At her suggestion I give you - Sarah's own http://www.knittyandcolor.etsy.com/ - "Jelly Beans" - custom-dyed in both a 100% Merino wool top & "Jelly Beans lite" - Merino & Bamboo blend! Sarah has been an ANGEL about dyeing up my picky ticky colourway requests - So when the 100% Merino “Jelly Beans” 4 oz. roving arrived in the expected usual retinal fusing brilliant colourway - I was THRILLED to no END! Then came the {gullllp} really tricky part… Trying to reproduce the very same deeply brilliant vibrant retinal BURN “Jelly Beans” in a Merino-Bamboo blend… It’s STILL quite amazing as you can SEE in the lower handspun yarnage it produced in the photo. But it wasn’t QUITE that retinal scorch I was really hoping the blended fibers would produce. But then Bamboo won’t absorb dye in the same dyeing processes as wool or nearly as deeply… So = the paler Jelly Beans-Lite version was the result. Still HAPPY - but it lacked the BURRRNNN... The dyed tops were PREPPED prior to spinning a bit differently too. The 100% vibrant Merino JB - was spun after splitting the roving into 4ths lengthwise, & spinning the entire solid colour sequence straight along the {1/4 width}roving strip length. Thus the specific clearly defined vibrant hues of the Navajo 3-plied lace weight singles yarnage it produced in the top of the photo above. The Merino-Bamboo "Jelly Beans - Lite" blend - was spun after layering on each single colour - of the intact roving width array. IE: a single roving strip of each of the five colours - layering one colour over another - while using my Louet Roving Carder to form lofty open blended Batts. That really fluffed things UP & made for a far more diffuse colourway in my laceweight singles - which I then used the Navajo 3 ply finger-chaining technique for a perfectly balanced 3 ply yarnage, as shown in the lower mini-skein sample of about 2 ounces worth after spinning TWO of the first carded four batts from the initial 4 oz. of "Jelly Beans-Lite" roving. We're calling it "Lite" only because the brilliant identical Jelly Beans hand-painted dyeing - resulted in a paler version of the dingle Merino fiber roving - vs. the Merino & Bamboo blend. Both yarns were spun using my ©Sling-Blade Handspinner - that I can wind on about 450 yards or so of laceweight singles with a single “blade”. Way more capacity than any other comparable hand-spinner like it’s design.
The finished yarns are BOTH sofffft to the skin & have that incredible soft lofty SQUOOOSH factor I only seem to be able to spin & ply using the finger-chaining Navajo Plying method. Otherwise - I consistently end up with a fingering to lite sport weight 2 ply yarnage that feels wonderful & has the elastic fiber “memory” once steamed & fulled - but is a bit more tightly spun & makes for a very uniformly bumpaged yarnage - More of a worsted look & feel than the lofty woollen handspun I get with a Navajo 3 ply method that will produce a DK sportweight to a light WW yarn gauge after steam-fulling to set the twist. I’m in the process of spinning up the last two of the initial first 4 batts of the Jelly Beans lite on a DIY supported hand-spindle. I plan to ply 2 singles together to see how that colourway & yarnage comes out. More pics to follow & further experimental results.
Sometimes -Ya just GOTTA bite the bullet & PLAY with your luxury fibers to SEE how using different fiber prepping & varying your spinning methods looks firsthand! In other words - It ain't comin' from someone else's how-to "book".
Sorry for the long-winded story saga - but Sarah kinda asked me to splain the differences & methods used in this experimental Jelly Bean Saga we’re working on togther.
Hope you enjoy it - Teri
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