What I did this weekend.....

I've been collecting all the leftover roving bits for ages now.  Some of the bits and pieces are leftover from my master spinner course.  Others have just accumulated over time.  Not all of them were really nice bits.  Even when properly stored, wool fibres can become somewhat compacted from time.  There can be temperature changes, humidity changes,  maybe some pressure from being stored in a bag or container and being squished a bit.   So some of the fibres were compacted, some were old, and there were a bunch that were in perfect condition.   I decided to dig out my blending board so that I had something to spin at the next spin in.   I will say that this is definitely a preparation where really nice, perfectly processed fibres work up so much nicer than a few of the compacted and neppy bits I ended up using

I had 3 shades of blue, 2 of which I'm pretty sure were dyed in an indigo vat and were probably leftover rovings that I tossed in to use up excess dye. There was some pale yellow, a rusty orange and a rusty red, some pinks, and purples, some green mohair locks which later became green roving when I realised I was sitting on it and some icicle nylon sparkly stuff.

I filled this basket full and forget to take a photo of the basket full of rolags.  It was quite impressive and very pretty.   It takes a lot longer than you'd think to fill a basket with blending board rolags.   I started just after lunch, took a 20 minute tea break to stretch, and then when I started running out of blue rovings, I realised it was 5 pm and time to start dinner. 

  I was getting 3 rolags from each loaded blending board.   I used to get 4, but decided to try one less.  The rolags were a bit larger and more substantial but not a single one broke or lost its structure.   I also didn't load quite so much on the board which made it a little easier to work with.

Since I'm running out of prepared roving in my stash, I was happy to have these to play with.   Spinning friends were quite complimentary about these.  I will say that the basket full was quite pretty.

Spinning the rolags was quite quick and pretty easy.   Except that this is where the quality of the fibre prep really shows.   Any of the areas of the rolags with the nicely prepared fibres were a dream to spin.   Hardly any effort was needed and they almost spun themselves.   The areas with the slightly compacted rovings, despite doing my best to loosen them up, require a bit of effort to get a reasonable bit of yarn.   In a few places, instead of being able to do the long draw, I had to do a short forward draw to get a consistent yarn.   There are a few bits that are uneven; even reversing the twist and trying to pull out the slub, didn't help.

Regardless, it was quite quick to spin.  I think because of the wide variety of fibres and the few that were compacted, it's a bit thicker than I'd planned.   It was just too difficult and not fun to spin any finer, so the plied yarn is about a worsted weight or maybe an aran weight yarn.  Not what I wanted, but it allowed me to chat with the girls while spinning the first bobbin- so there is that.

I'd been concerned that with the around of orange and rusty red in the mixture, that there was a high risk of getting a bit of undefined browns or greys in the finished yarn.   Not so though!  The yarn is manly dark blue, with smaller areas with the other colours showing through the barber pole effect of the plied yarn.   It's pretty enough, but after all that work, I really don't have that much yarn to work with for an end product.    If I'd made a finer yarn,  I was thinking about using it for a vertical stripe or stripes in a scarf.  It's really too thick for that I think, so maybe enough for a hat or save it for some rug hooking project.