I'm a Twisted Sister Part II: How to Turn Pencil Rovings into Mud

When last we left my beautiful Rose Quartz merino roving, I was doing a little experiment to see how the roving would look if I split it lengthwise into several multi-colored pencil rovings and spun it up. If I had actually remembered what I read in the Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook, or perhaps gone back to reference what the workbook said, I might have known to expect a little mud. Being the intrepid ignorer of the wonderful books I read in preparation for such exercises, I did not. In so ignoring, I have re-invented the wheel and performed the experiment all over again, in living color (or not so much?) for you, dear readers. I give you mud:

But it's a rather lovely mud, isn't it?

Happily, I think mud might be the preferred color of choice in this case. When I purchased this roving, the name Rose Quartz seemed to fit it better than it does now. It had a definite overall pinkish sheen to it, with tons of other colors as little accents. Photograhed, it appears that purple is the dominant color, with strong accents of green, and when you ply it, that is really how it turns out. I know that I read somewhere that the best way to figure out which colors will dominate is to photograph the roving and see what dominates (I can't remember if this was in Twisted Sisters or not), and I'm here to tell you in this case, at least, it works. I like green, and I like purple, but honestly I *think* I'd rather have brown with accents of both than see the two try to compete in a barberpole yarn. We'll see for sure if that 's the case when I try to figure out how to get them to do that.

As promised, here are some shots of the process:

One of these bobbins is not like the other...

Here's a shot of the two bobbins prior to plying. The one that looks bigger actually weighs a smidge less. I like how the purple has a bluish cast here. It doesn't make it through the plying.

The plied yarn on the bobbin.

Here's what it looks like plied on the bobbin. This is where the brown effect really starts to sink in.

All niddy-noddied up.

When you view it from a distance on the niddy-noddy, the overall effect is a purpley brown. Subtle, and nothing like the original roving, which had a distinct lack of subtlety.

The dregs.

You might remember that I attempted to weigh out the roving so that I would have equal amounts of yarn in the singles with very little leftovers. Even if I had weighed everything perfectly (which is hard to do with a kitchen scale that does grams, but not tenths of grams), my uneven spinning would likely throw the lengths of the singles out of balance. And it did, but not by too much. I'm not sure exactly how much I have sitting there, because two weeks later it is still hanging out on the bobbin, but I'm guessing only about 5 yards at a maximum. It could be worse!

All skeined up and hanging out with the lantern.

Here's a final view of the skein in its native habitat. This was actually the heftiest skein that I have spun yet - a total of 140 yards. (Woo hoo!) Eventually, I will return to this roving and alternate ways to prepare it, but for now, I'm knee deep in several other rovings which have distracted me in the last few weeks. In the meantime, if you want to see the differences between spinning from pencil rovings and spinning from the fold, as demonstrated by a much more experienced spinner than myself, check out this post from the other Julia.