'Tis Done

As of about an hour ago, I am DONE with my Rambouillet fleece. I have plied all the singles and the last two skeins are now soaking to set the twist. I'm quite pleased with the fact that when I finished the last skein, this is what remained of the singles:

I will of course be sharing a final photo of the full pile once it's all dry, but here are the first four skeins:

These are super squishy but also shrank up quite a bit in the finishing. My niddy noddy is two yards around (76 inches), but the skeins are measuring 54 inches around after they dry. Assuming the final two skeins do the same, I should end up with nearly 1,500 yards of yarn!

The final plying was powered by some new toys -- two new Akerworks bobbins for my WooLee Winder. They were having a special grab bag sale, so I took advantage. I feel like they might be a little wasted on plain brown, but it is pretty cool to look at a full bobbin when you can see through the end.

My next spinning project will be dyed fiber. As much as I've enjoyed this fleece, I'm craving color!

And Now for the Fun Part

This weekend I reached an important stage in my Rambouillet fleece spinning project: Last night I officially finished spinning all the singles with the completion of my 11th bobbin, and this afternoon I started plying. Here is a look at all the singles, wound off the spinning wheel bobbins and placed on my uber-fancy "storage bobbins":

I weighed the singles and recorded the weight of each "cake" (subtracting the weight of the empty tube) to verify the amount of fiber I started with, and it was indeed about 22 oz., or, to be more exact, 624.6 g. I was pleased to see that my bundles of fiber were pretty uniform, with the cakes of singles ranging from about 55.9 g at the low end to 57.4 at the high end.

The reason to spin all the singles at the outset before plying is that it allows for mixing up singles spun at the beginning, middle, and end of the project. Any human is going to have some inconsistencies, so by mixing up the singles, the idea is that those inconsistencies even out. So because I am making three-ply yarn, I'm working from three of these bobbins at a time. For my first skein, I used the first, fifth, and ninth bobbins of singles spun. The second will use the second, sixth, and tenth bobbins spun, and the third skein will be plied from the third, seventh, and eleventh bobbins of singles. The only unused bobbin at that point will be the fourth, which I'll ply with leftovers remaining from the other bobbins (as I spun 2 oz. for each bobbin of singles and am thus starting to ply with a total of 6 oz., which is more than my WooLee Winder bobbins can hold, I'll have leftovers from all of them).

I managed to get the first skein plied today, and I pretty much just plied until the bobbin couldn't hold anymore yarn and it was falling off the end:

If it looks a little sloppy, that's because I hand to hand-wind on some of the last few yards. I immediately skeined it up and washed it. It's still drying now, but here's a peek at it before it got its soak:

Woolen-spun singles are fairly delicate -- they can be pulled apart really easily -- so I'm adding quite a bit of plying twist to the finished yarn. The first skein kinked up rather impressively when I pulled it off the niddy-noddy, but it seems to have calmed down enough with a wash and some snapping. I think the finished yarn is going to have a good amount of elasticity, and it's still got the fuzzy texture you see here after washing. Actually, when it was wet, it looked a bit like velour or chenille!

Given how quickly this first skein plied up, I have a feeling that the rest will be done in short order over the next week, and I already have the next project lined up because my most recent Southern Cross Fibre shipment finally showed up:

This colorway is called Pebbles, and yes, it is that subtle in person. For this shipment, the wool base was a mystery, though it's something from David's regular rotation so the number of possibilities is still limited. It's softer than the previous month's Corriedale but not quite merino soft, so my best guess would be Bond or Falkland. For my birthday, I treated myself to some extra bags of February's club shipment, which was a semisolid purple called Thunderstruck (if you're okay with viewing Ravelry, you can see it here). I'd already planned to spin that up into a fingering weight for a sweater, and it just occurred to me that I could use it for the main color and Pebbles for the contrast in a Tiny Dancer (note: Ravelry link).

