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.
Plying angora
Tag: spinning
Angora rabbit fur
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
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.
It doesn’t need to be fancy
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.
Chain ply cotton
Since I had more spun cotton single than I needed for my crepe yarn, I tried chain plying it to make a three ply yarn sample. It did not go well. The cotton single was difficult to handle and kept breaking if the strands rubbed together. The resulting yarn is very haphazard with sections that coiled mixed in with the smooth ply.
The chain ply and the crepe yarn don’t look that different on casual observation because of the irregularity of the single spin. The variations in width cause more visual texture than the plying techniques. I will have to try this comparison with a different fiber preparation.
Critters and Craft 