Experiments in Plying
With Swatches!
So the Knit Witch roving in Vatican that I was spinning is now all done. I got a couple of 100+ yards of squishy two ply. It is a funny thing with two ply: two bobbins full of singles equal one bobbin with two ply and one with the end of whichever length of single was shorter. The math never makes sense to me….I mean it does. I get that I am stretching one of them a little more or when I predrafted one might have been thicker and ended up longer. I think it is the reason I favor Navajo ply though since that uses exactly that you have on the bobbin as it chains back on itself.
When I looked at the first bobbin with the sad leavings of the first skein of two ply, I figured I would save it for sampling. I would knit a swatch with the single, knit another with the finished two ply yarn, and a third swatch would come from a Navajo ply piece chained up from the other left-behind single.
My results were a fun, albeit kinda obvious now that I think on it, exploration into how the color play across the swatches for each:
The largest is the single ply, the so-called “energized” knitting that some books show. I am not a big fan of how the singles knit up, but it could just be me. The colors on that one obviously had the longest runs.
Looking at the two ply on the left and the Navajo on the right, I have to say I am glad at the way the two ply turned out. It seems to have softer borders or transitions between the colors (I am not sure what the technical term is). The same colors seem more distinct on the three ply and, with the “chain” in the Navajo, the color runs are more pronounced or concentrated to me. I can understand why the fingerless gloves with the Tuscany turned out the way they did. (Still love these colors).
In other news, I am being a button procrastinator. I don’t have a large vat of buttons and these two seemed the best choices for the Sideways Spencer. I am kinda leaning towards the purple-y shell looking ones.
Tags: handspinning, Knitting, Plying
Ta Dum here is the opinion you have been waiting for…purply shell buttons definitely. You did a beautiful job on the Spencer definitely love the Donnegal tweed colour.
Only two more sleeps and the enabler will be there, fortunately not too wide eyed and bushy tailed but definitely looking forward to some good fun and spinning lessons.
H&K’s all around…