Midnight Blush roving rose to yarn

I purchased this "roving rose" at the Jay County Spin-in in 2014. There was an ounce of white, an ounce of navy, an ounce of pink, and an ounce of blended colors, in llama, alpaca, and wool. I grabbed it to take with me to the February meeting of the local spinning guild and spun up the already-blended bit.

I tried to blend the solid colors on-the-fly at the meeting, but that was a FAIL. So later that week, I experimented with blending the three colors at home, using all the tools at my disposal.

A blending board is absolutely perfect for blending roving. You just "paint" the board with the fibers, layering colors as you wish.

The result is a fat sausage of a rolag. If the colors seem too separate, you can re-blend them, until they meet with your approval.

I didn't take notes, but I think I re-blended these rolags at least once, if not twice.

Or not.

I also tried blending on my new drum carder. This worked fine, although it would take some experimenting to get the combination you want.

The resulting batt can be run through again (and again) but from this pic, I think I opted out.

Hand carders may also be used to blend fiber, sort of like a mini-blending board.

I'm not very adept at using the hand carders.

Of these three methods, I like the blending board best. The rolags are fat and tight, and I think you have better control of the outcome.

More fun: spinning the blended fiber! The different methods produced different yarn, depending on how the colors mixed and fed into the wheel.

So now there are four ounces of llama-alpaca-wool, enough for a nice cozy pair of mittens, methinks. I have plenty of hats and scarves but not enough handwear.

But first, I'll take the yarn to the spinning guild for "show and tell".

A spinning experiement

Recently I purchased some dyed roving in what we will call turquoise and chartreuse. I had seen these colors together elsewhere and wanted to spin them together. My idea was to spin singles in each color, then a single with both colors combined, ending with a three-ply yarn.

I was somewhat disappointed in the quality of the yarn. It felt overly processed and stiff, and it was not much fun to spin. Looking back, I should have teased the fibers apart before spinning, to see if I could get them to draft better into the twist.

To blend the two colors, I used my blending board, layering one color, then the other, then rolling them together to create a rolag.

If I were to do this again (and I just might!), I would take the rolag and reblend it, as the colors were not actually mixed. The resulting single was mostly one color or the other or the two "barber poled" around each other. Not exactly what I was aiming for.

My spinning wheel has two spindles on it, but for a three-ply, I needed a lazy kate. I don't currently have one, so I rigged one up with US8 knitting needles and a shoe box. This worked fine, although a little drag on the bobbins would have been helpful.

I like the colors, but the result was not quite what I was aiming for. I like the bulky three-ply yarn, but there isn't enough to do anything with it. These are both good excuses to get more roving and give it another whirl. Right?