Lest you think I spent my entire holiday weekend behind the wheel, let me show you what else I did, with Rainbow's assistance:

Thanks to the link that Katie posted on Friday, and the serendipity of having all the ingredients on hand, we made this delicious strawberry custard pie yesterday. We had some difficulty with the crust falling apart on us, but we made it work and it was delicious if not beautiful. We served it last night, when my in-laws came for dinner, and there's still quite a bit left that will be tackled this evening. We also watched the Hamilton movie on Disney+, went on a 12-mile bike ride, watched our neighbors set off fireworks, and ate way too much. Though I'm not feeling especially patriotic this year, it was good to have a long weekend and to spend it with family (all outdoors, properly socially distanced). I'm not exactly excited to get back to work this weekend, but I feel rested and recharged -- and a bit bruised from the bike ride, if I'm honest! I hope whatever you did this weekend, it recharged your batteries for the week ahead and brought you some piece and contentment!

The Tour Commences

Today is Day 2 of the Tour de Fleece. In previous years, I've basically abandoned by knitting for the duration of the Tour, but considering how much spinning I've gotten done this year, especially during that first bit of lockdown when spinning was all I could do for any extended period of time, I figured it was okay to be more relaxed about it this year. I am still working on my Rambouillet fleece and am determined to stay focused on it until it's done!

In addition to spinning a bit already today, I also took the time to wind off the singles from bobbins 5 through 8:

I think the color is finally pretty accurate here -- it's a lovely milky brown, kind of how I like my coffee. I was very pleased that I had no breakage while winding these, which means that the singles are a lot stronger than I think they are! If they can withstand the force of the ball winder, then I shouldn't have any issues when I'm plying.

This evening I'll continue to work on bobbin number 9, which looks very much like its predecessors:

I am cautiously optimistic that I will be plying by week's end!

Over the Hump

I don't know about you, but when I'm in the middle of something difficult or time consuming, be it a long run on a hot day (like this morning) or a project that takes a long time to complete, I like to watch for that moment when I get past the midway point. For whatever reason, once I pass that point, I feel like I will have no problem completing whatever it is, like if I've made it this far, I know I can make it the rest of the way. That is certainly the case with any large spinning project, like my current fleece spin. And I had my head down so much that when I finished up the most recent bobbin of singles yesterday and went to get more fiber, I realized that moment had already whizzed past me.

For anyone who's counting, this is bobbin number seven. Those four balls of roving underneath are all that I have left to spin. Suddenly it seems like not so much! And that's a good thing, too, because this month has also flown by without me really noticing and the Tour de Fleece -- which is occurring even though the Tour de France is not --- starts next Saturday, June 27. Originally I'd hoped to have all the spinning done on this fleece by then, but I'm not going to kill myself (or, actually, my knees) to get it done. I will certainly spin up what I can this week and then use the beginning of the Tour to finish. If I needed any additional motivation to get through this last leg of singles spinning, this certainly works.

Make Like Dory

When I started spinning this Rambouillet fleece a few weeks ago, I was completely excited by it. After finishing the first three bobbins (which was my original objective), it was going so well that I thought I'd continue and just spin it all. After all, I was averaging a bobbin every two to three days, so how long would it take me to spin 11?

The answer would be not that long, but the assumption is that I wouldn't get really bored with it. And you know what they say about making assumptions. Though I still very much like spinning it, the same brown fiber over and over does get a little old, not to mention that my body is not as young as it used to me and my knees get angry with me if I do too much treadling. So I haven't done as much spinning in the past week, and as a consequence I'm not yet done with the sixth bobbin.

The important thing I'm trying to focus on here is that I'm more than halfway done. It would be great if I could finish all the singles by the end of the month. It would be super if I could then do the all the plying and be done with the fleece before the start of the Tour de Fleece (which I believe is occurring even though the Tour de France is not). If I don't, then I don't, but in the meantime, I will be like Dory and Just Keep Swimming -- or rather Spinning.

Twisting the Night (and Day) Away

Spinning content might be boring for a while. Although my initial goal was to spin up 6 oz. of my Rambouillet fleece, I figured that as long as I was in the groove, I might as well spin it all. In for a penny, in for a pound, right? I know I'll be happy that I did it this way in the long run, as my singles are more likely to be consistent if I spin them all start to finish with nothing in between. I'm certainly still enjoying spinning this fiber, but it's not very exciting to show.

