Blog

…but the truth remains that I love the “doing” of things more than the “writing about the doing” of things. Thus I have been remiss in posting. Alas.

I have been hard at work on my breed study, though, so let’s jump right in. If you follow me on Instagram (@thehopefulfleece)* you know that I recently happened upon Jillian Moreno’s Instagram post about steaming commercial top to revive the crimp. Whaaaat? I had to try it right away.

I put a little pot of water on to boil, and slowly moved half of my 1 oz. Perendale sample back and forth over the steam, allowing it to get damp. (I also touched this sample to the pot a couple of times – don’t do this. It singes the fiber.) Lo, look what happens! It crimps and puffs right up!

I used this re-crimped sample to make the rolags for semi-woollen spinning on my blending board, and lemme tell you, it’s a game changer. It made the process of making the rolags much easier since the fibers were looser, and it also made a huge difference in terms of how the fibers drafted for long-draw spinning. I prepared half my top in this way for all four of the samples mentioned here, and will do this for the rest of my breed study samples.  I only wish I’d known about it sooner!

Perendale

Perendale is a cross between Romney and Cheviot. I did notice that the fiber felt a little “crispy” – it was similar to the Cheviot in that way. As you can see above, the Perendale fluffed up quite a lot upon steaming, and the resulting semi-woollen yarn was light, airy, and appropriately fuzzy. This fiber drafted like a dream using both the supported long draw and short forward draw, and overall was extremely pleasant to spin. The semi-woollen yarn is softer, but the semi-worsted retains more luster.

However you choose to work with this fiber, I think you will love the result. It may not be next-to-skin soft for most people, but it would make lovely outerwear, socks, and maybe even a hat.

Texel

I was at the Fat Lamb Fiber Festival in Scio, OR recently when I saw these adorable little guys:

I couldn’t find the girl they belonged to, but after seeing some Texel fleeces in the fleece show, consulting my Field Guide to Fleece, and doing a little recon on Instagram** to see if anyone from the festival could confirm, I discovered that they are indeed Texel lambs. How cute are they? Clearly I had to spin my Texel sample next.

Again, steaming the top made a huge difference in terms of texture. Texels were created by cross-breeding a native sheep of the Netherlands with Leicester and Lincoln Longwools, with the desired result of a high quality meat sheep. The bonus for spinners is that their fleece is great too! My Texel sample is a little on the yellow side – at least when you compare it with the other breeds sampled here – but it is not displeasing. It’s just a bit creamy.

All that air in the fiber I carded into the rolags made an extremely fluffy semi-woollen yarn – so much so that it ended up bulky weight! It knitted up into a surprisingly soft swatch, and I suspect it would be very warm as a cardigan or hat.

The semi-worsted sample spun up at worsted weight, and was much smoother than the semi-woollen sample. Spun finer than I did it might be an interesting match for a lace pattern – I do love a “rustic” yarn in lace or cables.

I really enjoyed working with this fiber – I found it to be very easy to spin and nice to knit. I would be interested in spinning it from the fleece sometime!

Romney (Kent Romney, Romney Marsh)

Romney was actually the wool that my spinning teacher put into my hands for my first lesson – and I suspect it may also have been what I used to learn on a spindle several years ago. Romney is in the longwool family, but is considerably softer than some of its longwool counterparts. This is part of why it’s often used as a “beginner fiber” – it is sturdy, crimpy, and easy to spin. Its longwool heritage brings a wonderful luster, and it can be used for a multitude of garments and household items, depending on the fineness of the particular fleece you’re working with.

Even though I steamed half of this sample, I found that the difference between the semi-worsted and semi-woollen samples was more subtle than I have seen with some other wools I’ve worked with for this study. It is easier to feel the difference than to see it – and it’s a little more visible in the knitted samples than in the skeins. Possibly it’s more visible just because my spinning is less consistent in the semi-woollen sample. Oh well.

My takeaway from sampling this Romney is that I totally underestimated it when I was a beginning spinner. It is a really nice, versatile wool. The luster adds interest, and it’s really just lovely to use. I hear it also takes dye well, but that’s an experiment for another day. Oh, and I want to spin enough to make a pair of mittens. Romney just screams “cozy mittens” to me.

