As a knitter, I fell in love with yarn, fiber, and all things wooly. After knitting for several years I have taken my love of yarn to a new level and became a spinner. One reason I became a spinner was to have complete control over my yarn; to create specific yarns for specific projects.

Recently I have become somewhat obsessed with gradients of color. I like the idea of knitting scarves, shawls, and even blankets with long, slowly changing color sequences. One way to obtain this result is to spin many separate colors and use them in the order desired. However, when knitting, I would rather not have to weave in so many ends. Another way is to dye the fiber. But I don’t have as much skill or control over the dyes as I would like.

My solution? Use hand cards to disassemble commercially available hand-dyed top in order to get the color progression I desire. Using this method, the transitions between colors can be very gradual, or quite abrupt, whatever I choose.

Hand-dyed fibers are readily available from talented dyers all over the internet and I find myself drawn to the hundreds of beautiful color combinations. When choosing a fiber for gradient carding, I suggest selecting similar or analogous colors. This lessens the chance that the colors will become muddied during blending.

I have chosen a color way dyed by Spunky Eclectic, New Day, 100% Corriedale, 4oz. This is a Spunky Club color way, which will be available for custom order in the future.

The first step is to break the length of top into general color groupings. Most hand-dyed fiber will have spots of dye that do not span an entire staple length. Therefore, even the smallest piece will usually have more than one color. Don’t worry about getting cleanly distinct blocks of color now; this is a very rough separation which we will refine later. This coarse division will allow you to get a cursory feel for the progression of values in your final gradient.

Now that you have your fiber broken into more manageable pieces, inspect an individual section. Many times the tips are a different color than the main body. Often the inside can be different as well. Open the fiber and check inside as well as out. If this is the case, you may need to split the fiber lengthwise also.

To separate color from the end of a piece, start by holding the tip to the carder with your thumb and gently pull the piece down and away.

Repeat this until you have separated most of the tip color. It is difficult to separate the tip entirely, but you can get most of the color using this method.

You will find that many pieces have the same color pattern; for example, mostly yellow with red tips. When filling my carder I try to use as many of these similar transitions as I can. In this case, I load the carder with pieces that end up being approximately 95% yellow and 5% red, which will result in a light orange rolag.

As you blend, remember that dark colors have a strong effect. Just a little goes a long way to giving it a darker value. Light colors also brighten a blend, but do not have as strong as an effect as the dark colors.

For each rolag, I make four or five passes. I find this gives me just enough blending with a slight heathery effect.

When satisfied, carefully roll the fiber off the carder into a rolag. Place the rolag aside and start another. I tend to work from light to dark but there are no rules here; follow your intuition and have fun.

Here is a full four ounce set of rolags roughly organized into a gradient.

Now order the rolags in the sequence you desire. I went from yellow to red. Sometimes it can be hard to determine the order, especially if you are working inside with unnatural light. The softness of the rolled wool can disguise the depth of the color. One trick I found was to use photo flash to bring out the true values.

Often I find a few rolags that don’t quite fit anywhere in the sequence. If this happens, you can either set them aside for use in another project, or blend them with another rolag. Re-blending with another rolag will help integrate it further with the sequence. You may also want to do this to get more gradual transitions between adjacent rolags. For example, break two rolags into 90%/10% sections. Combine the 90% of one with the 10% of the other and re-blend. Do this with the second 90%/10% pieces. You still have two rolags, but their transition has been softened.

This group of rolags I have set aside because they have become too muddied. Their tone is browner than I wish to have in my set, and I don’t want to introduce this brown into my other rolags in the sequence. Perhaps they will fit with a future set, or they may be destined for a small project of their own.

Finally, when you have determined your sequence, start at one end and start spinning. I chose to spin a lace weight single, destined for scarves. Even though the preparation is woolen, I chose to use a worsted short draw to add strength to my single. If you desire a plied yarn, I suggest Navajo plying as it will retain the color sequence.

Here I have used the resulting yarn to create two New Day scarves.

Tags: carding, gradient, Technique Article

This entry was posted on Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 10:44 am and is filed under Technique Article. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.