Three bobbins are now complete, and I'm working on the fourth. When I start running out of empty bobbins, I'll start winding the singles off using my ball winder and sliding the resulting cakes onto empty paper tubes (my cheap and low-tech storage bobbins). I am hoping to get at least a couple more spun up this week, and it would be lovely to have all the singles spun by the end of June.

In the meantime, I have some excellent motivation to finish so I can move on to some dyed fiber: my April Southern Cross Fibre club showed up yesterday!

Shipping of this club always takes a while, as it's coming across at least one ocean to get to me, but the pandemic has made things even more complicated. David is now unable to ship to a number of countries, and his fiber supply has been affected, limited what he's able to get to dye, so anything that comes to me from this club seems like a huge deal. This colorway is called Hope Springs -- an excellence sentiment -- and it's on grey Corriedale wool. I love the depth of the color on the grey fiber, and I think this is going to be really beautiful spun up -- but not until after the fleece is done!

About All That Fleece ...

Hi, I'm a spinner, and I have a fleece problem.

Now, to be fair, my problem isn't as bad as some other spinners. But like them, I have a problem with acquiring fleeces that I fall in love with, bringing them home, and then letting them sit. With the extra time I have on my hands these days, and with the weather nice enough to take fiber prep outside, I thought it was high time I start tackling the fleeces in my stash.

The first one was the Rambouillet you saw the beginning of last week. It was one of two fleeces I split with another spinner back in 2012, and it was the easiest to start with because it had been cleaned and carded at a mill. I'd even split up the roving into manageable amounts of about 2 oz. I did not have a ton of extra spinning time this week, but I've managed to spin up one of those 2 oz. balls and gotten started on a second (I believe I have a total of 11 balls).

You can tell how much fluffier woolen-spun singles are by how much of that first bobbin is filled up -- for comparison, if I'd been spinning my usual worsted singles or yarn, I'd fill up about that much of the bobbin with about 4 oz. of fiber. I do feel that as I get more used to this fiber, my singles are becoming a bit more consistent overall, though they're still a bit lumpy-bumpy. I plan to spin up all the singles and then ply, mixing up singles spun at the beginning, middle, and end of the fleece so that the unevenness more or less evens out. I'm planning a three ply, as that is likely to be the most consistent, and I'm hopeful that I will have enough for a sweater, perhaps with some dyed handspun added in for stripes or colorwork if needed.

While this one fleece should keep me busy for a while, I also have some other fleeces that are clean but in need of processing before they can be spun. The one I've been most anxious to get to is Ollie the yearling Romney/Romeldale cross that I brought home from Maryland Sheep and Wool in 2018. Unlike the other fleeces, his I actually washed right away (I think within the month of May that year) and sampled. I ultimately determined that the short-ish staple length of the fleece meant that carding was likely to be the easiest way to process it, so yesterday, when the weather was lovely and Rainbow was willing, I took the fleece and my drum carder out to the porch and we carded up three fluffy batts.

It took three passes through the drum carder to get them to this point, but I know that work will be well worth it. If you're interested, I posted a short video of Rainbow doing the first pass on one of the batts on my Instagram account. There is still quite a lot of fleece to be carded at this point, but I think if I continue to make batts as I'm spinning the Rambouillet, it should be good motivation to get both things done. Wouldn't it be something if I ended the year having spun up most (if not all) of my fleece?

A Study in Contrasts

Even though my knitting mojo has returned, my spinning productivity really hasn't suffered, and so I'm sure it will come to no surprise to you that I have another finished skein of handspun to share this week. You didn't even see it in progress, as I started spinning it on Tuesday. It took me about a day to finish each bobbin, and I plied the entire skein yesterday.

Here's what the fiber looked like before I started, Falkland from Fibernymph Dye Works in a colorway called Cosmic Vertigo:

I spun my usual three-ply fingering with this, splitting the fiber into thirds and just letting the colors fall where they did. The skein was just washed this morning and is a bit damp still, so I don't have final yardage yet, though I'm hoping it'll be about 350 yards.

I'm quite pleased with how this turned out. I didn't expect the colors to get as mixed as they did, but I'm liking the blending that happened.