Polwarth

And now, after a medium-textured wool frenzy…something completely different. Polwarth is a finewool, found only in Australia, and it is a cross between Merino and Lincoln Longwool. I only have one word to describe Polwarth, and that’s dreamy.

I worked with some Polwarth shortly after I learned to spin, and at that time I found it to be really challenging. What I didn’t know then is that really, all the finewools are harder to spin than something with more substance. As I recall, I liked Polwarth better than Merino, though, and that’s partly because of the length of the fibers. The longwool influence helps a lot with that.

I have a little more experience now, and I found that this sample was a joy to work with. Again, I was surprised that the semi-woollen and semi-worsted samples were so similar. There is more loft to the semi-woollen sample, but it’s easier to feel than to see. Both samples retained their luster, and the individual fibers stayed pretty smooth even in the semi-woollen sample. Both skeins have a significant “squish” factor, and they are soft as can be.

Polwarth is next-to-skin soft in every way. There are no poky ends to contribute to the prickle factor, and both swatches are smooth and comfy. The thing I haven’t tested is pilling – it might pill quickly, but I suspect that the length of the staples will help prevent that, even in a woollen-spun yarn. I might have to knit another swatch and rough it up.

In the end, I am totally in love with Polwarth…and I still like spinning it more than I like spinning Merino. If you have someone in your life who says they can’t wear wool – try Polwarth. It just might change their minds.

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*And honestly, if you don’t follow me on Instagram you should start. I’m WAY more reliable about posting there.

** See? WAY more reliable.

Ok, so it’s not really IN my shower. It’s hanging on the curtain rod. When I shower, I move it to the towel bar. Then I move it back when I’m done. I can’t seem to make it live somewhere else.

Why, you ask? Because it looks like this.

And don’t even get me started on how it FEELS.

This project started with a batt from Calico Farm that I picked up at Okfiberfest last spring – the colorway is Glacier Sunset. Okfiberfest is a newish fiber festival in Omak, Washington – I found it kind of by accident and Randy and I were due for a vacation. We still lived in Bellingham at the time, so a road trip was in order. It’s a small festival but the people are nice and it’s a beautiful place (for this desert-lover, at least). Plus it was actually warm there, which it was not at the time in Bellingham. If you live in Washington or Idaho, I recommend checking it out.

I was a very, very new spinner when I bought this batt – I was drawn to the colors and the subtle sparkle. However, I had no idea what to do with it. I was terrified that I was going to spin it wrong or “wreck it” somehow. I also knew that I wanted to keep the runs of color intact, but had no idea how to do that at the time.

Like many spinners, I learned with roving and have spent a lot of time working with prepared roving and top. I hadn’t really watched anyone work with a batt, and my own experiment with an art batt full of curly locks and blobs of stuff had been…shall we say…not my favorite thing ever. I love a smooth yarn, and that isn’t what art batts are for. So I gave up, shoved the rest of that art batt in my stash, and waited.

Fast forward to Black Sheep Gathering last summer when I was lucky enough to get into Sarah K. Anderson’s Spinning with Color workshop. It was fantastic, and I highly recommend taking a class with her if you can. It was extremely hands on…she provided us with tons of fiber in different colors, and a gazillion samples of various ways they could be combined. It was a great class.

But here’s a secret. The WHOLE reason I wanted to take the class was so that I could figure out what to do with this batt that was hanging around in my stash calling my name.

Enter the chain (or Navajo) plying technique. You can watch Sarah demonstrate it here, but I absolutely needed to see how she did it, and then have her watch me do it, to be able to learn how to do it myself. I practiced a few times after I took the class, but the batt continued to languish in my stash.

It sat there because I was still so unsure. Sometimes I get caught up in the “right” way to do something. In this case it was “batt = woollen preparation = I should spin it woollen but I’m not very comfortable with that technique and I don’t want to do it wrong.”

And that’s where belonging to a spinning guild, or knowing other spinners, or finding an online community is critical to forward movement for me. I was sitting next to my friend Nancy at a Guild meeting and she was spinning rolags with a short forward draw. Woollen preparation. Worsted draft. Mind. BLOWN.

