Thankful Thursday: Happiness is.....

a drawer full of clean hand knit socks



and some new ones for my feet.




Happy Thanksgiving!

Fiber Friday: Core Spinning

Thursday I tackled core spinning. Core spinning is a technique where you sort of draft fibers over a core yarn. The core yarn can be commercially prepared or you can spin your own. You can even spin two single then while you ply you core spin. I didn't challenge myself that much. I took some Lion Brand Fisherman's wool I had handy and added some extra twist and carded up some fiber on the carder.

The results of my hard work: about 20 yards for each skein.

 
From left to right skein 1, 2 3, 4.

Skein 1

Fiber: Punta. Carded on the drum carder in layers: yellow, green, blue not necessarily in the order. It wasn't much more than .6 oz on half the carder. I attenuated the batt before spinning.

 
 I dyed this last week.
A little blurry but you can kind of see the colors after I attenuated the batt.

Core: Added extra twist to the left. Core spun to the right. Held fiber in left hand and yarn on the right. When the skein hangs it twists to the right.

 In theory adding the left twist then core spinning right or vice versa helps create a balanced yarn when you're done. I also had a hard time controlling the drafting.

Skein 2 
Fiber: The same Punta fiber as above about .6 oz. Carded on the drum carder by lining up the colors side by side. I attenuated the batt before spinning.

 

Core: Added even more twist the left. Core spun to the right. Held fiber in left hand and yarn on the right. I tried to slow things down and did a little better. When hanging it still twists to the right even with the extra twist in the core. Here where I realized I usually hold my fiber in my right hand. Then thought I should change how I add extra twist because of that.


From left to right skein 1, 2 3, 4. You can see here how the skeins hang.

Skein 3

Purple Polworth I'm using for another project but some of the darker bits called out to used for the core spinning.





Fiber: purple polwarth and the same punta above. Carded the purple on one side and the layered the other on the left using half the carder for a .6 oz batt. Did not attenuated the fibers. I just pulled chunks off for spinning.

Core: Added twist to the right until the commercial yarn looked liked it was plied to the right. Core spun to the left with the fiber in my right hand and core yarn on the left. This felt so much better to have the fiber in my right hand. I felt like I had lot more control.

I still had too much twist in the end. This time to the left since I core spun to the left.

Skein 4

Fiber: About .6 oz of purple polwarth and the same punta above but I layered the colors on the carder. No attenuation. I didn't get a fiber prep photo for this skein.

Core: Added extra twist to the left. Core spun to the right with the fiber in right hand and the core yarn on the left. I kept things pretty slow. I do find as I go along needing more take up to get the yarn to wind on. This was my best skein so far although still a little unbalanced.  The fiber drafted on more smoothly.



I'm thinking bulky knit hat.  I want to try some core spinning on some lace or fingering yarn next.