Spun My First Boucle!

I saw a great thread over in the Art Yarn Group on Ravelry with tips for spinning boucle yarn, I had to give it a go! I already had the perfect type of single for boucle all ready spun up, lace weight 100% mohair, hand painted in my Big Blue Sky color palette, plus some cobweb weight silk which I hand painted in my Dragonfly color palette. I love learning new techniques! It took a few yards to balance the right amount of twist and the size of the loops. So you can imagine, at first it was all stops and starts as I spun a little, then coaxed/scooted the mohair into little loops...and big loops, and every size loop! After the first quarter of the bobbin, I was able to pretty much manage the loops while slowly, yet continuously spinning. I like how it turned out, I learned that if you want big loops, you should spin a little heavier mohair single. The biggies looked good until I set the twist, and then some of them twisted on themselves, looking more like little fish than circles, I don't mind them actually. A whole skein of them would be cute! I should mention that this is a three stage project (actually five when you count spinning the singles needed) I used silk as my base single and my binder single, next time I will use something sticky like a cobweb mohair single or commercial yarn for the binder. I think that will lock things down even better. What else did I learn? Well, this is actually the most useful and important thing for me and I know I will benefit from this in future spinning. This is BIG news for me, if you ever tried/wanted to change a plied yarn by adding another single and been disappointed with the results read on!!!

It works like this you have two singles spun like normal to the right (Z twist) and you ply them in the opposite direction, like normal, to the left (S twist) THEN when you add the third single, you think of the two ply yarn you just made as an S(left) twist single. How do you ply an S (left) twist single? You use good ol (opposite direction) Z (right) twist. Which means the new singles you want to add to your plied yarn should also be S(left) twist. Voila, no more loosy goosy yarn where the ply you added hangs along the strand like it doesn't belong. I'm thunkin myself in the forehead for never making this connection myself! I love the boucle, and while I already have spun a couple of skeins, this was the best thing I learned from the whole process!


Have a great weekend! Blessings Friends!
Melissa