How good it is to be back to my Tweed Chronicles! I seriously have been yearning for this moment for what seems forever, thinking about wool blending in my sleep. So having moved tools of the trade into the new loft room, it is with great celebration that I resume my blending experiments, just as I was doing two years ago. I have been contemplating a pale palette over the last year, ” pastels ” just appeal to me these days, wanting to tame the intensity in life with soothing color I suppose. I received so many gifts from the spinning community after the wildfire, not only a beautiful Ashford Traditional spinning wheel from “L” (thank you so much L , I am forever grateful, and the Ashford is working beautifully after being stored four seasons in a shed!) but there were many gifts of spinning wool too (thank you & hugs to everyone who sent wool!). So now having everything nicely within reach, I looked over it all and got an idea with a hand-dyed color braid I found, by Nest Fiber Club, called “Muse”.
Wanting to lighten up the color a great deal, I added one part white. I went from these . . .
To these . . .
to these . . .
and finally to these . . .
I reckon I will be spinning up these tasty wool sausages next and seeing how my hand at the wheel does after an unplanned hiatus. This was the perfect re-entry into my blending experiments too, although I was a bit forgetful about the steps, it came out lovely. Now as I need some practice again with my recipe documentation, here’s how I did it . . .
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Techy stuff for One + One…
- Recipe I am calling “One + One” is 1 part hand-dyed colored roving plus 1 part undyed roving in natural white, grey, brown, or black, etc. (in this case white).
- I split a sliver off the “side” of the length of dyed roving, along the entire length so that it has the same colors in sequence as the hand-dyed roving. I then weighed, and it was 28g. I then matched the same weight in ultra fine white merino, totaling 56g.
- Then divided the two rovings equally into 4 thinner slivers ( made into little rolls to photograph) to hold together while drawing onto the teeth of the blending board, until the teeth were moderately full ( which actually only took three times, and why you see my wool rolls count go from 4 to 3)
- Using paintbrush tool to lift batts from board, (rolling up again to photograph 1st mix) I drew out each roll onto the board again as before, resulting in slightly finer mixing of color, for a second batt.
- Repeated last step again, ending after a third time.
- Drew off rolags.
- See ALL color blending experiments & recipes archived in Tweed Chronicles
Click 1st image in mosaic and go to slideshow in sequence with commentary…
I bought 24″ of very expensive 12″ carding cloth, but still less expensive than a new 12×12″ board. We cut some plywood to size, and after a quick glue & nailing down the carding cloth, added a footing to the head, and a handle, and ended up with double the size of the regular blending boards available. Not bad! I then spent hours practicing on some old weedy raw fleece I had hidden away, found my old carders, and had a go with some alpaca.
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