Fractal Friday

As I mentioned during my Ply Away recap, I took a class about Fractal Spinning that was taught by Jillian Moreno and have come home with toms of exciting ideas to try out. Of course, my first order of business was to knit swatches with my class samples so that I could see the finished products. Last weekend, I finished and blocked all 3 swatches using one of my favorite blocking tools from Knitter's Pride:

Knitter's Pride Knit Blockers at Patternworks

My first swatch is a 2-ply spun from fiber dyed in an ABCABC repeating pattern. I divided the fiber in half and spun the first ply with one of the halves as-is; the second half was divided into fourths and then spun in sequential order to preserve the color pattern.

My second swatch is a 3-ply spun from fiber dyed in a palindrome pattern. I began with splitting the fiber into thirds for each ply; the first ply was spun as-is, the second ply was spun with the fiber further divided into thirds, and the third was spun with the fiber further divided into sixths.

My third swatch was chain plied from two singles spun from a gradient fiber. I started by dividing the fiber into half and spinning the first half-as is; the second half was worked in kind of a funky way - I would divide it in half and spin the first half, then divide what remained into half to spin continually til I ran out, if that makes sense.

There are tons more sequences to try out from those above, and I am excited to experiment to see what I can come up with. My first full-size spinning project used 4 oz. of Polwarth/Silk from Huckleberry Knits (which I bought at Ply Away) to make a 2-ply. The first single was spun from half of the fiber that I spun as-is*; the second single was spun from the second half of the fiber, which I divided into thirds. Here is how the finished yarn knit up:

I have approximately 109 yards of the finished yarn left after swatching, which I think will make an excellent hat or cowl:

Believe it or not, I have never kept track of my spinning projects, unless you count Ravelry or this blog, but I think that I am going to start a spinning notebook so that I can keep better track of my spinning experiments this year. I got this cool notebook for Christmas last year, which I think will be perfect for the job!

Have you ever tried fractal spinning? What are some of your favorite ways to spin variegated hand-dyed fibers?

*I don't think it's a requirement to do that for the first single in every fractal spinning project, but I guess experimentation is the only way to find out for sure!

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