She said something along the lines of “It’s your spinning. Do it the way you want to do it.” So I did.

I LOVED spinning this batt. Unfortunately I didn’t take a photo of it before I started, but these two photos show how I split it up.

   

This stunning smooth layered batt was a blend of Alpaca, Pygora, Merino, Angelina, and Firestar. The colors are saturated, but sandwiched between layers of white which brought them all together. There is just enough sparkle to keep it interesting. Some of the dyed sections were a little bumpy, but I was mostly able to smooth them out (and I just let it go when I wasn’t).

I couldn’t stop taking photos of the bobbin…

It’s hard to get the sparkle into the pictures, but it’s definitely there.  I chain plyed it up, blocked it by soaking in hot water and snapping, and ended up with just about 160 yards of bulky/super bulky Glacier Sunset yarn. It is super-soft and I think it will be drapey if I knit it loosely. And very warm. I tend to be a little itch-sensitive where alpaca is concerned and it has quite a halo, so I’m not quite sure what I want to do with it.  Whatever it is, I need to use the entire skein…I don’t want one iota left over!

I’m sure one day it will tell me what it wants to be. Until then, it shall remain my pet skein.

And I swear that someday I’ll move it out of the shower.

PS: Do  you have a story about a pet skein? I’d love to hear it in the comments!

I belong to the Yaquina Fiber Arts guild in Toledo, Oregon, and a couple of the other women in the group were complimenting me on my spinning. They asked if I had been spinning long, and I said just over a year – I started in February 2017.  They then commented that I must spin A LOT. And I guess they’re right – I do spin a lot. (Fun Fact – It was this week a year ago that I bought my Ashford Joy 2.  My own wheel! Huzzah!)

This post brings us back to my breed study. I looked at three breeds recently, all vastly different.

Finnsheep

Finnsheep, or Finn for short, is (no surprise here) a Scandinavian breed. My sample was lovely grey top – as usual I carded half into rolags. I found it challenging to get the right setup on my wheel for both long draw and short forward draw, as the fiber is quite unexpectedly slick. Soft, yes, but also slippery.

I found that the semi-woollen sample was still quite smooth, and knitted up nicely into an airy swatch. It’s not nearly as “fluffy” as some other fibers.  The semi-worsted swatch is very smooth and soft, and could probably be worn against the skin. This fiber sample was in the middle of the micron range for Finn, so I suspect that a finer fiber would be very comfortable against the skin.

What surprised me about working with the Finn was how frustrating I found it. When doing short-forward draw, my most comfortable spinning method, it took several tries to get the brake band on my wheel set in such a way that I didn’t feel like the yarn was flying out of my hand. I used my 8:1 ratio, which I usually find quite comfortable as well, and it was just…not as much fun as I had hoped. I could have been having an impatient or off day, for sure – and Finn is not a “toothy” fiber by any means. I definitely learned a lot while sampling it, and I am looking forward to trying again.  The good news is that I have 4 oz. from the Three Waters Farm Top of the Month Club Fiber Shipment, so I have plenty more to play with!

Eider

Eider is a German breed and has many other names, including Oldenburg White Head and White-headed Marsh. My personal favorite for sheer unattractiveness is German White-headed Mutton. I’m so glad that someone saw fit to select additional monikers for this lovely sheep. Unfortunately, this breed is not listed in the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook so I had to take to the internet to learn about it.

The Eider is a dual-purpose sheep, bred for both meat and wool production. It was derived from breeding several English breeds to native German sheep, and it grows a long rough fleece. Although the fleece is classified as white, it is kind of a dirty white – my sample had almost a yellow hue to it. This isn’t a complaint in any way – anyone who has looked at “white fleece” of several breeds knows that it’s a relative term. However, it is hard to tell from the photos, so I wanted to note the color. As I was spinning it I found it to be closest to Whitefaced Woodland in terms of other breeds I have spun as part of this study.

This wool was a dream to spin long draw from rolags. It holds together beautifully, and I don’t recall having any breaks as I went. It is fluffy and airy, and although it’s not next to skin soft it would be great for outerwear.