The ply and the fiber make this skein rather suited for socks, but I'm not sure if I can justify another pair of socks for myself right now, so this might go into the stash for the time being.

I couldn't let my wheel sit empty for too long, so I reached deep into my stash for the next project. I may have mentioned once or twice that I have a problem with fleeces -- namely that I seem to keep falling in love with and buying them but rarely actually spinning them. I really want to work on rectifying that situation this year, so I pulled out a fleece that I bought back at Maryland Sheep and Wool in 2012 and split with another spinner. It was a gorgeous gray/brown Rambouillet from Roclans Farm that I ended up shipping out to a mill to have it carded. When it came back, I measured out 2 oz. balls of the roving, and it has been waiting to be spun ever since. Today, I finally started spinning it. Here's the fiber beforehand:

And here are some of the singles on the bobbin, which I really wish you could pet because it's so soft!

Because the fiber was carded into roving (and not combed into top, which is what I usually spin), I'm spinning this woolen, allowing the twist to enter the fiber supply and determine the grist of the singles. They're definitely uneven, and there are some lumps and bumps in there because no doubt the carding caused some nepps. I was very new to dealing with fleece when I got this one, so I have no idea if the mill I chose was really outfitted to card fine fleeces, but it's too late to worry about that now. I'm letting the fiber do what it wants, and I'll figure out what to do with the resulting yarn once it's finished and I know what weight it is and how much of it I have. That's quite a bit outside my comfort zone, but I think it's helping me to be a better spinner!

Recentering

We are home, after a bit of an ordeal, to be honest, and getting back into the swing of things. We flew home yesterday after a truly lovely and restful vacation. We'd booked a 1 p.m. flight, which would get us home in the late afternoon time frame, giving us all a bit of time to unpack and catch up on the mail and generally settle last night. Unfortunately, all did not go as planned. The flight was showing as on time, and we boarded the plane at about 12:30 and then taxied to the runway at a bit past 1 (though I wasn't too concerned just yet, because when the pilot had come on to welcome us onboard, he'd said that the flight was about an hour and 55 minutes from takeoff to landing, so I knew that even if we left after the posted departure time, we'd still be on the ground by our estimated 3:30 p.m. arrival). When we got to the runway, though, I noticed a long line of planes waiting to board. We were informed after waiting a few minutes that the backup was due to the air traffic controllers' trying to avoid congestion in the airspace because of some storms and rain on the west coast of Florida. Then we were put on a ground delay as the weather moved over us. In all, we were sitting on the tarmac for a bit more than two hours and finally took off a bit before 3. We landed around 5, and thankfully there were no hiccups after that. The Mister immediately went to get the car while Rainbow and my parents and I grabbed the luggage (which was already on the belt by the time we got to baggage claim),  and the five of us went directly to a restaurant in our neighborhood for dinner before heading home to unpack. Though we probably all could have gone to bed a bit earlier, we all got a good night's sleep and got everything done at home without feeling too rushed.

We did have to do some of the normal chores and errands today, but it's largely been a relaxing day. As has been the case practically every other year we've gone away in the winter, I had a strong urge to spin as soon as we got home, so I spent about two hours at my wheel today, working on the lovely fiber that was already in the process of being spun. I found it apropos that the colors of the wool are very similar to the colors of winter up north -- muted and moody.

I've got about a foot and a half of combed top left to spin, and I expect that I will get in some extra time this week after being away from it so long.

One of my goals for 2020 is to really spin up more of my stash, particularly as I still have fiber coming in once a month from the Southern Cross Fibre club. This fiber, for instance, came in right before we left:

This one's called Pretty (aptly named!), and it's on South African Superfine Merino, which feels like kittens. It's actually even more vibrant in person, but it's a typical dreary winter day here, which does mute everything colorful.

In addition to getting to a lot of the hand-dyed fiber in my stash, I've also decided that 2020 will be The Year of the Fleece. I have quite a lot of unspun fleece fiber, some completely ready to spin and some washed but not yet processed. I have enough that I could knit several sweaters out of it, if I would just get around to spinning the yarn, so I have set myself some modest goals of spinning up several ounces of at least two fleeces. One is washed, carded, and already divided into 2 oz. bundles; one is the beautiful Romney/Romeldale cross I bought at MDSW 2018 that I've already sampled. I think I might wait until spring/summer for the latter so I can take my drum carder outside and leave the mess there, but I think you can expect to see the former soon. Hold me to that, will you?

