One thing I really love about handspinning is plying. It’s the final phase of traditional handspinning, after the individual strands have been spun, and it’s time to ply them. It’s the process where all the work of spinning literally comes together through the twist of plying to create a finished yarn. For me it’s the most exciting part, because of how different the final yarn can look from it’s original parts.
The Tour De Fleece 2020 is in full swing, and this is the first time I’m actively participating in it. I’ve been spinning for 3 years now, I started with a drop spindle, kept at it, , kept going some more, couldn’t stop , bought an actual spinning wheel, and started spinning yarn with that. I have many more posts on spinning and how it’s become such an integral part of my artistic practice: Handspun Redux, Art Yarn , and others. The remainder of my spinning archive is here, and here.
A while back, I discovered the power of plying in upcycling some of my left over store bought yarns. More recently, I’ve been experimenting with combining my beginner handspun yarns with store bought yarn that’s been sitting unused in my stash.
The yarns I used in this ply are: Joann’s Sensations Rainbow Boucle Buttercream, in the Black/White Colorway. The other yarn is one of my first handspun yarns, spun from some of the roving that was included with my wheel purchase. It’s stock dyed, meaning dyed before being spun into yarn, and it’s content is unknown, however I believe that it’s wool, maybe a wool silk blend. Note the shininess.
Here’s the process:
I love how this spun up! It’s really a pretty awesome blend of 2 very different yarns, and I know that this is a better yarn than what the 2 were separately. It looks better and it’s stronger and easier to work with. The Joann’s yarn was quite thin and hard to work with. I’d made a top for my daughter with it, and it ended up being too large. It knits up into a very floppy fabric by itself. As for my early handspun, it’s just that: a single roving with uneven twist that can benefit from being plied with another yarn.
I plan to use this new upcycled yarn in a new kerchief for myself for the fall. I want a new one, and I think it’ll be a good choice for that, along with some other upcycles and handspuns I have set aside.
Take care and thanks for reading 🙂
Sewcoordinated 