I also found spinning this breed in a semi-worsted style to be very pleasurable. The resulting yarn was lovely to knit as well, and the stitch definition is very nice. Both swatches bloomed a bit with blocking, filling in some of the gaps and creating lovely fabric.  Though the semi-worsted swatch is smoother, I suspect that it is still mostly outerwear worthy.

Rambouillet*

If I had to use one word to describe Rambouillet (ram-boo-yay) fiber, it would be dense. I suspect that is partly because I’ve been working with courser fibers recently, but handling Rambouillet is a little like handling a very nice cotton ball. It isn’t silky but it’s soft as can be. Rambouillets were derived from Spanish Merinos, and are plentiful in the United States and abroad should you want to get your hands on a sample. They also have funny wrinkly faces, which I think are awfully cute.

Since this fiber is so soft and the recommendations I read said it is best spun relatively fine, I set the ratio on my wheel to 11:1 for the rolags. Again it took some experimentation to figure out how much twist I needed to put in so the singles didn’t break, and I had some waste while I sorted that out. Once I got it, though, I found Rambouillet to be great to spin using a supported long draw from rolags. The yarn is fluffy, soft, and airy, but the fibers do tend to cling to each other. Rambouillet will felt easily.

When I switched over to short-forward draw for my semi-worsted sample, I was surprised that I needed to strip my top into multiple pieces in order to handle it easily. The density of the fibers within the top meant that I needed to work with smaller pieces so that I didn’t keep getting too many fibers with each draw. Related to my last post, it is important to note that both my semi-woollen and semi-worsted sample skeins fluffed up A LOT in finishing – I only did the math on my semi-worsted skein, but it went from 54 yards before blocking to 37.5 yards after…this is definitely something I will take into consideration when I work with Rambouillet in the future!  Which I will…I love this semi-worsted yarn and swatch. It totally reflects the fiber I started with – dense, soft, and relatively smooth.

An Aside

I was talking to my dad on the phone last weekend while I was working with the Rambouillet and he said “how come I’ve never heard of that breed? We love things made of Merino.” My response was something about how I really hadn’t either until I started spinning, even though I’ve been knitting for almost 15 years and I work with wool all the time. Wool is so fascinating, and I am grateful for all of the large and small companies that are bringing breed-specific yarns to the market so that more people can learn about how wonderful the different breeds are. I am also grateful for all the enthusiasts who came before, as well as those today, who keep me excited about this world of wool and learning new things all the time. I know that there are many people who don’t care all that much about it – they are more interested in color, or novelty, or any of the many other things that draw people in to fiber crafting. I am finding, though, that the more I learn the more connected I feel not only to the fiber world as it relates to artists and makers, but as it relates to farms and animals and sustainability as well. I can imagine no greater gift to have received from pastimes that already bring me such joy. Knitting and spinning are, for me, truly the gifts that keep on giving.

* I am aware that “Rambouillet” is misspelled on my sample tags – it has been corrected. 🙂

What I’ve Been Spinning

You may recall that in my last post I had spun a lovely melange of BFL, picked Gotland locks, and bamboo into a single but then wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do with it. I only had a little bit of the locks and I had used them all, so replicating it exactly wasn’t possible. Instead, I decided to create more rolags with just the BFL and bamboo, spin them up, and ply it with the single containing the Gotland. I am very happy with the result!

There wasn’t enough Gotland in the first single to make it markedly different from the second, so all works well together. I have a little more BFL left, so I think I’ll just make more of the bamboo blend with it. It will be interesting to see if there is a noticeable difference if neither ply has Gotland in it.

I have also been working on spinning an 8 oz. braid of Targhee from Willamette Valley Wool Company that I picked up last summer at Black Sheep Gathering. I’m a new enough spinner that 8 oz. feels like a LOT of fiber. Particularly when it’s only three colors. There is nothing wrong with only three colors, but with runs that long you have to really like looking at them. In any case, I started this spin in January, and just finished it at the beginning of March.

I chose to do a fractal spin with this yarn – I split the yarn in half, and then split one of those halves into 5 strips. I spun the big half from pink end to green end, and the smaller strips end to end in the other direction, always starting with the green. At some point during my spin I realized that the brown in the middle was the pink and the green mixed together, and it became interesting to look for the places that were more pink or more green.

