About this blog space

This blog space is a place for me to primarily put all my wool gatherings, adventures, experiments. I am now a mum of two astounding daughters, and I used to be a DIY musician and co-ran a tiny independent label (Slampt), so this punk can-do attitude plus feminist analysis and Art school experience somehow informs my wool work! I am also deeply moved by GREEN, trees, weather, colour combinations in nature, and texture. I aim to source wool from round the corner or at the very least UK grown and processed, and to create no toxic waste. This means I get to see sheep as often as I can, sometimes at wool fests.
I am on Ravelry and Etsy as FatHenWildWool and Facebook as Rachel Holborow.

Wednesday 3 November 2010

Navajo Ply, first attempt!

This is my first ever attempt at Navajo Plying!
Using my birthday money I splashed out and bought some handpainted wool tops (mostly in green of course). This one is from Wheeldale Woolcrafts, and very reasonably priced...
For my birthday I'd also got some books about spinning "Get Spun" by S North, and "Spin Control" by Amy Singer, the first a more"Art" (as opposed to the "primitive" or "punk" yarns I  produced in the beginning..)Yarn how to, the second, an in depth analysis and explaination of all the building blocks of skill, and their reasons for being in the spinning pantheon. These ofcourse have been inspiring me to develop my spinning repertoire, and causing many wide awake small hours brain meanderings of  spinning creativity, as I plot my next yarns... Some ofcourse just happen as they go along...
However, more to the point, the above yarn occured because I could actually UNDERSTAND Amy Singer's directions for Navajo Plying. This, I think, is because she likens it to chain stitch in crocheting, and really in essence that's all it is, a series of both edges of  the loops pulled through each other (in a chain), fairly large, and plied together with the strand you are holding, ofcourse the thing I hadn't previously realised was that Navajo Ply is a 3 ply, NOT a 2 ply! Well it's one Singles Plied on itself into a 3 Ply. Anyway....
It worked out okay, except that it's a little hard to keep the tension on all 3 strands even and sometimes mine crossed over. But when I did my (normal) 3ply sock wool (plant dyed greens, BFL and Cheviot, and natural Texel) I found that a little easier, see? Just above...

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