Gift spinning continues. This blue-green yarn is meant to become gloves for my brother. He originally chose another braid, but that was dyed in stripes and stripes are not an option according to his wishes.
At first I tried to come up with a way of spinning the striped wool without it striping in yarn, and I could not. Not unless I completely deconstructed the braid and mixed up the colours, but I was not happy to do that. I had bought that braid specifically because it was dyed in stripes, and I didn't really want to destroy that. I tried to see if I could use any other fibre that I already had, but nothing else was even close, so bought more fibre.
I tried to find fibre in greens and blues that were closest to the one my brother had chosen, and this 100% shetland wool by Edgewood Garden Studio was it. I did not need the other colours, but this set was the best match that I could find. The red will become fingerless mitts for me, and the purple and yellow/orange will be an experiment yarn.
The plan was to strip both colours vertically and use a technique called combination drafting to blend the colours in the single. At first I thought I'd make it as a 2-ply, but while I was spinning the first single, I changed my mind and divided the strips into three. The resulting 3-ply would blend the colours more effectively, thus reducing the risk of stripes even more.
There are sections where the three singles were so close in colour that they look uniform, but most of the yarn is delightfully barberpoled. Some striping may still emerge, but I can take scissors to the yarn and cut out the worst bits if needed.
The tiny miniskein is a leftover 2-ply from mostly one bobbin. It probably is the first single and I had spun more than I had estimated when I was dividing the rest of the wool into 3 parts, so the other two were short a bit.
A really interesting effect emerged as I was plying. When two and a half singles were in the same colour, the second colour in the other half of the third single made beautiful flecks in the yarn. This is an effect I want to explore more, and try to recreate it in a whole skein.
I am happy with how this turned out, and hopefully there will be no stripes in the finished gloves.