I made a two-ply and finished it by soaking in hot water and snapping. From the photo above you can see that it’s slightly over-plyed – I usually ply that way. All that wigglyness blocked right out, and it hung straight when it was dry.

You can see that it is going to stripe, which I guess I knew was going to happen – I just didn’t consider how much.. The little pink skein is the end of one bobbin that I plyed on itself, but there are equivalent amounts of green and brown that are not mixed with another color. When I choose a project, I’ll have to decide whether I want to keep the stripes or do something to break them up.

I learned a lot about what a tri-color braid would do during this spin. I’m about equally a “plan before you do” and “try it and see what happens” person, and this was definitely a try it situation. I have another tri-color braid in my stash, and I’m already thinking about how I might break it apart differently to diminish the single-color stripes.

The Dreaded Math

The other thing I finally tackled at the end of this spin was measuring my yardage after blocking. I was taught to measure it as I wound it off of the bobbin using my niddy noddy – which only kind of works for a number of reasons. I am terrible about pulling the yarn tight around the niddy noddy, so it springs back when I take it off. I also tend to get little curly-cues that block out. And then I saw this:

Those are the two fibers I have talked about above. I wound both off the bobbin onto the niddy noddy and counted the yards – my niddy noddy is two yards. I blocked them exactly the same way – soaked in hot water and snapped before hanging with no weight. You can see that the Targhee has sprung up a lot more than the BFL blend.

I did a little research online about how others measure their yardage. While I aspire to own a yardage counter that you can run with a swift, I don’t have one yet. I also don’t have a McMorran yarn balance, and although I’m sure I could set one up I don’t have a calculating Excel spreadsheet. Lacking any of these I could only employ one strategy…MATH.

I found this post about figuring skein length in metric, and extrapolated that for yards. The principle is the same, though.

First I laid my skein out flat on the counter and measured one half of it in inches. It would also work to lay the tape measure in the center of the skein and measure from one end to the other. I doubled that number (so, if half is 30 inches then the total is 60 inches) multiplied by the number of strands in the skein.  Then divide that number by 36 (for the number of inches in a yard) and voila! Your finished yardage.

As an example, half of one of my Targhee skeins measured 27 inches. Twice that is 54 inches. There were 218 strands in the skein. 54 x 218=11,772. Divide by 36 – 11,772/36=327 yards.

I still think of it as a slightly wiggly number, but it is more correct than the pre-blocked one! If you’re interested in calculating the “loss” in yardage between the pre-blocked length and the blocked length, simply divide your pre-blocked yardage into your blocked yardage and subtract from 100, and it will give you a percentage of loss.

Using my example above, the original number of yards I wound off the bobbin and onto my niddy noddy was 436. Post-blocking, I have 327 yards. 327/436=.75 and 100-.75=.25.  In this case, with this skein, I had about 25% “loss” in my yardage. This is partly because I may have wound too tightly, but it’s also because the yarn relaxed out and puffed up during its warm bath. Obviously the Targhee puffed more than the BFL!

For more on the changes in yardage after blocking, or setting the twist, check out April’s post on With Wool.

I think that about does it for this post – next time a little about sampling Finnsheep, and perhaps adventures with spinning from a batt.

Sorry it’s been a while since I posted – I took a little trip up to Washington to see my brother and his family, and to meet my darling new niece and play Lego with my nephew.  No time for blogging and spinning there!

This post is all about playing with some Gotland locks I got last summer at Black Sheep Gathering. My breed study box did have a little roll of prepared “Gotland” top in it…but it’s white. One of the lovely things about Gotland sheep is that their coats are many lustrous shades of grey. Although there are breeders in Sweden upbreeding to get white fleeces (thank you, internet, for that bit of knowledge!), it seems pretty unlikely that that’s what I have. Which means it’s either been bleached or it’s not Gotland. There are a gazillion breeds that produce perfectly nice white longwools – why would you bleach Gotland!? It’s a mystery. Anyhow, I put the little ball back in the breed box. Since I had a bag of locks to play with, I used them for this experiment instead to get make sure I was getting a truly Gotland experience.

