Changing Depth of Shade Through Fiber Proportion
The more I play with bast fibers, the more I like them. They really are quite lovely to spin! For this experiment I played with undyed merino and hemp. I varied the proportions of each fiber in 5 mini skeins and dyed them up together to see how the different proportions affected colour and feel.
My 20g bundles of fiber ranged from 1% through 25% hemp. I took them to the blending board for the first pass at mixing. As the hemp proportion increased in each bundle, the layering of the fibers on the board changed. For example, with only 1% hemp, the hemp could be laid down in one layer sandwiched between merino. After that, it became necessary to alernate small amounts of merino and hemp to avoid clumps of hemp that might separate when dizzing or spinning,
I blended the fiber again on a hand card and dizzed through the smallest, 2mm hole to encourage a fine singles. I kept the fiber nests separated with marked papers in a catering pan.
The first singles with only 1g of hemp needed the most twist to make it strong enough to chain ply. In fact, I had to stop plying and spin it again to add more twist because the singles kept breaking. As the hemp proportion increased the necessary spin lessened bit by bit. I chain plied all 5 singles and soaked them in soapy water before dyeing in some leftover green dye. My chain plying skills are not strong so some of the samples are a bit overplied.
Clockwise from blue to green are the final skeins with 1g through 5g of hemp.
In terms of feel, all the skeins are next-to-skin soft but the texture increases with the hemp proportion and there is a added texture as well from chain plying. The 5g hemp skein definitely feels a bit papery and appropriate for warmer weather knits.
The colour change is very subtle and only really noticeable when the 1g and 5g hemp skeins are side by side. This experiment would have benefitted from better blending. If I had mixed the fiber well on hand cards and then dizzed or made rolags, I probably wouldn’t have so many obvious white areas of hemp. The tweed look is lovely though! I have one more bast fiber to try, Himayalan nettle. I think I’ll try blending the nettle better and repeating this experiment in some form.
