Snail Spirals

TA DA!



The carding is done! Thirty batts, made up of fifteen colors, carded three times: once as separate colors, twice to blend.



All together, the batts weigh 3.0 pounds, fluffily fill two plastic containers totaling 114 quarts, and cover a tabletop measuring 13.5 square feet.



Overall, I'm quite pleased at how consistent the batts are. There is some surface variation (streaks of color), but if you squint at them, they all look pretty much the same hue and value. I took these pictures and am writing this post immediately after finishing the last batt (notice the time of this post), so the middle of the night lighting leaves something to be desired and the color is a bit off, but you get the idea. Hopefully the consistency carries through to the yarn.

One other thing I did this week was to spin another experimental sample skein, just out of curiosity.



The original sample is on the top, the new one on the bottom. What I did this time was to take one sixth of a batt after only one blending pass through the carder, when it was at the layered stage, and spin it like I did the first sample, including chain plying. I just wanted to see how the layered batt would spin up.

The outcome was pretty much as you would expect it to be. The colors were more distinct, less blended, and the red especially was very noticeable.



Granted, if this were a true 3-ply rather than chain plied, it wouldn't have been quite so obvious, but even so, the singles themselves often had long stretches of nearly solid red or chartreuse. It's a pretty yarn, but not what I want for my subtle heathered sweater yarn.

So now I know.