A Cabled Yarn from Kent Romney fleece

Since I started spinning several years ago, I've made 2ply and 3ply yarns.  Some of the 3ply yarns I spun using one single/strand of spun fibre, chain plyed (which means pulling the single through itself to make longish loops so there are three strands lying next to each other which are then twisted to make the 3ply yarn), but generally speaking I've spun plain yarns.  In recent months, however, I've been reading one of my spinning books and thinking about expanding my spinning horizons.

A couple of weeks ago I pulled out a 100g bump of Kent Romney fibre from my stash and dyed it with some fuchsia pink and turquoise food colouring paste and ended up with it looking like this (this isn't the whole 100g; I realised as I was coming to the end of spinning the singles that I hadn't taken a photo of the starting fibre):

I then divided the 100g into four and then each quarter was spun into a single.

The next stage of making a cabled yarn is to spin the four singles into two 2ply yarns, but with much more twist than usual.  When spinning yarn, the singles are spun one way (in this case, my wheel was going clockwise) and then the singles are plyed with the wheel going the opposite way.  During plying, some of the twist of the singles gets taken out and, as the final stage of a cabled yarn is to ply the two 2ply yarns together in the same direction as the singles were (which then takes twist out of those 2ply yarns), the middle stage 2ply yarns need to have much more twist than would be put in a traditional 2ply yarn.

Two singles waiting to be made into a 2ply yarn - the middle stage

The two 2ply yarns waiting to be spun into the final 4ply yarn

The final stage was plying the two 2ply yarns together, then it was wound off into a skein, washed and hung up to dry and this was what I ended up with:

Here's a close-up, which shows off the cabling:

What's interesting is how the bright pink and turquoise (there was a little bit of purply-mauve where the colours mixed as well) of the original fibre has become muted as the colours got spun together.

The final skein weighs 91g and measures around 158 metres and, according to my yarn measuring thingammy, it's a sport-to-DK weight yarn.

Did I enjoy making the yarn?  Yes, although it was pretty labour-intensive.

What am I going to make with it?  No idea!  Cabled yarns are supposed to be good and hard-wearing for socks but I don't think I've got enough for that, although I could use a contrast yarn for the toes, heels and cuffs (although that would negate the reason for spinning a 4ply cabled yarn for socks as the heel's the bit that's more prone to wear).

Would I make a cabled yarn again?  Possibly.  I could definitely have put more twist into the middle stage of making the two 2ply yarns, which I think would have given better results (handspun yarn loses twist when it gets its first wash and I find it difficult to judge how much).  Overall, I can see that it's a cabled yarn, but there are also areas where I've either under- or over-spun the final stage so the cabling isn't so evident.

At least I tried something different!

What I need to do now is get on with spinning the yarn I've been making on my spindle.  It's another 4ply yarn, but the construction's slightly different to a cable.  More about that in a future post though.