A Combination Drafted Sample.

I’m just popping in to share with you a project that we made at our guild meeting this past week. I was exhausted, as I was incredibly short on sleep after a night shift on the weekend, and didn’t ply the sample at the meeting. Instead, I pulled out my knitting and watched as everyone else made centre-pull balls and enjoyed watching the colours of their samples ply together. There were exclaims of “wow!” and “I didn’t think I’d like this so much!” as people finished their skeins, which was really cool. I love combination drafting and thought it was a great exercise to be introduced to as part of a larger demonstration of an upcoming workshop our guild will be hosting in the spring, which is Diana Twiss’s Wild About Colour class.

This past weekend, although I was working nights again, I was able to get some much needed plying done – one project off the wheel for my friend Katrina – and this little sample! I plied it after I had finished the other plying and was really happy with the results. I’m looking forward to putting this little bit of colour into my mitered squares sock blanket. I have to say that I was surprised to get anything done creatively this weekend due to working, but I was able to get a lot of sleep Saturday afternoon, which set up the rest of the weekend really well. Thank goodness!

This little sample of a combination of SW BFL, BFL and other random bits. Diana had us break our original fibre into 4 stripes and swap with others for 3 new pieces to put with our last one, which we kept. I intentionally tried to get the most random selection of colours, since I have done this exercise before, and have found that the more random and at-odds the colours are, the better it works! The results are stunning, as you can see!

I have personally found that these combination drafting projects go really well as centre-pull 2-plies. I think the heathering in the original singles while spinning works really well in a 2-ply yarn. There is, of course, no rules that say 3-ply wouldn’t be beautiful as well – I can attest that it is! But I do really love these as a 2-ply.

Have you tried combination drafting? What was your experience like?