Another upside of having five part-ruined braids to spin up has been that I’ve been able to experiment with spinning the same fibre with different methods.

This is how the ‘Meadowbank’ grey merino looks as a braid:

The skein below was spun using the ‘fractal’ method. I split the length of top in half and spun one piece with no further splitting. The second piece I split in to 3 or 4 pieces lengthways and spun those with shorter colour repeats. Yarn produced with this method seems to stripe when knitted (or woven) but in a more subtle blended way (as seen on my liesl)

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For the second skein, I drumcarded the fibre once in to an un-blended batt and spun low-twist singles.

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This third skein is navajo plied using the technique I linked to a few weeks ago.

I let the singles rest for almost a week but a bit longer would have been better. I used my tensioned lazy kate which helped control tangles. I plied slower than usual but these still ended up a bit over-plied. I think I will try a lower ratio next time. I tried to spin very fine singles and was aiming for a sock yarn thickness but this is probably closer to ’sportweight’ and I was a bit disappointed with the yardage – only about 90 metres. I really like how the yarn looks plied this way though.

And it’s been really nice to be able to compare some different methods of spinning. I still get surprised at how some colourways look once spun – I don’t get the chance to test-spin many colourways.