I did decide to cable ply my angora hand spun yarn to go from a two ply to a four ply.
I am going to let time set the twist, so wrapped the final yarn into a center pull ball. This is yarn spun from raw angora rabbit fur, not carded not combed, not washed. I’ll created my swatches for my fiber book before water touches the fibers, just to see what happens.
I’ve two plied the angora yarn I spun.
The yarn is still quite thin, so I think I will ply it again to make a four ply cable yarn. The bumpy texture of cable plied yarn will complement the fluffy nature of the yarn, I think.
I finished spinning the angora rabbit fur I purchased from a Texas rabbit farmer. I didn’t wash, card, or comb the fiber, just took it out of the bag and started spinning, which resulted in a more uneven spin, but was worth the experiment.
The next step is to ply the yarn. In preparation, I wrapped the yarn into a center pull ball.
Crochet cables are an entirely different beast than knit cables. Rather than just switching the order of a few stitches, it involves at minimum three different stitches, and different placement. I ripped out my swatch twice trying to get my brain wrapped around the technique. I finally made myself a rough chart, which helped, and religiously counted stitches on each row.
I used a combination of single crochet, double crochet in the front post, and treble crochet in the front post. I have not puzzled out how to reverse the cable twist, although I suspect it involves some pretzel like moves.
If you don’t have a swift or a nostepinne (or don’t want to go upstairs then get them), the back of a chair and a roll of paper work fine to take yarn from skein to ball form.
I rolled up two skeins of hand spun cotton this way. This is the cotton that I spun from raw bolls then three plied two ways: crepe and chain ply.
I’m most interested in how these two preparations knit up. Yes, I’m looking forward to swatching. I’m weird like that.
Critters and Craft 