A few weeks ago, the rather marvellous Verity from Truly Hooked [1] sent me a braid of dyed merino to test. Never one to turn down free fibre, I jumped at the chance! I spun up the single and sent my feedback to Verity, and then it sat on the bobbin for a few weeks whilst I pondered on what to do with it next. In the end I decided to experiment with some of my plant fibre stock. I spun up 50g of banana silk to ply with the dyed merino. I was hoping that the delicate colours of the original braid would be enhanced by the pure white sheen of the banana fibre.

I absolutely love the result! I cannot possibly capture the delicious lustre of this soft and silky yarn on camera. It is heavenly and I adore the look of the oh-so-delicate colours. I have named this skein “Sea Foam”.

Now, I still had a fair bit of the merino single left. I had spun the merino very fine, with a high twist, but the banana fibre drafted differently (bananas act differently to sheep! who knew?!) and, once I stopped fighting the fibre and actually worked with it, the single became smooth but somewhat thicker than the merino, and therefore made a shorter single. I had my lovely Sea Foam skein, and a bobbin still partially filled with merino. Time for a new experiment.

I’m not a fan of having odds and ends of singles left on my bobbins, so often I will chain ply (or ‘navajo’ ply) a single to make a 3-ply yarn:

What I havent tried before is winding off my single as a centre-pull ball and plying it with itself (taking one end of the single from the middle of the ball and the other from the outside) into a 2-ply yarn:

 

And ta-da:

Two beautiful, and very different skeins made from my original braid. Sea Foam, meet Harebell.

[1] http://www.facebook.com/trulyhooked