Saturday, November 10, 2012

Spindling a gradient part 2

A while ago I wrote about spindling a gradient roving - one that starts one color and works its way over to another. I am part-way through it now so I can continue with the update. My plan was to spin one single all the way through but I found that the spindle was getting very heavy about half way through the single.
Here is the spindle full of yarn and the remainder of the roving. I also realized that I had to plan out the whole thing so I could keep the color consistent with the roving all the way through.
I thought it would be good to illustrate this via a diagram. You can see both halves of the roving laid out here. I started spinning at A and am now at B. A is the inner end of the single on the spindle in the picture above and B is on the outside. Normally I would wind off this cop and then continue winding off the rest of the single onto the same cop. If I did this, I would start the second half of the single with B on the inside and C on the outside. Adding it to the wound off first part would result in C being next to A. That would mess up the colors in the roving.

So I need to wind off each part separately. This is the first bobbin, with B on the inside and A on the outside. When I finish spinning the second half, I will wind it off onto a different bobbin. C will be on the side and B on the outside. Then, after I finish the second single the same way, I will have 4 bobbins: 2 of A on the outside and B on the inside and 2 with B on the outside and C on the inside. I just have to ply the first two bobbins together and the second two bobbins together to get a yarn that matches the roving.

Makes sense?

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