i finished the knitting on a shawl (Industrial Revolution) and started a new (smallish) knitting project. Last week a friend asked me to make him a set of knitted garters, about 1″ and 40″ long each. After sending a couple of pictures I ended up using cascade fingering in an orange shade…he decided it looked enough like madder dye to be ok. At this point I have one of them done and about 11 inches of the second one done. They are going much slower then I had anticipated for two major reasons. 1) I stupidly decided to use like 000 needles, and 2) they are 11 stitches wide, and are about the most boring knitting project ever!
Last Monday I started to spin the fibers in a bad of random wool Michele C had given me about a year ago. It was in the grease (which had turned takcy at this point) and was still in its locks. I think it might have been a Romney, but not sure in any way shape or form. So, starting last Monday, in an effort to avoid cleaning the house for the 4th of July party, I started spinning that. I got about 100grams a day spun, and I was spinning at the thinnest I could get. I was not tottally consistent, but it was mostly thin or really thin. I ended up with around 300 grams spun in a semi worsted manner. So on Sunday after the party, I plyed it all up and ended up with a little less then 1000 yards of two ply thinish yarn. It is a lovely variegated grayness. I have a shawl pattern I think it will work very nicely with, but the pattern calls for beads, and while I can order them online, I would prefer to buy them in person so that will take some thought as to location. I tried to put lots of twist into the singles and to over twist the plying as well. Before I took the wool off the bobbin, it was twisting up on itself, but once I wound it onto the niddy-noddy, it pretty much stopped that, and once I washed it (used a bit of orvus paste cause it was in the grease) it tottally stopped that, and I did not even hang it up and put weights on it. Oh, also, this yarn was about 13 wraps per inch.
I also also got one of the Shetland fleeces cold water washed, and the other got put into th water for an overnight soak. I hope today to get both fleeces though their hot water washing process also, but am feeling a bunch creaky, so we will see about that. As you can see, they look quite different from each other. The fleece on the blue sheet seems to have much less course guard hair, so I am going to pick and card that all together. The fleece on the orange sheet however seems to have much longer and courser guard hairs, so after cleaning and drying, will try to use the Viking combs mounted as a help separating the guard hair out. nither fleece seemed to need much skirting, maybe the dark colors covered up the nasty bits I could see in the white stuff?
Last, but not least. I got one of the already washed and dried fleeces picked and carded!
2015 shearing, fleece J. About 450 grams. It was the whitest of the fleeces, but I think that was mostly because after hot washing that one, I decided one washing with orvus paste was enough. It was also very wooly as opposed to hairy. It had one or two places where it felt hairy, but on th whole it was wooly, with bits of the wool feeling almost silky. Very nice.
jaurbik 