We're a bit obsessed with tweed and tweed inspired fibers and that of course means we experiment with it as a base quite often. So here’s a little adventure in tweedy experiments <3
All our fiber was provided by RH Lyndsey, and all dyeing was done by us.
base:
We wanted a rougher blend of wools for the base, so we chose a brown top with a 26 micron count and a Carded sliver with a higher micron count of 29.5 (sometimes a little scratch is nice). The darker gray was selected also as a way to mellow out the rather bright brown of the Spanish Top.
Of course no tweed would be complete with out a little extra fluff to Noil
We found this to have a bit of VM in it, but as with any handling of such product, much of that VM is removed in the processing, so by the time we got to to plying, there was little to none but the most stubborn of burrs in the fiber, which could easily be picked out. To accent the brown base we chose to dye the noil in tertiaries, as we find those hues to be closest in proximity to browns (they are a nice in-between of dynamic shades before the hues start getting muddy/muted). All the shades were hand mixed to make Red-orange, Orange-yellow, Yellow-green, Green-Blue, and Blue-violet. This was done rather late night, so if we had recipes, they've been lost to the gods. Luckily, we have triad dyeing references (a dye adventure coming to a blogpost near you) for future, more organized and full of clarity moments.
After dying all the noil, and prepping all the fiber for blending, everything was weighed out, giving 1 oz batts. (about as much as our lil makeshift blending board can handle, without chaos ensuing).
We did two runs: one as a batt and one as rolags. We honestly like them both, but can see the rolags as a pathway to a more blended final product in terms of even noil/color spread.
And finally as a final test We had to give it the Rumplestiltskin treatment. For this, we went with 1:2 fractal spin, measuring by mass with a hint of eyeballing. The batt had a bit of a tertiary gradient going on and we wanted to lean into that with subtlety. Here's the knit up so you can catch the color vibes with us.
ex1: the distribution of color for the two strands being plied together
ex2: the knit results
We call it “Crutch #1” since we gravitate to tertiary hues with no hesitation. The batt will be available for purchase here.