Some more samples from Wool House, this time Pink Lemonade on Texel. I did a bunch of different samples this time around (colors are best in the above photo).

First up, a single, spun and finished more or less the same way I spun up the Parakeet Corriedale.

For a not-very-soft wool, this fiber spun up into a really lovely single. The colors stay nice and bright, and the crunch of Texel makes it a very easy spin. It's also got a lovely halo that I think will be great when it's knit up.

Next up was a standard 2-ply: also with some lovely fuzziness. I'm reserving judgement on how much I like it until I knit up the swatch, but there are some solid colored sections along with the marl.

Next up were the 3-ply samples - both a traditional version (left side, top and bottom) and a chain plied version (right side, top and bottom). The traditional 3-ply ended up with some similar fuzziness, while the chain ply was a much smoother finished yarn. I think this largely reflects the fact that when I chain ply, I tend to smooth the plied yarn before it goes on the bobbin; this may or may not happen with the regular 3-ply.

Hopefully you can see the difference in the color mixing between the two: the 3-ply has some sections where all the plies are the same color, but more often there's a mix. The chain ply has much less mixing, and will therefore knit up with clearly defined stripes.

Finally, I got fancy and did a cabled yarn. Cabling (in reference to spinning) is when you take 2 or more plied yarns (of however many plies you want) and ply them together again. The singles are spun one direction, then the singles are plied together in the opposite direction with a bit of extra twist. Finally, the plied yarns are plied together again, with the wheel spinning in the same direction as it was when the singles were spun.

This yarn is a 4-ply, with two 2-plied yarns plied together (I feel like I'm writing "plied" an awful lot here...). I seem to have issues with photographing cabled yarns - the way the colors mix and combine is really interesting, but tough to capture. Particularly in this colorway, for whatever reason!

So that's what one colorway looks like when spun up in different ways. It was a really fun experiment, and I'm looking forward to the next batch of sampling I get to do. Hopefully I won't wait until next years Wool Week to try it again!

Porpoise Fur