Of Fiber and Fleece

I feel like a bit of a Tour de Fleece failure this year, as I haven't spun nearly the quantity I have in past years, but the days are busy and the evenings are short, so I'm trying to be happy with what I can get done. For one thing, I am very pleased with the skein I finished yesterday. Remember the purple singles I finished up last weekend? Yesterday, after I went for a good run and did my household chores, I sat down and chain plied the full bobbin. Then I skeined and washed the yarn last night. This morning it was dry and bouncy and floofy and so pretty.

Because the wool in the blend is Targhee, I expected (and got) a nice poof in the finishing. Fresh off the wheel, the yarn was a light fingering. After washing, the yarn is fingering to sport.

I ended up with about 343 yards, which is respectable, I think. It certainly would have been more without the poofing up. But I think it'll make a lovely shawl or scarf-type thing.

Meanwhile, yesterday I dumped the contents of my fermented suint fleece experiment and rinsed the fleece. I won't know until it's fully dry if it worked, but it certainly looks a little better. And I did pull out some more bits that looked dodgy and dumped them, but I've still got plenty of wool. Right now, the fleece that remains is sitting on some drying racks on our covered porch, with some additional drying racks on top so that no animals decide to grab some fleece for themselves.

I was prepared for a really bad smell, and there definitely is a smell, but it's not nearly as bad as I was expecting. I think I may still need to wash the wool once more, perhaps in some floral mint 7th Generation dish liquid I have, but it's looking pretty good! I'll still be keeping it in quarantine from the rest of the stash until I'm sure it's safe, but I'm pretty confident I've saved a good amount.

My main TdF project is progressing, slowly but surely. I think this bobbin shot does a good job of showing all the colors in the fiber.

I am just loving this spin -- and it's a good thing, too, because I still have an awful lot left to be spun!

The TdF and a PSA

It's the most wonderful time of the year for spinners: The Tour de Fleece is here!

For the uninitiated, the Tour de Fleece is a handspinning event that was created to coincide with the Tour de France. It's a three-week-long celebration of handspinning and handspun yarn, and the gist of it is that on all the days that the cyclists are riding, we spinners are spinning our own wheels (as well as our spindles). In past years I've gotten very competitive about it and challenged myself to spin large quantities of fiber, but this year I'm being much more realistic and just taking the event in the spirit in which I think it was originally intended -- to enjoy spinning.

While I had hoped to be able to finish spinning up the singles for the purple gradient I started last week before I started my Tour spinning, I didn't quite manage to do it. So I spent my spinning time yesterday working on finishing those up.

I had been spinning short forward draw but discovered that I could spin from the combed top using a supported long draw, which is a much faster way to get the spinning done. So the whole skein might not be consistent (using long draw, for instance, results in fuzzier singles), but I wasn't really aiming for perfection here, and good enough is good enough. I'm planning to chain-ply these singles, so I'm letting them rest on the bobbin for a day or two.

Today I got started on what I was planning for my TdF project, and that's the pile of little fiber bundles you saw here last week. I've got a total of 550 g/19.4 oz. of Polwarth to spin into what I hope will be a sweater's quantity of yarn. Here are a couple of bobbin shots so you can get a sense of the colors.

I really love these colors and am excited to see how they play out as a three-ply yarn.

Now for the PSA, which will really only apply to you who spin and buy fleece: When you've bought a fleece, please wash it as soon as possible after bringing it home, even if you don't get around to prepping it for a while.

