Dudleyspinner Tie Dye Roving/Combed Top: How Do I Choose?

These three combed top pieces were purchased together to be spun into one yarn for one project. This is a difficult choice for many people, myself included. Will these go together? How can I feel confident putting colors together in a way that is outside my comfort zone? These are important questions when you are making a large purchase of spinning fiber.

Why do I think these colors will go together? They are all from the same dyelot. I don't number each dyeing session, but I use a baby book to name them in alphabetical order. So most of the time the names are an indication with my dyed tops. So in this case Amanda, Alvina, and Anastasia were dyed with the same batch of dyes. I really only mix about 6 colors at a time starting with base colors of sky blue, lemon yellow and fuscia or magenta. These three colors are blended either in a jar or in the pot to make other colors. That gives the entire piece being dyed the same color value. What is value? It is the depth of shade, how dark and rich the color appears. These three pieces will go together in a pleasing fashion because there isn't one of them that is jarringly different, they all have the same tone. The colors are all fairly close to each other on the color wheel. Analogous colors are the colors next to each other on a color wheel. I call them the same family, so these three sisters Amanda, Alvina and Anastasia should live well together.



The past few days I have been having another discussion about Navajo plying. I linked to Stephanie, the Yarn Harlots blog where it said that Navajo plying is weaker. I did a google search for who said Navajo plying is weaker and this post came up. It no longer says that Navajo plyed yarn is weaker,it did when I linked it. It says now

spun yarn is not as strong as a regular ply

This blog post was actually the only place I had ever actually seen the statement in print other than disccusions where people are saying that it is weaker and explaining why it is. All this nonsense about changing directionality and how the knots are a problem.