the two colour ranges with blue though the drum carder and even after multiple passes, I couldn't get it to blend evenly, due mainly I think to the variances in staple length.

Regardless, it was a fun activity but time consuming.  I think I've spent a good part of this week just working on blending and spinning small amounts.   Each colour range took  much experimentation to get it right and none of the "recipes" were the same, so I couldn't just assume that because blue and yellow took a certain ratio to make a secondary green, that red and blue would take the same ratio to make the secondary purple. 

I also finished plying the hood project singles.  I've a bunch of skeins ready to go, especially if I ignore the plying twist differences.  I also spun up a small skein of Dyer's Knotweed dyed roving from earlier this fall, just in case I needed a bit more colour.  It's a pretty blue.  I ran the roving through the drum carder to blend it nicely, for a fairly even blend.  I say fairly because there are a few differences and I didn't take the extra step of blending the carded batts together to get a more even colour.   This is merino rovings and I didn't want to risk getting any neps or noils, so stopped when the batts were lovely, light, fluffy and perfect.  I tried to match the Knotweed merino in size with the Romney hood project yarns in case I wanted to make something out of them, so I'd have enough yarn.   But my little old imagination keeps on wandering toward the rainbow colours.   Except that I really don't want to blend and spin enough for a blanket or some such thing, wouldn't they make a cool colour gamp project?

I ended up fulling the hood fabric a bit more.  I tossed it in the washer for a few minutes but got distracted and it was in there for a couple of minutes more than I'd intended.  I spun out the water and layed the fabric over the kindling bucket to dry in front of the fire.  The cat looked disdainfully at it until it started to dry a bit.  Then it was deemed a good place to sleep!   In the end, I'm really happy I left it in the washer for the few extra minutes.   It's soft and yummy now.  It will make the perfect hood!  It's interesting that the stripes show up quite well from the Z/S differences but the broken diamond pattern is lost.