I started with the purple locks, which I picked into a cloud. I discovered quickly that if these locks had been washed before dying, they weren’t washed very well…so that was startling. There was a fair amount of waste, but plenty left to use. I will say that the array of shades of purple in these locks was fabulous! It was so much fun to see it all play together.

I put the locks on the blending board and carded them into rolags. What I learned was that I should have taken MUCH more time laying the fiber in, ensuring that it was more orderly. The staple is long enough that once it’s in a rolag it just knots up and doesn’t draft easily, which was pretty frustrating. I ended up using primarily a short forward draw even from a rolag, just because I had a little more control of the twist.

I Andean-plyed it into a two ply, and I ended up with a very hairy, slubby, textured yarn. I wound it into a ball and attempted to knit it. This yarn isn’t for knitting for me…it looks too messy. It might make a fine weft in weaving for someone, though!

My next experiment was with the natural grey locks. I used my flicker and opened up the (also not super clean) locks, and spun directly from them. I tried to spin all the opened locks from the tip end. Being a longwool with such a nice shine, Gotland is also SLICK. I used a short forward draw so I could keep it all from sliding away from me. I wanted to see how smooth I could get the finished yarn so I chose not to spin from the fold, which would have been a more manageable way to handle the slippery locks. I was very surprised when my singles only broke once as I wound them onto my hand to Andean-ply. I didn’t have very much of this color, so I only ended up with about 14 yards of worsted weight yarn…definitely just a sample. It is smoother than what I spun from the cloud rolags, but still pretty hairy. I didn’t try to knit with it, but it’s definitely not next to skin soft. It’s also pretty underplyed – I was trying to keep it soft and not too much like twine…I think there’s a happy medium I missed somewhere.

I had some locks left, and considered picking them and spinning from the cloud. In the end, though, I decided to make use of my blending board to blend some ecru Bluefaced Leicester (BFL)  top, picked red Gotland locks, and red bamboo. There was a lot of waste in the locks this time too, so I just ended up with a little bit. I was diligent about how I laid the fiber into the board, and the resulting rolags were very nice and smooth.

The Gotland fiber still got snarled up in the spinning a bit, and there were some neps in the BFL as well, but overall it was very nice to work with. Again I broke the rules and spun short forward draw from the rolags…I’ll still work on my long draw technique, but short forward is more relaxing because I do it well and I was feeling lazy.

This yarn is still on the bobbin – It doesn’t have a lot of twist in it, and it’s all one piece so I either need to wind it off to Andean ply or into a center pull ball to ply that way. Or I can leave it as a singles yarn, but I’m not convinced it will hold together. I’m going to let it rest a bit to set that twist before I mess with it. More on that next time.

First of all, there is a tiny mushroom growing on my deck.  A. Tiny. Mushroom.

I grew up in New Mexico.  I’ve lived in the Pacific NW for more than 7 years, but this whole idea that things will just sprout up wherever they feel like it is still totally fascinating to me.  I did wonder if I cold dye some yarn with it.  So, it all comes back around…

I’m plugging along on my 8oz Targhee Braid from Willamette Valley Yarn Company…it’s only three colors, and I FINALLY got through the solid half of the braid…I’m doing a fractal spin, so I’m now on to the little strips from the second half of the braid. 8oz may actually exceed my attention span.  Good thing I have other things to play with too!

(Want to know more about fractal spinning? Try this.)

Whitefaced Woodland

My breed study yarn this time is Whitefaced Woodland.  It’s a medium wool, a lovely cream color, and the staple length for this sample was about 6 inches.  As usual, I spun half straight from the top using a short forward draw for a semi-worsted yarn.  I combed the other half on the blending board, made some rolags, and spun it long draw for a semi-woolen yarn.

The bizarre thing? When all was said and done, I had to look pretty closely at both the yarn and the knitted swatches to be able to tell which was which. In good light.

Whitefaced Woodland drafted like a dream from the rolags.  It was smooth, crimpy enough to grip, and allowed me to really focus on my long draw technique instead of fighting with the fiber. I spun the first half ounce quite quickly this way, and I’m beginning to see why people like this method when they want to go fast.  I was still conservative with my ratio (6:1 with LOTS of treadling) but the result was a yarn I liked very much. My consistency was better too…mostly.

