New yarn

Today was my first time finishing yarn. I wound the Frabjous Fibers Blue Faced Leicester (BFL) singles onto my swift and tied them off into two hanks. Since I don't have a niddy noddy, I opened the swift until it was 36" around so I'd be able to easily count how many yards each hank was. Then I soaked the hanks in a hot Eucalan bath for about half an hour. When they were done, I lifted them out, thwacked them hard against the side of the tub and hung them up to dry. Before soaking and thwacking, they were very curly and unruly.





I also took the Corriedale fiber from Copperpot Woolies and plied my singles. In both cases, I wound the singles into a center-pull ball and then made a two ply on the wheel using the inside and outside of the ball together. It meant no leftovers and worked pretty well. I was really happy since the plied yarn came out mostly balanced and looked like real yarn.

First I plied the singles I spun on the wheel.





Next I plied the singles I spun on the drop spindle.





I really love how the colors turned out in both of them and it's interesting to me that I had pretty similar results with both methods. Honestly, except for the fact that the spindle hank is smaller, I have a hard time telling them apart. Both hanks were also soaked and thwacked and are now hanging up to dry.

I took advantage of my emptied drop spindle to haul out some more fiber. This is 1 oz of BFL in color "Scarletta" from Infinity. The very generous braid was part of my February Phat Fiber box.



I spun up singles on my drop spindle. I was aiming for as thin as possible and it was fingering or less for most of it. It's getting easier for me to ply and the fiber was wonderful to work with.



Then I made my first attempt with Navajo Plying. The singles were thin enough that I wouldn't end up with a super bulky 3-ply at the end of it. It was a rough start but by the end, I was getting the hang of it. I've watched a couple You Tube videos and putting the loop over my wrist really helped. The ounce of fiber yielded not quite 5 yards of worsted to bulky thick and thin 3 ply yarn. The colors are very pretty and this will probably look even prettier once it's finished.