How Do You Spin a Braid? Try a Shuffled Palette!

In our first lesson of 5 Ways to Prep and Spin a Braid with Kate Larson, we learned how to split up a braid for maximum sampling fun, how to spin off the tips of a braid to preserve the color sequence, and how to chain-ply. All those skills combined to create a chain-plied yarn that’s a mini snapshot of what our selected braid will look like when it’s spun with no color manipulation.

That’s a great start, but many of us wonder what would happen if we tried something just a little bit different. Even the most beautifully dyed braid has a few surprises, if you just take the time to make a few samples!

In this month’s installment of 5 Ways to Prep and Spin a Braid, we’re looking at a shuffled palette. What does this mean? Well, it means that while the dyer has chosen the colors, you get to choose the sequence—with as much or as little precision as you’d like.

How to Do the Shuffle

If you like color blocks with bold transitions for a self-striping yarn, you can do that. Or, create a gradient, where each color flows into the next. Or, as Kate shows in the video, you can literally shuffle the colors around to create a more variegated yarn where you can see new color interactions in your braid.

To shuffle your colors, simply break apart your fiber into smaller sections, then shuffle the colors in your hand like a deck of cards.

Once again, we’ll be chain-plying our singles—for quick reference, take a look at Lesson One for Kate’s tips for easy chain-plying.

Want to see how it will look with different colorways? Read on to see the technique demonstrated with more options!

More Ways to Shuffle Your Palette

Kate’s sample is gorgeous, but it’s often hard to visualize how your sample will look until you’ve seen the process repeated a few times. If you’re not quite ready to dive in, here are a few more examples of how you might go about dividing your braid.

On the first braid, dyed by Honeygold Acres in the colorway Lake Park, we’ve created three options: a gradient, a shuffled palette that mixes the colors up a little bit, and a shuffled palette that mixes them up even more.