Leftovers Spinning

Maryland Sheep and Wool is now less than a month away, and I'm planning on buying some more fiber to spin there (mostly in the form of a fleece), so I thought it would be a good idea to finish spinning what I bought at the festival last year before I acquire anything additional. For nearly a year, I'd had a bundle of Cormo top shoved in the back of my closet; I'd started spinning it at the festival on the Jenkins Turkish spindle I bought the same day but never made much headway. This week I put it on the wheel.

It's a little hard to tell from the picture, but this is some pretty uneven yarn. Cormo is a very fine wool, so it gets neppy and felty easily. I thought the fiber was a real steal at $4/ounce, and I'm seeing that you get what you pay for. The prep on this fiber wasn't great, meaning it was difficult to get a really consistent yarn, but it wasn't horrible either. I decided to go with the flow and enjoy the experience as much as I could. The color is great and it's very soft, so the finish yarn should be nice. I finished up the second bobbin this afternoon while Rainbow was napping and will ply later this week.

While the singles are resting on the bobbins, I decided to challenge myself and spin an art yarn. I had a small amount (probably less than an ounce) of fiber leftover from my sweater spin last year that I knew I was never going to use for anything really because it was so rough. I hate to waste fiber, though, so I figured it would be perfect for the core of a corespun yarn. I spun the singles up quickly last week with lots of extra twist, and this afternoon I started "plying" with some Colonial wool top I've had for probably as long as I've been spinning.

Apologies for the dark photo -- using the flash was the only way to get the camera to focus and really show the yarn! This is definitely a spinning technique that's outside my comfort zone, but I'm enjoying it!