I was very excited to see my May 2012 Wildcraft club fibre arrive on the doorstep this week. The theme is ‘Euphorbia’ and it is dyed on 100% BFL. Love. Not only love, but serendipity.
I’d been keeping have an eye out for 200g of some BFL that I could pair with my remaining 100g of Primrose fibre (March club; BFL/Silk blend) as I really want to spin to knit a Sothia shawl and this will work out perfectly. Here is a reminder of what the Primrose looked like (my remaining braid only has a touch of the orange):
My plan is to spin a 3ply sock weight yarn out of both yarns to knit the Sothia shawl. The Euphorbia may have jumped on the wheel within 24 hours of arrival. I may be excited about this.
The fibre is spinning up beautifully.
To prep this fibre, I divided it into three sections. Usually if I’m dealing with a single braid I simply fold into into three sections and tear the fibre at the folds. When dealing with multiple braids, I like to weigh my braids and then measure out by weight. I do this for a few reasons, but the biggest is that the two braids could vary in weight and this is the easy way of getting equal amounts of fibre for each ply. I also never assume that just because the tag say ‘100g’ that the fibre is 100g. It often depends on the dyer. Some dyers cut it very close, some are very generous. It is always best to weight it out.
I’ll be fractal spinning the Euphorbia fibre. For my first bobbin, I am spinning it straight from the top. For the second bobbin, I’ll be splitting the fibre in two lengths prior to spinning, and the third bobbin will have the fibre split into quarters. This should be an interesting experience is it is very rare for my to split my fibre at all, let alone strip it down into quarters.
Here is how it look about halfway through spinning up the first bobbin:
I just finished off the first bobbin today. It looks just like the above photo, but with more singles. On to bobbin two… tomorrow.