This fiber was also very pleasant to spin in my usual short forward draw.  All in all – very nice.

There is a difference between the woolen-spun and the worsted-spun yarns, but it’s not nearly as pronounced as it has been in some of my other samples.  In good light the color is different because of the density of the yarn – the worsted-spun is creamier and the woolen-spun is whiter. The same is true of the swatches. The worsted-spun swatch also feels denser, as does the small skein of yarn, which is how it should feel. I was very pleased with how both of the swatches knitted up, and I don’t believe that the woolen-spun swatch would pill particularly quickly. Overall, I think that this fiber would be great for socks, a sweater worn over a shirt, mittens, or possibly a hat. It seems like a good, sturdy fiber. I would spin it again.

First I have to say that I am very tired of grey and rain.  Very. Tired.

I am aware that it’s only January, and that this will be with us here on the Oregon Coast for many moons yet…just like it was in Bellingham. But being home during the day definitely colors the…well…grey. Sigh.

Anyhow, I had intended to sample and swatch two down-type breeds from my breed study box for this post.  I did the Southdown, and then went for the Suffolk.  Which was, quite unexpectedly, GREY.

Now, I’m pretty new to the spinning world, but I’ve learned enough to know that the down-type breeds are primarily meat sheep – fleeces are an afterthought. Down-type herds in the United States are almost exclusively white (many with black faces) so that their fleeces can be sold into the wool pool for industrial or mass market wool items. (Fun fact – Pendleton purchases the vast majority of the wool pool in the US.) Wool pool wool needs to be white so it can be dyed any color the purchaser wants…non-white lambs are usually culled from herds. So this little fluff of grey wool labeled “Suffolk” was perplexing.

What to do? Consult the Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, of course. Sure enough, there is a little note in it about a grey mystery wool being sold as grey Suffolk…that bears absolutely no resemblance to regular Suffolk. So, back into the box it goes. Perhaps I’ll spin it at some point, but it doesn’t help my study very much right now!

Southdown

So, on to the Southdown. Southdown is the grand-pappy of all the down-type breeds, so it was an obvious starting point with down-type wool. In reality it was just the poof of fiber I pulled from the box, but…never mind that.

As always, I spun half of my one ounce sample worsted style and half woollen. I keep looking at my samples and thinking that they don’t look that different, for the most part. My consistency wasn’t great in either case, apparently, and the thick and thin bits are pretty obvious in both sample skeins. I am still working on getting enough (but not too much) twist into my long draw singles so they don’t fall apart during plying, and this time I only had a couple of breaks! I’m going to consider that a win.

The result of one of the breaks was two plying bracelets. Why two? Because one of the traits of a down-type breed is that the wool will not felt, so my usual spit-splice method of disguising breaks in my singles wasn’t an option. Two bracelets it was. Which, as it turned out, was perfect for sampling.

I started my plying with 4 treadles per 12-15 inches on my 8:1 ratio. Straight off the bobbin it was a little under-plyed, so I upped my treadling on the larger bracelet to 5 per 12-15 inches on the same ratio in an attempt to balance it – only to discover that then it was slightly over-plyed. I washed them and blocked them and didn’t see a lot of difference, but the real difference was in the swatches.

The worsted yarn is denser and the stitch definition is cleaner (mostly), which is to be expected. I like the nubbles where I was inconsistent in my spinning, and I think this would make quite a nice sweater that would be durable and long-lasting. It would also make lovely socks, I’m pretty sure.

The woollen spun swatches are the interesting part. Although I liked the look of the more tightly plyed yarn better, I like the knitted swatch that uses the under-plyed yarn better. It more closely resembles what I’ve been taught a woollen-spun yarn should be – light, airy, and fuzzy. Although I don’t know how well it would hold up to significant wear, I really love how the swatch feels now. An under-plyed laceweight Southdown yarn might be quite lovely and I suspect it would bloom nicely over time.

I would absolutely experiment with Southdown again. And since my husband thinks that Babydoll Southdowns should be part of our future fiber herd, I guess that’s a good thing!