Part two of my series “Spinning for a Project” (see Part One) and second post of the day, this one being about designing the wool blend for the hand spun yarn, so eventually knit into a future project. A blend which I’m calling “English Rose Tweed” for the Malabrigo colorway’s namesake.  These are the wools I am blending all together to make 500g of yarn, the amount I forecast needing to knit a sweater.  (Note: So much of this fiber was a gift to me from “rescue spinners” after the wildfire, when I was given my Ashford Traditional wheel from L. ) When recently I thought to try the Malabrigo Nube roving, I chose “English Rose” and thought that I really wanted to try doing a blend with it with natural undyed roving.

I have weighed off each wool color into ten segments each, to put each together into ten 50g batches to do incrementally, but I wanted to share the recipe after the 1st blend, so I could refer to it for the rest of the batches, and so I could do a test spin-up on the first blending before proceeding.

From these…

to these….

to these…

In the next post you will see these rolags all spun up!  I may not like the results after the first 50g test and add a color to continue, but stay tuned to find out if these are a keeper.  Also you can see all posts in my Spinning for A Project  series.

Okay, here’s what I did…

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Techy stuff for English Rose Tweed…

•  I need 500g for a sweater project; using 113g Malabrigo Nube (roving) in English Rose colorway, along with 122 g of grey merino, 200g mixed brown & natural wool (unknown breed) and 65g white cormo.
• 500g of wool blend divides into ten 50g batches, so using a gram scale,  I divided all into equal 10 segments.

Note: With hand-dyed braid of Malabrigo Nube “English Rose”, I decided to keep a consistent color ‘bookmatch’ by splitting the dyed braid along the length into 5 segments, then each of those long skinny segments more easily in half, folded end to end and pulled apart at center. Otherwise, pulling apart the dyed roving when full thickness it was seriously hard (being 100% Merino), and should never ever be considered to cut it.

• Layered very thinly one color at a time, alternately.  using this technique: Blending for tweed simplified
• Lifted batt, and sectioned into strips of four, to photograph the transition wool rolls.
• I took the wool and layered again, then photographed rolls again.
• Layered wool rolls once more and drew off rolags.
• I’m naming this colorway blend ” English Rose Tweed “
• See ALL color blending experiments & recipes archived in Tweed Chronicles

(( Click 1st image in mosaic to go to slideshow with commentary. ))

200g mixed natural (unknown wool)

122g grey Merino

113g of Malabrigo Nube in “English Rose” colorway

65g of natural white cormo

divided into ten 50g batches like this

lay down first mix

some English Rose

grey merino

more English Rose

cormo (repeat with first color)

Comb fiber into carding cloth then lift off batt

first blend

blend into carding cloth again

2nd blend

After blending into carding cloth once more, drew off rolags. Mighty pretty!