Preparing Raspberry Yogurt

Day 65: With most of my bobbins for two spinning wheels full of single-ply yarn in the "resting" phase, I was compelled to return to a project which went on hold when Merry moved in. Little catses love fuzzy stuff, and after having to move quickly several times to keep him from swallowing what had adhered to his tongue, I decided the Raspberry Yogurt needed to be locked safely away. Now that he's beginning to understand "That's not for kitties," I felt it was safe to bring it out of hiding, although I still keep the various bits in containers with good lids when I'm not actively handling them.

So...my "Raspberry Yogurt" is a blend of magenta-on-the-red-side, pale lilac (sorta too pink for my tastes) with a touch of creamy white. I begin by applying a layer of magenta to my blending board, top it with roughly half as much lilac, add a small amount of white, and then top it off with another thinner layer of magenta. The wool is then gently combed into the teeth of my homemade blending board so that it can be drawn off with the fibers in alignment crosswise to the way they will be spun (this is a "woolen" preparation, if you've been following along). To draw them off the board, I pinch the exposed tips between two aluminum knitting needles and pull toward myself, keeping the fiber engaged in the board's teeth. When I have an inch or two drawn out, I wind it onto the needles and repeat the process to make a small rolag. In this case, I usually make three or four rolags from each batch of blended wool. The rolags will be spun from the end, and because the fiber has been wound around the needles, it comes off the rolag in a spiral fashion, corkscrewing like a tornado around a central core. Oddly, when spinning from this batch of rolags, I find that a short forward draw results in a more uniform yarn than my customary supported backwards draw. In other words, I let the wool dictate how it wanted to be spun. A good spinner should be able to switch methods of handling the fiber supply as the preparation requires.