August Experimental Spinning - Fractal yarns

Fractal Spinning is another way of spinning a multi-coloured top to get a mix of colours. It's based on the idea of fractals and indicates an ever diminishing division of colours. 

I decided I'd like to see what happens when you use the primary colours, red, yellow and blue. This should be bright but I was hoping for some optical colour mixing. I had the separate colours and created a run that consisted of the three colours four times.

I split it all in half and spun the first half. Then spun further splitting the remains and spinning half until I had this left for the last sequence.

Which gave me the following two bobbins, which I then plyed together.

A fun and gorgeous yarn, not as much colour mixing but not as starkly bright. 

For further reading have a look at the Schacht Spindle Company website (www.schachtspindle.com) for articles by Benjamin Krudwig exploring this topic.

Also suggested by members of Experimental Spinning:

1. Spinning a Rainbow-Fantastic Three Ply fractal ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIqr00PwvRA )
2. Fractal Spinning Preep and how to - craftymisfits Tour De Fleece Weekly challenge ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTYEZwVSIxo )

Not another fractal yarn!

I blame knitspingirl, but I can't help trying yet another fractal yarn.

 

I bought this packet of Pure Merino Wool Top from Garments and Gadgets at the Sheep and Wool show this year. They're not particularly cost effective, but I can't help trying someone else's colour combinations. This one is called: Brights, and yes, there is another one in my stash.

As I have related before, a fractal yarn, is where you spin one half of your colours in sequence. Then you keep splitting the other single in half and half again till you get to the smallest amount, either possible or that you want. I stopped here.

It's interesting how the two bobbins end up. You can see only the last few colours in the first and in the second all the different colours in their different lengths. Plying is also a fascinating exercise in colour theory as the spinning combines colours and you get purples, greys, browns, all sorts. I'm sort of hoping that this will work in the final product.

This is the finished yarn, and before you say it, yes it does look a little barber shop pole. It does look bright though, and that was the idea. I am happy, mostly as this is finer than I usually spin and my last effort at spinning this fine was not my best effort. I did not put enough twist in my original singles, so when it plyed to balance it was way too soft, this time, I think it was just about right....hooray!

I'm hoping that this will become a little more subtle in the weaving. I'm going to make a fine black warp and use this as the weft in, hopefully a couple of different twill patterns. I do feel confident, but as I haven't even a warp plan, that's easy!

Now, off to have some breakfast.

PS, yes it was fun to do and I just had to share!

Last skeins

Well, they're finished. I filled two bobbins and managed to ply off three skeins. Thought I could do it in two....how does that work?

The first bobbin, which was spun in long lengths of colour has meant that the 'background' colour stays the same for awhile but completely changes by the end of the bobbin, as can be seen from the very blue last skein.

To try something new, I divided each colour in half and then took a quarter and blended on my handcarders with a quarter from the previous colour and another quarter from the next colour and spun them in order. I did this for the second bobbin.

I did manage quite a few splits, (sorry, didn't count them) and at the end just completely blended them together. Again, I'm going to have to knit it up to find out how the colours work together.

The odyssey of fractal spinning

Fractal spinning does appear to have created some interest and I must admit to it being slightly addictive.

I used the skein from the red to make this neck warmer complete with buttons.

I knit a young friend a hat from 'Hats - a knitter's dozen' called 'Chill chasers', which is actually a hat with a draw string that converts into a neck warmer. She is off to France (mountainous and snowy regions) for Christmas and, like most Australians will feel the cold. So her early Christmas present will hopefully help her enjoy this wonderful trip.

However, in the process, I sort of got the idea about neckwarmers and quite liked it. They seem very popular and I can understand why now. The little bit of yarn required (50gms about), simple shape and then it would really add some lovely colour to all those winter coats. So, I knit one.

The hat has already gone onto Etsy and the neckwarmer will today, after I take a couple more photos. I did feel that they needed to be worn, so a photo of me (yes, ME) is accompanying the entry. I just hope it doesn't scare anyone off!

I have started, what I think, will be my last fractal spin, for the moment. To be honest, it has been a useful stash buster, but I do think some different yarns might be in order. I do need a bit more texture!

This is a bundle of very mixed colours from First Editions and it will be interesting to see what happens.

I'm spinning the second bobbin, which does tend to show a bit more of the colour mixing and at a quick glance, when walking past, it looked just a bit muddy.

All will be revealed!

The tale of the fractal hat

This fractal spinning is strangely addictive. However, this time I wanted to change a few of the parameters.

1. Big blocks of colour that I wouldn't need to work too hard to split, and I hoped would show up the effect gained by all that splitting.



2. Thick spinning. To be honest, I just wanted to spin something that wouldn't take too long. I ended up with a yarn at 4wpi, and it was quick!







