Mud, continued

I wanted to post a reply to Artis-Anne rather than comment because it dawned on me that a photo of the roving might help. (Clever, I am, once in a while. [grin])

Here 'tis:


See how indistinct the bands of color are? Now look at the other side of the same strip of roving and notice that they don't match up:



I love this roving and these colors. When you spin it in a worsted weight, you get green with these beautiful semi-isolated threads of pure red or yellow, in addition to the places where the colors blend a bit. Those red and green spots really pop in that yarn in that weight. When you spin it fine without doing any color separation, however, it turns into a uniform green.

Artis-Anne, I think I'm now doing what you're talking about. I'm trying to split out the three main colors (loosely). Since the colors don't have distinct edges in the roving, I'm getting the yellow with a green base, red with a green base, and of course more or less pure green. I switched to that approach when I realized that the red and yellow were disappearing and turning the green into a kind of mossy color in the drafting process. I couldn't think of another way to do it which would preserve the red and yellow hues on a base green. When I let the single ply back on itself, it seems ok and I can see that there will be shifts in the color, but I'm wondering how the overall ply is going to look since there's no way the tones will match up in the plying process. There's definitely no way I'll get all the reds together, all the yellows together, and all the greens together. And to be honest, if I'd wanted that degree of color separation I'd have opted for solid or same-hue rovings.

But I'm really curious to see what the final product is going to look like--and then how it will look knitted up. I'm intending this to be a lace fichu, and I'm just crossing my fingers that I end up with some depth and variation rather than a muddy green.

And I'm laughing even as I write this, because of course the only way to really know is to just do it and see what happens. :-)