Apart from cataloguing all 30 wool samples on Ravelry, I gave been playing with my mini wool combs. I wanted to see what would happen if I applied the classic colour wheel from art classes to fibre. Before I started blending, I did some math to determine how much fibre of each colour I would need. 16 grams each if I only did tertiary colours, 64 grams, if I did quarternary colours as well.
I decided to do tertialry only for this experiment. I first blended the wool with the mini combs, then carded the combing waste. The results were... interesting, baffling, and educational. As the Mythbusters say: "Failure is always an option." Some blends looked as I expected, some absolutely not.
Does that look green to you? No? Me either. I combed, and combed and combed until I had to stop or I wouldn't have any fibre left, but the 50/50 blend of yellow and blue refused to be green. The 75% yellow, 25% blue looks more green!
These are the primary colours I started with. I combed and carded 4 grams of each to be able to compare these preps to the blended ones later.
Secondary colours. These are 50/50 blends of two primary colours.
Tertiary colours. These are 75/25 blends of two primary colours.
The results of this experiment are fascinating and I want to try blending other colours as well to see how they come out. I am also keen on seeing how the hand combed top spins, and what happens when I attempt short draw with the hand carded rolags.
Another result from this experiment was that I need more accurate scales then the kitchen scales I used. They are supposed to measure with 1 g accuracy, but I sometimes had trouble registering 2 g on them. It can wait, though. First I want to finish up the green merino/silk and then spin some samples from this experiment.