Faded

I am not immune to a craze... even though I am the most untrendy person you are likely to meet. 
So I caught the Fade bug!
​Back in July I wrote a blogpost about spinning for sweaters, and we've had a rolling thread over in the Ravelry group filled with lots of advice and encouragement. And after encouraging others, I acquired some fibre in a destash that was perfect for my own So Faded jumper. 

Three braids are Rambouillet, dyed by me, and 3 are from other dyers, I like spinning stuff that other people have dyed on occasion... it feels like fun and not like work!
From left to right there was- HTC Rambouillet, Three Waters Farm 85-15 Polwarth & Silk, HTC Rambouillet, In To The Whirled 85-15 Polwarth & Silk, In To The Whirled Targhee and finally HTC Rambouillet.
This was my original colour order, but I actually did a bit of a shuffle when I looked at the finished skeins, and the middle HTC Rambouillet ended up moving to between the Targhee and the other Rambouillet braid. 

First up came the sampling... because occasionally I do follow my own advice!
I found an oddment of commercial yarn in the right thickness, and spun to match that gauge. I kept back some of the singles to use as a reference, and a ply-back sample to check my plying twist. I spun enough for a swatch, washed the skein, and cast on.... and hated the fabric. I actually got a slight tighter gauge than the one in the pattern (7 stitches per inch instead of 6) but the swatch was far too open, and if I'm going to the effort of spinning for a jumper I want a fabric that will wash and wear well. 

Now the joy of spinning for a project... I can ignore the recommended yarn, and just spin to produce a yarn that gives me a fabric I like, but one that still matches the gauge so that I don't have to do any maths. 
On to  version 2. A thicker yarn, so a denser fabric. 

Onwards to the spinning.... 600g later, and there were 6 full bobbins. The braids from other dyers were dyed in what I call a repeating style, and I didn't want broad stripes, so I took the colour sequence to pieces. First I unbraided everything, then broke it in to chunks of varying length (but always containing multiple colours), then stripped it in to thinner pieces. I then shoved them in a bag and spun them in a random order.  These bobbins were still in my original order, but when I plied and looked at the skeins, that's when I decided to swap things around slightly.

Because I had a reference card I could stay consistent, and because I had a ply back sample, when I committed the heinous crime (!) of plying from both ends of a centre pull ball I could put enough plying twist in. I finished spinning the singles at the end of September, and had just finished the plying before I went to America in middle of October. 

Then came Christmas knitting... and the skeins sat looking at me. This is often the fate of my handspun skeins, but not this time, I ended up finishing it just before Christmas. Then life got in the way, the rain fell, and the snow. and I didn't get any photos taken. Finally however, the sun shone, and I had a spare 10 minutes.