Even colors in handspun

It's a generally desirable trait for fine fleeces to be uniform, but that may not be reality, and as fleeces gets coarser it's less and less a standard. Judges in fleece events will give serious points for a merino to be absolutely uniform for instance, and will appreciate it in Lincolns, but by the time you get to Karakuls all bets are off. An old Romney can work up some fine stuff on its shoulders, but the butt looks like it grew on an entirely different beast.

I think color uniformity is even less likely than texture uniformity, especially since the stock of colored sheep has been so nearly wiped out since the advent of mill spinning, synthetic dyeing, and the dominance of white. In industrial quantities, it seemed easier to breed every sheep to a uniform white and dye whatever color was desired in whatever quantity was suitable, natural colors are unique and come in only a few pounds at a time. If your fleece is colored, the color variation may be subtle but it'll be there, and you will see bands in the finished product if you don't correct for it. A person could just -sort- the original fleece for color, for instance I have a Dorset fleece that I've sorted into light, medium and dark grey and there's enough value contrast that they make quite fine fair-isle patterns. But sometimes you don't have enough fleece for your project, and you need to get more creative.

It's a good idea to card the whole thing at once, not just get a handful at a time out of the bag and card it. A drum carder is a big help, and you should try to borrow one if you don't have one. Be prepared to be totally overrun though, volume usually at least doubles after carding - this will be good motivation to get spinning done quickly. Then after the first pass is all done, you can split each batt and recard with others half-batts of obviously different colors. I find it works best to card extremes together, and the middle with itself. Judith McKenzie maintains that if you need to card once it's always worth while to card twice, and she's probably right, but I often run out of energy at that point :-). At least card in this manner till there isn't anything that look glaringly different from the rest.

Finally, you can make sure you ply together singles that were spun from different batts. If you're doing a 2-ply, you probably still won't have perfect uniformity. But a 3-ply really should be sufficient to make everything OK, never mind if you go crazy and start doing a many-plies cable.

Everything I learned about spinning I learned from Judith McKenzie, and I know she's mentioned all this at some point :-). But I also heard a lot about this mixing from Rita Buchanan in her excellent class about making handspun sweaters. Her sweaters are always flawlessly even, unlike mine, no fault of hers.