Considering Colors: Spinning a Colorful, Marled Yarn
A brand new roving just arrived in your mailbox … what do you do first? I’m pretty sure we all give it a good pet and squish and revel in its beauty just as it comes. I mean after you’ve done that. There is no wrong answer. An answer I’ve heard repeatedly is “I just go to my wheel and start spinning it”. I do that too. It’s so hard to resist instantly starting on a gorgeous, indie dyed braid! But lately, I’ve started spending more time playing with the roving to determine how I want the colors to play out in my finished yarn. Plus, it gives me more time to squish some wool, and that is never a bad idea!
The January 2020 Merino Wool Braid of the Month Club from Crafty Housewife Yarns was so wildly popular, they actually did a second batch, which I just couldn’t resist!
When I saw these neon colors, I knew instantly that I wanted a wildly colorful and playful yarn. The first thing I do is unbraid my whole 4 oz roving and see how the colors line up. You would be surprised how asymmetrical or splotchy a roving can be depending on how it was dyed. That is not a bad thing mind you. But if your intent was to spin a gradient yarn, you would want to know what sections were longer than the same color on the other half so you could compensate in your spin or ply. In my case, I wanted to make a 2-ply yarn, worsted to aran weight, and I wanted a lot of sections with 2 different colors twisted together. In yarn, we call a yarn made with different colored plies a marled yarn.
This roving was likely dyed while braided to create those gorgeous sections where one color peeks in like the aqua at the tip of the neon yellow section on the right side.
Since I want my yarn to be as colorful as possible, I’m going to break it in half in the middle of the orange section. The left side will become side A of my ply, and the right will be side B. In order to guarantee that as few colors as possible line up, I’m going to flip one side over. This will put the neon yellows of side A next to oranges of side B IF we leave the 2 halves in their existing size.
Roving split in half in the middle color section, orange in this case. Then I flipped side B so the colors would run opposite how they were dyed.
Now we have to determine how long I want each color to last in the yarn. Roughly speaking, there are 5 main colors in this: neon yellow, aqua, royal blue/purple, hot pink and orange. Looking at the beginning of the left side, if I spin side A exactly as it is, approximately 1/5th of my yarn will have a large neon yellow stripe/presence. In my case, I didn’t want the neon yellow (or any other color) to be a continuous 1/5th of my finished yarn. To prevent this, I spit the side A down the length of the roving into 2 equally sized pieces. For side B, I wanted this flipped side to have much shorter color sections that dart in and out much faster than side A progresses through colors. This is in keeping with the idea of fractal spinning which I’ll discuss in the future. But since we flipped side B, it is definitely a different product that a fractal. To make these colors transition faster, I striped side B down into 6 strips down the length of the roving.
Side A (left) will be split into 2 pieces. Side B will be split into 6 pieces.
I’ve braided up the final split rovings so you can visualize how the colors will play next to each other. The roving is too long to lay it out flat. These colors are absolutely stunning together! You can either spin A and B on to separate bobbins, being careful to start both As with the yellows and start all the Bs with the orange sections. I spin all of it onto one bobbin and ply from a center pull ball so that means I spin both As yellow end first, then connect the Bs from the yellow end first. Whatever you decide to do, go slow and make sure you are starting with the correct end of your yarn first.
Ready to spin! Side A on the left, Side B on the right. Even though B looks so much longer, each side shown here is 2 oz of wool!
Ready to see the finished yarn?
VOILA!!!!! Eat your heart out Lisa Frank fans!!!!! This yarn is EVERYTHING I hoped it would be! It has the occasional moment of solid colors, but is mostly a wild, marled yarn. Something I could have done to possibly make it even more wild is spin with odd number splits like 3 and 7 instead of 2 and 6. That might be fun to compare 2 of the same rovings spun with different numbers in the future. I hope this helps you take a moment to think about how you want to approach your yarn making process. Is there a spinning colorwork technique you want to know more about in the future? Let me know in the comment below!