Fiber Friday: Tdf Yarn #3

Hooray! The huge whacking pile of Romney is done!

Fiber: Hello Yarn Fiber Club September 2010 offering, "Timber" Romney
Spun/plied: 9.25:1/8.5:1, 3-ply (and chain ply for the leftovers)
Stats: 1087 yds/23.5 oz, ~10-12 wpi, ~730 ypp, about DK weight.

My first experience spinning Romney was not terribly successful - it was fun to spin, but the finished product was scratchy and not so pleasant. I suspect that spinning from the fold was the culprit, leaving all those coarser staple ends to stick out. This time around I spun worsted style, and the finished product is a win.

I had six bags of fiber, and I wanted to mix up all the colors as much as possible. I split each 4 oz piece into fourths, then strip each length into four pieces. I lined up the six bags and put a strip into each one sequentially. I won't know until I start knitting it up how well the mixing worked, but I'm pretty certain there won't be a predictable stripe sequence!

Given my prediliction to overtwist, and the tendency of coarser fibers to get wirey with too much twist, I choose to spin this on a lower ratio then I usually use, and to ply on an even lower ratio. This is the first time I've used the plying head for my Lendrum in almost 4 years, but it was perfect for this yarn (and gave me 8 oz skeins!). I tried to be sure I wasn't putting in too much plying twist especially - I wanted the yarn to be nice and loose and drapey. The first skein is perfect, but the other two might have a bit too much plying twist. I debated going back through and taking out a bit of twist, but decided to leave it for post-TdF.

I had 0.5 oz of singles left over which I chain plied - I don't know the yardage yet, as they're drying on the back porch as we speak - and I hope there's enough there for trim on something. It's kind of neat to see how the chain ply compares to the 3 ply in terms of how the colors play off each other. The 3 ply looks pretty garish up close, but from farther away (or on the spinning bobbin as I was skeining it) the colors blend really nicely.

Now I've got to decide on a sweater pattern. I'm thinking something with garter stitch because of the 3 ply, maybe Cobblestone, but I need to go do some pattern searching on Ravelry. After the Tour finishes however...there's about 12 oz to go on my list!

Day 14: 32 oz of a proposed 44 finished. I only need to do another 8 oz to beat last year's total!