Spinning Broken Angora Wool

Henrietta is a broken chestnut French doe, her chestnut color is very dark, more gray than orange.  In the old standard, this color would be considered as "Wild Gray".

Rayna is Henrietta's daughter, also a broken chestnut.   Rayna's chestnut has lots of brown and orange, it's considered as the more proper chestnut.

Mom Henrietta on the right, she is 5-1/2 years old and daughter Rayna is very close to 4 years old.  Mom and daughter get along very well, they either live together or next to each other, and they exercise together.   Both produce very nice wool for spinning.

The chestnut wool from Henrietta and Rayna are put together for spinning.   The two skeins have different shades, it's not because Henrietta's wool being darker or Rayna's lighter and more brownish, it's because of the different way of plying. 


   

This is a close up of the skein on the right, it's a 100% two ply.  I spun two strands of the broken wool into single yarn then plied them together.    Broken means there are white and color mixed in the wool.    Each single has white and chestnut, when plied together, white and chestnut to some degree cancel the "dark" and "light" factor.

This is a closeup of the skein on the left.   I spun one ply of the broken wool then ply it with a gray thread.  As you can see that white stays white and chestnut stays chestnut, very distinctive.   There is no mixture of white and chestnut. 

Which way is better?  There is no verdict, it's more of personal taste.   My taste is more in favor of the one ply broken wool with one ply thread method as it shows off the two distinctive colors better.