(This was a draft I wrote in May of 2020 – today is April 17, 2024. So much has changed, but I’m going to publish this anyway, because it’s a fine post in itself, reminding me of The Before and all the things I was doing at the time.)
I tried very hard to get through that grey fleece I had bought from Balky Farm in 2019, but that didn’t happen. I did try, though, and that resulted in quite a bit of yarn.
Good yarn! Squishy yarn!
This time, I decided to measure and tag it. I have enough yarn that I swore I would remember which fleece it came from, how long ago I spun it, and how many yards there were. Good grief. And I have a terrible memory, and I know it. So. This time: tags!
You’d probably not guess that the fleece the above yarn came from was grey, but it was. It spun up brown, which I think I did not quite expect. Well, I did expect some yellowing from the sunburnt tips, but I didn’t expect brown. Not that I’m necessarily complaining! It’s still really gorgeous wool and made Really Good Yarn.
I also started combing some of that new! grey! fleece! that I washed up a small bag of.
So fluffy! So beautiful! And I wanted to do some experiments to see exactly how I should prepare this wool for spinning. So I combed some as they were, I combed some locks that had been flicked first, and I combed some locks that had their sunburnt tips trimmed off.
Combed fluff to spin! The color is off I think, but you’ll see some yarn spun up from it in sunlight, which is truer to the actual color.
Three tiny skeins!! So tiny. I spun each nest up, then Andean plied them (a technique that I very much appreciate now). The skeins on the right are probably closest in color. YOu can only just see the difference. The middle is the one with the tips trimmed, and while I was certain that was the one I was going to love the most, now I am not so sure. Oh yes, it’s grey. But it lacks a certain texture in the color. Or a layer of color. I’m not sure I can explain it. My eyes say that yarn is boring. And yet, I look at the Gotland yarn sample I spun up some months ago, and I think this is the perfect, beautiful grey and it is not boring. And it is way more homogeneously grey than that middle mini skein. Well. I can’t figure it out. But what I did like was the one on the far right. It’s the most even, and it’s grey, but with the very slightest tinge of creamy yellow, like that yellowish tinge silver has. And I loooove it. I really do. I’ve decided to spin the whole fleece with the tips attached.
In the meantime, I spun MOAR of the fleece I’ve been working on forever. Got two skeins. Washed them up.
Looms are very handy for hanging yarn on. I had been working on finishing the measuring portion of a dishtowel project that I started back in September 2019. You can see the warping board hanging on the other side of the loom.
Had some singles left on a bobbin, so I Andean plied that, and got a smaller skein that I wound into a cake. Then I knit a swatch.
I don’t hate the swatch, but I don’t like it either. I used three different sizes of needle, and I think I could go down another size even. This yarn would definitely resist pilling and it’s stretchy enough for knitting, but I’m not crazy about how it doesn’t fluff up after washing and blocking. It is, after all, a weaving yarn. If I want sweater yarn for knitting, I’m going to have to card the wool, and then spin using the long draw method, which, frankly, scares me. I’m pretty good at spinning a worsted yarn. Pretty darned good. I cannot spin long draw to save my life. It’s awful. And a thing I will have to learn.
Marlie and I got out and about in May. We explored the dirt roads near where we live.
Crafturgency 