A bit of back story on this one: Some months ago, a friend of mine posted that her mother was looking to sell some fleeces from her sheep, so I bought one. She sent it to me, and I promptly put it in our laundry room so that I could wash it "soon." I think you can all guess what happened -- I never got around to. Fast forward to about a month ago, when I kept seeing moths every now and then. Like any knitter and spinner, that concerned me a bit. Though most of my stash is safely stored in various bags and bins, I do have some yarn and fiber out, particularly if it's yarn or fiber I'm working with at the time. I saw quite a few moths in the laundry room, and I very quickly discovered the source: an infestation in the fleece. Yuck. So this past week (on the 4th of July, actually), I took it outside, pulled out a big portion that seemed to be where the moths and eggs were concentrated, and tossed all that into the composter. The rest of the fleece I decided to clean outside using the easiest method possible: the fermented suint method. I pulled a spare plastic bin out of the stash room and a contractor's trash bag (because the bin wasn't opaque), popped the rest of the fleece in it, and used the garden hose to fill it up. It's now sitting on our deck and, I hope, getting clean over the next week.

The trap on top is just to keep critters from sneaking under the lid.

Next weekend I'll dump out the water and rinse the (fingers crossed!) clean fleece. If it needs further cleaning, I can always wash it in our utility sink as I normally wash fleece, though my hope was that this method would save water and allow me to dump the wastewater out in the back of the yard rather than down the drain. I'm also hoping that this method will kill any moths or eggs that were still in the fleece, but I won't be precious about what's left and will happily toss any compromised wool. Assuming it comes out okay, it'll also be quarantined from the rest of the stash until I'm sure there are no more critters coming out of it. Let my laziness be a lesson to you: wash your fleece!

Spinning the Sunset

I haven't been spinning as much this past week, what with the rush to finish up Rainbow's socks and the excitement of casting on new things, but I did manage to finish spinning up the superwash Targhee singles from the fiber Rainbow selected.

This colorway is called Tropical Sunset, which certainly is fitting for that lovely pinkish orange at the end, but I think the blue-purple that's underneath looks rather like my favorite shake of hydrangeas.

I'll be letting these singles rest and then chain plying each bobbin separately for two skeins of yarn that I hope will be relatively equal. I originally thought this yarn would become socks, but Rainbow has requested legwarmers instead. I can work with that!

Meanwhile, I did spend a little time today playing with some other fiber. I pulled out my washed Romney/Romeldale fleece and carded up a little batt.

This fluffy pillow is only about 25 grams. But it's very fluffy, after three passes through the drum carder, and I think it will be nice to spin. Obviously there's still a ton of the fleece left to card, and I'll have to devote some serious time to get that done, but it's a start, and I like the direction things are heading.

Rinse and Repeat

Even though we've just come off a long weekend here in the United States, I've got another one in front of me. Tomorrow is Rainbow's last day (and I use that term loosely, because it's really only about two and a half hours) of second grade, so I am taking the day off to attend her school's final assembly and then spend the day with her. The weather report isn't looking very favorable, so while we'll probably be out and about to run a couple of errands -- including going to get Rainbow's summer haircut -- I imagine we'll spend a lot of the day inside, which means crafting time for me.

My two current WIPs look very much the same, though the ball of yarn currently being knit into my Boxy is getting noticeably smaller and my second sock is getting close to being ready for its heel.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to pull out some of my washed fleece, my hand cards, and my mini combs and do some sampling. I don't know that I'm ready to process and spin the whole fleece just yet, but I at least want to have a sense of how I'm going to do it before I start that big task. I figure that a bonus day (because on the weekend I always feel obliged to do chores and errands and such) is the perfect time to do it.

Outside of crafting time, I have been enjoying some other hobbies. I've been reading a lot lately, thanks to the wonder that is the ebook, and have finished several books. I've read two Kindle books about North Korea: A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea (which was a Kindle freebie) and A Kim Jong-Il Production, which I'd bought some time ago after hearing a bit about the story on an episode of This American Life. They were both fascinating and heart-breaking reads, and given the current geo-political situation, they felt very timely. I've also read two books recently about lexicography: Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries and The Professor and the Madman. While the former is very much about the process of creating a dictionary, in the latter it plays more of a secondary role, with the focus more on a very interesting player in the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. Finally, a book I could not put down (in a manner of speaking) was Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness. I bought it on Kindle after receiving a recommendation e-mail and really loved it. I'd describe it as a cross between Girl, Interrupted; one of Oliver Sacks's books; and an episode of House. What is most interesting to me, in looking back at the books I've read so far this year, is that half of them have been nonfiction and that all but four of them have been ebooks. I've always said that I'm devoted to physical books, but I've really learned to love digital books. I also just recently got around to connecting to Overdrive so that I can borrow digital and audio books from the library, so I expect that this is a trend that will continue for a while. An added bonus of reading a book on my iPad is that I can read while knitting or spinning!