3. I actually wanted to make something with the resulting yarn, just to see what happens.

So I spun my yarn, and I knit a hat. I just love it. It sits very nicely, even though this is just a bit small for me. That's OK, because I have a big head....and yes, I've heard all the comments about that one.......

So a lovely couple of days spent making this and I've got most of the second skein left over. Just don't know quite what to do with it.




On the inspiration front, I am kicking myself as I missed the opening of the RMIT Studio Textiles and Screen Print Graduate Exhibition last night. (Don't know how, as I've been carrying the invite around with me all week) I will be going, just not sure when. It's always inspiring and you get to see really innovative and new work. If you can, go!

Unfold - RMIT Studio Textiles and Screen Print Design Graduate Exhibition
28th November - 19th December
Counihan Gallery in Brunswick
233 Sydney Road, Brunswick.
Wednesday to Saturday 11am to 5pm
Sunday 1pm to 5pm

PS I've added the blogs of people I know to my front page. There are regular and irregular bloggers and I like them all.

Spinning all weekend

With a wet weekend, cancelled sporting committments and no reason to go out, I decided to spend the weekend spinning. Remember this...

...well it turned into this....

I was, however, disappointed. The tops that I'd bought were a beautiful colour, however the dyeing had caused some felting, not too bad and it may have actually helped with splitting the roving. However, the dye had not penetrated evenly through the roving which meant that there were a lot of pale areas which dulled the final skein.

This is a good lesson for when buying dyed tops or rovings, just check how well the dye is distributed by doing a little digging.

As this was more fractal spinning, I managed to split the second half quite a few times though my guessing of half was a little out, so you can see that I have a small skein that I Andean plied.

The next exercise with the fractal spinning that I want to try is to use distinct colours and see what happens. I have a bag of red in the garage!

More fractal spinning

I have spent the weekend spinning around town. On Saturday, I spent the afternoon at Incube8r and managed get a good start on my new fractal spinning skein. Incube8r was not very busy. We were wondering if the combination of a beautiful sunny day and perhaps a feeling of gloom kept people from coming out to shop.

You do remember this beautiful Hand-dyed silky wool I bought at the Australian Sheep and Wool show in July from Virginia Farm Wool Works (http://www.virginiafarmwoolworks.com.au/). I decided that, as it had very definite areas of colour and the colours are very distinct, this would be excellent for another try at the fractal spinning.

The 9"x5" market was on Sunday and it was very quiet. We did, though have a little celebration in advance of children's week. So I sat there with some very bright red, yellow, blue dyed English Leicester and taught some children to spin on a stick. This was fun and surprisingly successful. It is difficult to do, I did manage to rope my youngest into sitting on the stall for the day, but I doubt he'll do that very often....it was a very quiet (read boring) day for him, though I did appreciate it.

I also did manage to spin more of my fractal stripe. If I manage to get the colour happening well and then knit something to suit, there are those waiting for the result. It is a beautiful 120gms of the loveliest coloured wool.

Today is SnB and our new spinner has finished her scarf and is looking for her next project. A shawl, but as she is of smaller stature wants something elegant or unusual, even maybe with armholes(?). The Wendy Dennis wool she has is thick (around 8ply to 10ply) and multi-coloured. She'll be doing a sample with feather and fan today, just to see, but is willing to try something else. Suggestions anyone.....

Fractal spinning

Yesterday was the meeting of the Experimental Spinners group at the HWSG. This meeting coincided with the Weaving Certificate class so we were surrounded by lots of colour and texture as they were working on their cram-weave scarves.

We were working on Fractal spinning, which was inspired by a skein called 'George' and two articles in the Summer 2007 issue of Spin-off.

Definition: A fractal is generally "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole, “a property called self-similarity. The term was coined by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975 and was derived from the Latin fractus meaning "broken" or "fractured."
(http://www.wikipedia.org/ – search for ‘fractal’)

For the purposes of spinning, it is applied to multi-coloured tops where we split the top into ever smaller lengths. There are, of course, variations on the main idea, and these can also be applied to any series whether, tops, fleece or textures.

I chose these beautiful silk tops, of which I only had 10grams. Enough to finish in a short time. I split them down the middle and spun the first half as it came from the top. I did a little pulling apart to try and maintain some blocks of colour, but I wasn't very precise or finicky. This was my first bobbin.

The second bobbin, I split the remainder of the top and spun half, and, continued splitting in this way until I wasn't drafting when I was spinning. I managed to split it four times (five lengths). I wasn't sure of the result, as at times, the second bobbin seemed quite different, but then at the end I couldn't really tell them apart!

I then plied these two together to get a beautiful yarn, which is quite reflective of the original tops, but far more subtle. Unfortunately, my halves weren't exact and I had a little left over, so I Andean plied that off. Having scales on hand would have been good!

I now have a small 10gm skein of silk...but what to do with it?