Thursday, May 31, 2012

Why sort that fleece?

Two locks torn as samples out of one fleece:
Don't worry, they clean up beautifully to pristine white.  But notice the totally different crimp pattern?  The lock at the top has a super fine wool type crimp, what you'd expect in a Merino-type fleece.  The lock at the bottom has great crimp and nice hand, but it is indeed something like half the number of crimp counts per inch as the other.
They're likely to spin up very different.  They could be mixed evenly, or spun totally separately, but switching back and forth between sections is not likely to make a yarn that's easy to spin or nice to look at or use.
This fleece is over 7 lbs of Rambouillet-Targhee-Polypay cross, so I have plenty of each type even given that a lot will be lost in scouring.  It's just a good illustration of why it's important to get down into that fleece, feel it out, look it over, and evaluate the different sections.

And now adding what a bit of the finer crimp section, which makes up the majority, combs out to:

No comments: