Knit Fire With Spitfire: It's August - Let's Talk about Spinning and Books

This month's Spinning and Books are linked.

I was gifted 8 ounces of Gale's Art Corridale wool in a Randome Colorway. Of course there is no before picture. Sorry. It was a bunch of Purples, some red, a navy, aquas and a blue. They were 2 bumps of four ounces each, likely dyed at the same time. I didn't care for the red, however the purples and blues were very nice. I decided to break this up, pulling the colors into different piles. I then weighed each pile to see how I could divide these colors up while still being able to pair the red with a color that would ply into something good. The red is so tonally different than most of the other colors but I wanted a 2 ply. I figured out a color progression that would pair the red with the navy which should give an effect of a purple from a distance.

My sidekick bobbins hold about 4 ounces so my intent was to spin 2 bobbins FULL and ply them together making a 2 ply that would be a lovely purple yarn to gift over the holidays to a new knitter. I have never spun Corridale before, it wanted to be spun pretty fine, finer than I usually spin. So, I needed to come up with a different option and I turned to The Spinners Book of Yarn Designs. I had flipped through the book in an early post, but I hadn't READ the whole thing. I did, and I loved it. I went browsing and learning through the book looking for a multiply that would work with my Z spun singles that are divided into 2. I had already spun one bobbin full :-/

I found the Hawser Plying, I think I was familiar with Hawser Rope. It's a 4 ply that is a double 2 ply taking your z spun singles and making a z spun 2 ply yarn, then taking the 2 ply yarn and making an S spun 4 ply! Ah! And when I was flipping through the book I found a secret pouch on the back that had cheat sheet cards! So handy to remind me what I was doing.