Plying and Color Technique

This is a color technique is one I use often for thoroughly mixing solid color roving throughout the skein. The blue skein, I spun in a more random manner, and if you look closely, you can see lengths of yarn that are plied all one shade. It's most evident in the light blue. This technique will prevent that.

I'm using 4 solid colors of our hand dyed mohair in this skein. I've dyed it into two cool shades of true purple and bubble gum pink and two warmer shades, more of a plum and a salmon-y, dusty rose. I want to thoroughly mix these four shades so that every color touches every other color.

To do this, I take 1 oz of each color roving. When the skein is spun and plied it will be a 4 oz skein. I'm going to spin the first two colors, the pink and pruple.

I break the roving into somehwat even lengths, around a foot. And spin these alternating. Where the pink attaches to the purple you get the "pink/purple" blend.

Then I break the plum and dusty rose into lengths, about 6 inches each, and I spin these on a separate bobbin. Again, where the two colors alternate, I get the "plum/dusty rose" blend.

Then I ply the two bobbins together. The colors hit at different intervals and you get all colors combinations throughout the skein without two of the same color hitting at the same time, which would result in lengths of pink on pink yarn.

This is a great technique for using up bits of unused roving, odd colors or fiber that you don't have a lot of. You don't need a lot of each color/type just enough to break it up throughout the skein. You can do this with several different colors, it doesn't have to be 2 and 2.