The Fractal Stripe: One Method for Controlling the Striping of Painted Roving

A painted roving is a delicious proposition—lovely fiber, sensuous color, the promise of a unique and delightful yarn. We usually want to jump right in and start spinning, but we often end up with surprising results. Sometimes they are good surprises when the roving turns into a yarn more beautiful than the one we imagined, and sometimes the results are disappointing when the clarity of the roving’s colors turn to mud. Often, spinners are mystified about predicting what the colors of their fiber will do when spun. If you take the time to analyze how to prepare and spin the fiber, you can control the resulting yarn.

There are three major factors to consider when predicting the outcome of your striped yarn: scale, direction, and color. I will first analyze the role of scale and direction relative to the fractal stripe (a fractal is a mathematical definition of a pattern in which the element is repeated on a smaller and smaller scale into infinity). Color theory is a subject too large for this article (see Deb Menz’s book Color Works for a thorough treatment of the topic); however, we will explore a few principles very briefly.

The first step in working with painted roving is to analyze it. Is it space-dyed or random-dyed? If it is randomly dyed, then you will get random results. You can influence your results a little, but for the most part, you just go with the flow and get wonderful random striping and blending. If, on the other hand, your painted fiber is space-dyed, then you can manipulate it to get the type of effect you want.

Scale

The first aspect to notice about scale is in the dye job itself. Here are some questions to ask about your roving that can affect the outcome.

• Does your fiber have long or short stretches of color?
  
• Are the relative scales of the colors even, or does one color have a longer stretch than the others?
  
• Is the roving dyed evenly, and does each occurrence of color roughly match the size and intensity of other occurrences of the same color?
  

The answer to the first question, concerning long or short stretches of color, determines the size of your stripes. It sounds obvious, but it is worth stating that a roving with short stretches of color will change colors more quickly than one with long stretches of color. The answer to the second question determines the overall tone of your finished yarn. In a roving where one color has a longer stretch than the others, the color with the long stretch will dominate your finished yarn. To verify this, take your roving and twist it together like a skein. Slightly squint your eyes to look at it and notice which color dominates. The third question concerns the regularity of your stripes. If your roving is dyed fairly evenly and you spin it in a controlled manner, you can achieve even striping of your yarn.

You can affect the scale of the stripes in your yarn by your preparation for spinning it. If you want the striping to appear more frequently with smaller stripes, strip the roving into smaller widths. If you want your striping to appear less frequently and have large stripes, use the roving in its original width.

If you like to attenuate your fiber by gently pulling from one end to loosen the fibers and make a thinner roving, be aware that this will not affect the ultimate size of your stripes. Although it may look thinner in your hand as you spin, you still have the same amount of each color, as long as you spin to the same grist as with a thicker strip of roving.

Direction

Many times we don’t notice that a space-dyed roving has a particular sequence or direction to the colors. Typically a roving will have either a linear or a palindrome sequence.