Fiber Monday - Eureka!

I told you about how B. had given me some unwashed fleece for Christmas. I spent the break figuring out how to wash it and prepare it for spinning. Then I told you about me trying to spin the prepared fleece, showing you some samples of what I had spun. Well, here's a tip. If you see me showing you multiple "samples" of something, then you know things aren't going quite how I had expected. I kept sampling because I couldn't get a good, even spin. I tried both wheels as well as a suspended spindle. All were equally difficult to spin and I ended up with pretty inconsistent yarn. So I set it aside as I pondered what to do about it.

A few weeks ago I read that if there is lanolin left in the wool, then trying to spin it can be sticky and difficult. Sticky and difficult pretty much sums up my spinning experience, so I decided to take a few locks and rewash them to see if there was more lanolin I could remove. Well...

Eureka!

I had no idea when I started this little venture exactly what a learning curve awaited me. I am finding the fleece and fiber preparation to be a little more challenging than learning to spin. That was pretty straight forward. Preparing fleeces feels a little like learning to make pie crust. You can follow a recipe, but it is a little trickier to get it the exact texture you want if you have never seen someone make pie crust and can really see what each stage looks like. I read a lot and watched a lot of videos about washing fleeces, but really knowing what I am looking for, how long to do things, how to know when something is actually done, etc. is more challenging than one would expect.

I am happy to report that this last washing made a huge difference. It combed easier and it spun much, much easier. I was happy with what ended up on the wheel and didn't feel the need to make the small amount I tried into a "sample". This was just a few locks worth of fiber.

I wasn't sure what my next spinning project was going to be, but I was so happy with this that I can see me turning into a sock weight 3-ply. And since I also have some lighter color wool from the same fleece, I decided it would be fun to spin sock weight yarn with both and knit a pair of socks with some color work. (Color work is the knitting skill I want to conquer this year, so it would be killing two birds with one stone.) I have spun all the wool I had rewashed, so now I need to prep enough fiber so that I can get a good amount spun. 

I also took some dirty locks from the box of the huge fleece I bought to see what they would turn out like. This is the fleece I want to use part of for the class I'll teach in the fall, so I needed to start experimenting to see if it would be appropriate. I am very happy to report that I think it will. 

I should have pulled out some dirty locks so you could see the comparison... maybe another day. On the left, you can see the cleaned locks. My hope was that since they were long, I could use a dollar store pet brush to comb them open and then spin directly from the locks with the suspended spindle. (The trouble with teaching a class like this is keep costs to a minimum. As with so many arts, the supplies needed are often pretty pricey. I wanted to be able to teach spinning without a huge outlay for equipment.) As you can see, the pet brush did a nice job of opening up the locks. Certainly easy enough to spin them with the spindle. I'm pretty happy with the result. My next step is to figure out an equally frugal way to weave the yarn into a scarf. I have ideas that I hope to be able to try out this week.

Finally, I wanted to share the project that I finished this week. It was actually one of Y.'s birthday gifts, so I wove this over the course of just two days.

Y. had wanted me to weave her a scarf, so I thought that would make a nice birthday gift. She had a hat she loved that was a Christmas gift, so I decided to try to coordinate with it. I think I did a pretty good job. 

I will wet finish the scarf tonight, then it will be all dry and ready for her to use when our weather turns rotten again. You'd think weaving a scarf for a gift in late February would guarantee that we wouldn't have any more super cold weather, but you would be wrong. L. wants the next scarf I weave, so maybe finishing that one will do the trick.