Fractal spinning

Last year I spun and knitted a hoodie for my 2 year old grandson. It looked great but was a bit scratchy. I'd used a Romney fleece and spun it with too much twist.

Top down knitted hoodie

He looks happy enough in it here

So this year I am determined to make him a garment that is soft and gentle on his skin. I've chosen superwash Polwarth to spin and I shall include yellow in the dyeing as that is his favourite colour.

I painted the dye onto the sliver in bands of red, orange, yellow and brown. Altogether there were 12 metres of sliver with 8 repeats of the colours. I steamed the sliver for about 40 minutes.

I wanted to use fractal spinning for the yarn for this project. To prepare the dyed sliver I split each set of the 4 colours in half lengthwise. One half I split further into 4 equal portions.

One of the eighths being dizzed.

 I spun the halves one after another onto one bobbin (right one in the photo). The eigths were spun onto a second bobbin (left). I used a worsted spinning style. When the yarn is knitted I should see bands of colour and within each band, for example the red band, there will be red with red, red with orange, red with yellow and red with brown.

Closeup of the yarn

200 g of glorious yarn