BLENDING COLOURS WITH LEICESTER LONGWOOL

I am thrilled with this experiment.
I make small skeins which are 1 yard per wrap using thumb and elbow. They work well for me especially if I want to dye small quantities and also for drying.

My first attempt at using a blending board that my husband made for me with bought fabric. I opened each end of lock of Leicester long wool with a dog comb then spread on the board. I used 5 colours I had dyed https://orangecottagescrafts.blogspot.com/2020/12/acid-dyeing-using-fibercraft-dyes.html

These were pulled off with large knitting needles which rolled a bit tight for ease of spinning.

This spun ok but I should have realised it was not mixed colours but lengths of different colours so was unsure what best to ply it with and kept bye until I decided what to do.

My next attempt I mixed the colours on the blending board using a dog comb to spread the fibre.

This time I used two short pieces of dowel so thicker than the knitting needles and made rolags.

This spun much more as I had hoped with colours mixed well.

This was plyed. 

I then experimented using hand carders - opened the locks either end then placed a few locks of each colour on one hand carder and took off with other carder rolled into rolags and spun. 

I wasn't pleased with the result and forgot to take photos, but basically as one can imagine the colours were rather mixed into each other too much for what I was aiming at.

As an experiment I plyed them with the first yarn that I hadn't known what to ply with and was very pleased with the results.
 

These are two balls of each method and I really can't tell which method was used the similarity is excellent.

Thanks to several Facebook groups that have supported me through my journey.

UK Spin-a-holics  https://www.facebook.com/groups/1590818151231693

Rare breed sheep fleece UK  https://www.facebook.com/groups/898829940297091 

Weaving and spinning for beginners

  https://www.facebook.com/groups/WeavingandSpinningforbeginners

The art of hand dyeing yarn     https://www.facebook.com/groups/1882051402019457

Addendum:- I eventually found that using my hand carders worked best. I chose two colours and opened the locks putting each alternately in clumps on hand carders ie. 2 of each colour. Then carded and spun. Then used two different colours and did the same. Once the singles were spun together they looked just the same as I had previously done and the majority was done this way for the three rugs seen in another post.  https://orangecottagescrafts.blogspot.com/2021/01/bedroom-rug-woven-using-leicester.html