Spinning Barry's Jubilee - A Woolen/Worsted Odyssey

For the last couple of weeks, I've taken a break from spinning my hand-dyed fiber to spin Barry's Jubilee - a collaboration between Schacht and Sweet Georgia Yarns. I bought a total of three braids, and I'm spinning them all a little differently.

For the first braid, I spun it just as it came. (This is the skein on the right in the photo above.) This braid was spun with a short backward draft, which is a worsted spinning style. This style tends to result in smoother, denser yarn. This yarn was also very consistent in thickness across the skein - no slubs here!

I spun this yarn quite fine - about 80 wraps per inch, and got almost 1,000 yards from just 4 ounces. 

With the second and third braids, I split them into three sections by color - mostly blue/purple, gold, and white.  First up in the spinning was the purple/blues, shown at the left in the top image and on the bottom in the image below.

This one was spun with a long draw - a woolen spinning technique that is my favorite way to spin. Other than separating the braids by color, I didn't manipulate the fiber before spinning. Spinning a woolen drafted yarn from combed top resulted in a yarn that is noticeably loftier, and has a little bit more variability in thickness than the worsted skein. I didn't track the thickness of this yarn while I was spinning it, but I estimate that it's probably an average of 50-60 wraps per inch. From about 3 ounces (all the purples/blues from two braids), I got about 700 yards of yarn.

Next, I carded the golds together, and added in some stash fiber - a mix of Falkland dyed gold and some unbleached Tussah to maintain that golden tone. Using my spinner's multitool, I dizzed the fiber off my drum carder into roving, and am working on spinning it up now. I expect it to be similar in texture to the purple yarn, if not a little bit loftier still, since it was carded. 

I carded the remaining bits of mostly white fiber with undyed merino and bleached tussah silk. There were puffs of blue and gold on the ends of the white fiber from the braids, and the resulting blend has a gorgeous silvery tone to it. I'll most likely spin it like I'm spinning the gold fiber - more to come soon!