Fleecy Thoughts

This weekend has been all about the wool. Yesterday I spent nearly all day doing loads of laundry (five altogether, in case you're wondering), and as long as I was going down to the basement all day, I figured I might as well wash some more fleece. I got two lingerie bags' worth washed up yesterday and also pawed through the first load that I washed last weekend.

This was my first time washing fleece using Unicorn Power Scour (previously I used blue Dawn) and I have to say that I'm a convert. This lovely stuff needed only one wash cycle to get the lanolin out. The dry fleece feels clean but not dried out. The color is getting blown out in the photos above -- the actual fleece is a gorgeous chocolatey brown:

I'm planning to use some of what I've washed to do a little sampling so I can decide how I want to prep the rest of it. The staple length is a bit short for what I'd expect for a Romney cross, but that's probably because the fleece came from a yearling ram. I'll attempt some combing and some carding and see which looks best.

Meanwhile, in between the trips up and down the stairs, I got some decent spinning time in yesterday as well. I finished up my first bobbin of Cheviot singles on Friday night and finished the second yesterday afternoon.

I won't know for sure until the third bobbin is spun and the singles are plied, but it looks like my plan to line up the colors is more or less working!

Back in My Happy Place

My spinning mojo is back in full force, and I am spinning lots of my default yarn -- three-ply fingering weight. Yesterday I finished plying up my Southern Cross Fibre Spelsau:

It turned out well but a bit low on the yardage, at only about 250-ish yards. I expected it to be lower than my usual, but it was much lower than I expected. It is perhaps a tad overplied, so I might run it back through the wheel to remove some extra twist, but that wouldn't give me much more yardage. I suspect it's mainly the wool, as it was a coarser, heavier wool than I'm used to spinning. Still, it feels good to spin up something from the stash. This skein will either go in my Etsy shop or will be used to make some shortie socks.

Next, I decided to tackle one of my Rhinebeck purchases, some Cheviot from Classy Squid Fiber Co. in a colorway called Starry Night. I was pondering how to spin it to keep the colors fairly distinct and was all set on chain plying when I laid out the fiber and found that if I tore it in thirds widthwise, the colors lined up fairly well. So that's what I did, and to create shorter color sequences, I split each third in half lengthwise. Now I can spin a traditional three ply and have more or less distinct color sections.

I'm about halfway through the first bobbin of singles and already love how it is spinning up.

I've currently got the first batch of my Maryland fleece soaking and hope to have some to play with this week!

Back to Reality

I'm back, only just, from Maryland Sheep and Wool, and I came home to much to do before starting the week and very little time to get it done, so this is just a short post from me tonight.

I got in a little bit of spinning time before we left for our trip and finished up the second bobbin of my Southern Cross Fibre Spelsau. Two down, one to go.

I was fairly good at the festival in terms of buying spinning fiber. The only dyed fiber I bought was this 2 oz. bag of Hobbledehoy battlings:

When I say fairly good, I'm probably exaggerating, because other wool followed me home as well. I'd told my travel companions not to let me buy a fleece, but then I had to go into the fleece sale barn to meet someone who was selling me a hackle, and while I was waiting for her to listen to the fleece judges' comments, I did a little browsing. I guess by now you can tell that one thing led to another and I came home with yet another fleece. Oops. I can't say I'm sorry -- it's a beautiful fleece. It was from a yearling Romney/Romeldale cross ram named Ollie. The bag went right to the basement, but I pulled out one lock to show you so you'll see why I was so smitten:

The sheep was coated so the fleece looks incredibly clean, and it's all this beautiful dark chocolate color (with some slightly lighter tips). I'm planning to wash this as soon as possible and do some carded and combed samples. It seems likely that I may be going to Rhinebeck again this fall, so wouldn't it be amazing to spin up and knit a Rhinebeck sweater from this gorgeous fleece?