Spinning a Fade?
It all started with a fiber purchase from Maryland Sheep and Wool. One of my favorite additions to the festival has been the HipStrings booth. This year I picked up 3 braids of their Buoy base (37.5% Blue Faced Leicester, 37.5% Shetland, 25% Manx Loaghtan wool) in different, but very similar colors - Prose, First Frost, and Autumnal.
HipStrings - Buoy
From left to right - Prose, First Frost, Autumnal
I’ve only been spinning for about a year. At last year’s MDSW festival I picked up my trusty Daedalus Starling spinning wheel and that’s where my true spinning journey began - so I haven’t had much experience with blending colors while spinning. I went to my crafting community, mostly hosted on Twitch (Shout out to the amazing content creators there - Check out JKKnits4ewe and rogueknitter on twitch) and asked what they thought I should do when trying to establish a fade via spinning and not knitting.
I knew I wanted a 3 ply. I was spinning this for the Traveler spin it to knit it make-a-long and I knew I wanted a really squishy wool for the Traveler Shawl. Would this feat be much easier if I went for a 2 ply? Absolutely, but I was determined to push ahead with my 3-ply dream. I got a lot of good feedback including trying a fractal spin, but that wasn’t really the look I wanted. A fractal would make the colors blend really nicely, but I didn’t want to blend the colors - I wanted to fade them gently into each other.
Thus began the rabbit hole JK and I dove into. We spent hours of time and energy trying to figure out what is the best way to do this. JK had previously done a thought experiment on this using three braids of Malabrigo Nube that she had not spun yet, so she had a great springboard to base this conversation on.
<— Extremely janky sticky note to visually convey my initial idea
My initial thought would be to split each braid into 3 equal sections and spin them in the same order. For example, bobbin 1 would have section 1 from braid one, section 1 from braid two, and section 1 from braid three. Bobbin 2 would have a section 2 from braid one, section 2 from braid two, and section 2 from braid three. Bobbin 3 would follow the same convention. Plied together in the same direction. If my braids were split correctly and my spin was pretty accurate, I should end up with a yarn spun from braid 1 to braid 3.
JK took one look at this and said you’re going to have some pretty harsh transitions even though the braids are similar. Ok fair. But where do I go from here?
JK’s idea was split the braid evenly into pieces and spin it. I’ve redone her visual representation on another janky sticky note to keep it consistent.
JK’s visual fade idea
In JK’s example braid one and three would be split into 6 equal parts, and braid two would be split into 9 equal parts. For bobbin 1 - 3 parts braid one, 1 part braid two, and 3 parts braid three. For bobbin 2 - 2 parts braid one, 3 parts braid two and 2 parts braid three. Pretty quickly we realized that this fade doesn’t work unless we have more fiber in braid two.
Yes, this is going to give us the best fade as long as the parts are split equally, and the spin is pretty consistent. But I did not want to either not use some of my braid one and three or have to buy more of braid two. I know I can buy fiber by the ounce, but generally, the fiber I buy comes in 4 oz braids. So, I wanted to get the BEST fade I could from utilizing all of the 3 - 4 0z braids. I’m very math based, JK is more visual, so we both used her initial idea above to base our next idea off of.
JK pulled out card sleeves and laid them out so she could see how to colors would blend. I set up a system of equations and ran it to see what percentages of the braids I could use for each single and then picked the one that was the most ‘even’ / visually appealing to me.
JK’s idea with using full braids
Now an equal amount of each braid is being used. Bobbin 1 would have 40% braid one, 40% braid two, and 20% braid three. Bobbin 2 would have 40% braid one, 20% braid two, and 40% braid three. Bobbin 3 would have 20% braid one, 40% braid two, and 40% braid three.
My idea with using full braids
the best way I thought to represent the singles would be a bar chart. The x-axis represents the bobbins. In my example, bobbin 1 would have 40% of braid one, 20% of braid two, and 40% of braid three. Bobbin 2 would have 32.5% braid one, 35% of braid two, and 32.5% of braid three. Bobbin 3 would have 27.5% of braid one, 45% of braid two, and 27.5% of braid three.
JK’s idea in a bar chart
To keep it fair I wanted to show JK’s idea in a bar chart as well so you can see the differences (and similarities) between the two.
Next steps - I am going to spin these and see what fade reigns supreme. Or at least, what fade I like the best. Stay tuned!
You can follow my progress and/or join our Tour De Fleece (TDF) - Team Cyber Fibers at the discord here. TDF is a spin-a-thon that happens during the Tour De France. All rules and pertinent information can be found in the discord - JK and Rogue are both TDF team captains. We started the first leg of the race (clear your bobbins) last weekend! Join us for prizes during the 2nd leg of the competition starting on June 29th!
And check out JK’s socials: