Marl-velous!

I got an email the other day from Shelley Rau, a woman who’d taken one of my workshops at the NYS Sheep & Wool Festival in October. She’d been perusing my website and noticed a photo of a particular yarn that I posted in my gallery of handspun yarns.

I’d named the yarn “S’mores”. It’s a 3-ply marl yarn with one ply of marshmallow-colored merino wool, one ply of graham cracker-colored alpaca, and one ply of chocolate-colored American bison down. Here’s my yarn:

Well, Shelley had recently spun a 3-ply marl yarn with the very same colors, but all of alpaca. Here’s her yarn:

And then she’d knitted a vest with the yarn, following the “dishcloth vest” pattern in Debbie New’s book, Unexpected Knitting. Here’s Shelley’s vest:

I do like marl yarns. Whether you’re using the same fiber for all plies or different fibers, you can create a lovely yarn that makes a nicely speckled knitted fabric. If you use different fibers for the different plies, you do need to pay special attention to get the right amount of twist so that the different fibers ply together neatly.

I cover these techniques in a half-day workshop “Spinning Marl Yarns”. As of now, I’m scheduled to teach this workshop twice in 2011: once at the Wisconsin Spin-In in April, and once at the Michigan Fiber Festival in August.

And, an article of mine which features a marl yarn shawl that I spun and knitted is going to be in the Spring 2011 issue of Spin-Off magazine.

To see more of my marl yarns, go to my handspun yarn gallery on my website .