Aragorn-inspired yarn by lirin

[lirin_lirilla]

B2MeM Prompt, Card and Number: Aspects of Aragorn - Traveller (O67)
Format: yarn
Genre: n/a
Rating: G
Warnings: kludgy HTML (sorry, mobile users, photo captions may go wandering a bit for you)
Characters: Aragorn (well, sort of)
Pairings: n/a
Summary: Handspun camel/silk yarn, and why it is representative of Aragorn.

This is my spinning wheel. It's an Ashford Traveller (that I named Kivrin, after a character in one of my other fandoms). Ashford has been making spinning wheels since the 1940s, and the Traveller design dates back to the 1970s, although my wheel is far younger than that. When I saw "Traveller" pop up on the Aspects of Aragorn card a couple weeks ago, I decided I wanted to take the prompt very far afield, and spin some yarn on my Traveller that I felt would be representative of Aragorn.

Ashford Traveller "Kivrin"

A bit about spinning: I spun the yarn out of camel/silk top. "Top" is fiber that's been taken off of the animal, washed, and then combed so that all the little individual fibers point the same direction. Spinning fiber into yarn is all about drafting the fiber out and attenuating it until it's the width that you want it to be, and then adding twist. The drive wheel on the spinning wheel is much larger than the whorl of the flyer (that's the mechanism on the top that is actually twisting the yarn, and then winding the newly-made yarn onto the bobbin). This means that every time I treadle to spin the drive wheel once, the flyer spins several times (15 for the ratio I was using to make this particular yarn), and adds plenty of twist into the yarn I'm making.

spinning the singles

Anyway, that's a little bit of background about how spinning works...now an explanation of why I think this yarn is representative of Aragorn!

So I chose this fiber because it's kind of a plain color, maybe even a bit uninteresting at first glance, but there's more to it than meets the eye. Unfortunately this part can't be conveyed in photographs, but you guys, this yarn is so soft, it's amazing! I've got it sitting next to me on my desk, and I can't stop petting and touching it. One might say, with only slight exaggeration ('cause I actually don't dislike the color), that it looks foul and feels fair. Also, the fiber is a blend of fiber from two different sources—camel and silk—which is suited to Aragorn's mixed heritage of both Men and Elves.

undyed camel/silk top

Once you've spun one strand (called "singles"), you can either knit with that, or you can ply the singles with other singles (this is what's done for most yarn or thread you'll run across in the fabrics in your life). In singles, all the twist is going in one direction, leading to bottled-up tension and potential energy in the yarn that can create biased fabric in the finished project. I didn't think this was at all suited to Aragorn, so I decided I wanted to make a plied yarn. In plied yarn, multiple singles are twisted together in the opposite direction that the singles were twisted, thus balancing the yarn so there is no built-up tension in the finished yarn. My choice of number of plies (two) was mainly practical—if I'm only dividing my total yardage of singles by two instead of three or more, I have a higher finished yardage to work with—but let's say that the two plies combining into a finished yarn is also representative of the way Aragorn recombined the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor. :-)

plying

And here's the finished yarn:



(More photos and nitty-gritty details on the yarn itself can be found on its Ravelry project page.)

Comments

[hhimring]

How lovely! I'm sure Aragorn would appreciate it.
Very interesting, too. Thank you for sharing!

[lindahoyland]

What an amazing imaginative use of the prompt. I compiled those prompts years ago and am thrilled how you used it. I think the yarn well suited to Aragorn.

[shirebound]

One might say, with only slight exaggeration ('cause I actually don't dislike the color), that it looks foul and feels fair.

*grins* A very clever use of the prompt. Thank you for sharing this, a craft of which I know nothing!

[oloriel]

Wow! Now that's a creative use of the prompt! I love your yarn. Camel/silk sounds like it would have a beautiful texture - I can well imagine that it "feels fair"! The camel might also refer to Aragorn's travels to Umbar, and the noble silk of course hints at his ancestry.
Loved all the details about the spinning process, too! Spinning is an art that I haven't mastered at all (I'm still very much in the "pregnant earthworm" stage of the craft ;)), so it was really interesting to see how it looks when done by someone who can do it properly.

[sasha_honeypalm]

Ooh, that looks so soft in that third photo, I want to reach through the screen and pet it.

And as everyone else said, what an incredibly creative idea for an entry!

[senalishia]

That is SO COOL. I learned something about spinning yarn! I love how we can relate any craft to our favorite characters.

[zdenka]

Neat, that's a really cool idea! And the unspun fibers do look lovely and soft.

[erulissedances]

Oh yeah! Another spinner! I have a Reeves castle wheel that is similar to your Ashford, and my Ashford is their Elizabeth style which is less compact (of course, my Great Wheel is huge - anything BUT compact). I totally agree with your choices on the yarn, and that combination must have been wonderfully soft. I love the color too. What fun!

- Erulisse (one L)

[ermingarden]

I absolutely adore this! The amount of thought you put into this is phenomenal, and this is beautiful yarn to boot!