Navajo Plying Revisted

Navajo plying has gotten a lot of bad press and I hadn't gotten such great results when I attempted in the past so I hadn't thought I'd fall in love with it.

It all started with my search for the perfect hat. I started fiddling with the creation of my perfect winter hat.
But almost at the beginning, I took a detour. I started knitting a hat that I knew I would never wear in public but I recognized elements that I would want to keep and combine with other features.
I grabbed some Noro Kereyon off the shelves of my LYS and began knitting. I fell in love with the gradual color changes and thought that a hat worked in sections and then sewed together would shows these off to their best advantage.


I really love the hat and the yarn! I wear it around the house as a kind of comfort wrap.
I got the urge to make yarn with large color repeats. Blocks of color rather than stripes or dots. I considered the possibility of using low twist singles as in the Kureyon I used for the hat.
And then I decided to take a class at Weaving Works on Navajo Plying. The class was short but so amazingly good. The teacher, Shirley Shaw had me successfully navajo plying within minutes. I am hooked.
Navajo plying is a technique in which one can make a "3 ply" yarn from a single bobbin of spun fiber. This makes it possible to get a round yarn that is perfect for knitting and at the same time preserve the color sequences present in the dyed fiber.
Whether it is actually a plied yarn is open to debate. I honestly don't care if you call it a 3 ply or chained single, I'm a convert.
Combining my new skill with a new dyeing method, I'm going a bit wild, spinning hours and hours.
I was so anxious to try the new methods that I was very haphazard with the colors I used.


The black (which was supposed to be gray) was too much so I eliminated it from the roving and spun up about 100 yards and then knitted a sample swatch.
Very bright colors but okay in the right article....maybe a young child's hat.

The initial plying resulted in a slightly underplied yarn. Although I had been told that you can't add additional plying twist to navajo plied yarn, I had to find out for sure if I could. And it worked! I fed it through the wheel again putting in a little more twist. All is well and it's drying outside right now. The only difference I may have noticed (and am not completely sure if this is true) was a slightly more obvious bump where the yarn joins.
When it's dried, I plan on making a child's version of the sectional cap.


The hurried dyeing yielded another roving.




I couldn't wait to spin up the first half of it. I haven't had a chance to swatch it yet. I fear that the turquoise block of color might be a little longer than is ideal.
For the time being, I'll just continue to dye, spin and knit sample swatches in order to get an idea of what will work well. It's a lot of fun!










I've also been doing some pretty sober spinning. I dug into my stash and pulled out some Brown Sheep rejects I bought from Carol Lee at Sheep Shed Studio. They are making a lovely 3 ply yarn though I doubt I'll get more than 450 yards of this color. Luckily I have some gray and blue. The one below is a lovely plum.

Oh My!

It's been a long time!
I've been dyeing, spinning and knitting quite a bit...squeezing it in to what seems to be very busy days but I can't honestly say what is keeping me so busy.
I had an awful lot of fun with some silk.
I dyed some tussah silk roving in two colorways.










And spun each into a 3-ply skein.





I love to show the process of transformation!




Remember the silk hankies that I had previously posted drying outside. They were mostly white with blues and a bit of brown. I spun them up into another 3-ply.





This was such a quick spin because I was forced to use the woolen spinning method. I really ended up liking the yarn. Here's a bit of it swatched. (I think I haven't even set the twist yet though!)









I photographed it against the scarf I'm knitting in some commercial yarn and some handspun mohair but what struck me was how much better this yarn would have worked.






Alpaca Granny (Sorry I can't do hyperlinks or even manage to place an url here.) asked me what I did with the silk caps. I asked my friend Guy to take a few shots. He's not very used to a camera but I think he did manage to get shots that give an idea of the process.

After openning the silk caps, I pull one layer off.









And then I poked a hole in it.
















And then I stretch and pull the silk into a roving.










Then you have roving ready to spin.


This method works really well for people that are adept at drafting roving but it works pretty well for people like me that don't have that much practice. It is also possible to just go ahead and knit with the roving as is. You could pull it into the diameter that works best for the results you want to achieve.



I was so intimidated by the next method until I tried it. It is so easy! And amazingly fast! It's using a distaff for the bells. I imagine this only works for caps but I really don't know absolutely for sure.
First you open the bells up.






Do you see that neat hollowed out space? It's perfect for fitting on a distaff but even better for placing on a yarn swift. Ideally you open the swift out a bit and place some fabric on the swift before placing the silk caps on top.
I didn't do that here. In fact, I don't even open up the swift sometimes but I think that might end up damaging my swift. I'm yanking on it a lot and that can't be good. I think the idea is for the swift to turn when needed.



There's no peeling off each layer. It all just comes off as you draft.




There's also a video on youtube from Rexanne. She plies the silk as she spins. It's worth a watch.

I dyed some Blue Faced Leicester roving. What a difference from the superwash I've been working with. The superwash takes the dye like lightning... that is....... very fast so it's very difficult to get an absolutely solid color throughout the roving but the BFL took the dye beautifully and all the way through without any coaxing or contortions.















Here's the blue all spun up into a 3 ply.











And here's the bold autumn colors spun up.






You have to excuse me. I really couldn't decide which photo I liked best. Well I guess the one of the skein on the ground came out the best but I bought the piggy bank especially to showcase the yarn.





This particular roving I spun up experimentally as a single because I was knitting with some Noro Kureyon and loved the effect. I kind of intuited that the colors were too strong for a single but I still wanted to try. You can see why some handpainted rovings need to be spun and plied to tone down the intensity. Some might like it but it's not really to my taste.

You can see I have no qualms about throwing my yarn down in the dirt!








I found the best lichen book at the library. So I think I'll give lichen dyeing another try.








I'm always picking up great fiber arts books here and there but this one is worth noting here especially because there are many small projects perfect for handspun! Andean Folk Knits.










I came across this wonderful print in the local thrift store. It looks like a Russian spindle. I'm wondering what she is doing! Is she plying? Or is one of those spindles filled with predrafted fiber?