Wednesday, June 6, 2012

One month, one bobbin

I've been combing and spinning this Rambouillet fleece for a month now, and I've finally finished spinning...one bobbin.  I can usually spin a bobbin full in 2-4 days if I'm spinning lace weight singles to be plied into a 2 ply fingering weight yarn.  Does that give you an idea of how fine this is?
I made a small sample of a finished 2 ply from this.  Not only is it a beautiful, low-twist lace weight when plied, it amazingly has so much elasticity it stretched to more than 130% of its resting length.  And how often do you ever see a Rambouillet this beautiful fawn color (there are many colored Rambouillets, but they are normally in the grey range, browns are considered fairly rare).  It's so worth it to spin for so long to get this incredible yarn but yikes, I didn't intent to spend 4 months on one yarn.  I have 4 whole pounds of it (well, prewashed, so imagine maybe 2 lbs after washing and combing), so I suspect at least half if not more will be spun into a slightly heaver (read:  much faster to spin) yarn, but I do hope to have at least 2500 to 3500 yards of this fine lace weight before I stop.
This fleece came from Lowder Colours Farm.
Then I have 7.5 lbs of white Rambouillet-Targhee-Polypay cross to get washed, combed, and spun.  It's not quite as fine, but it's longer (a good 5" for the most part) and also very bouncy, combing up into top I can only call marshmallow-like.  It's got more VM (vegetable matter) than I'd prefer, especially the little particles of grass and hay that don't wash out, but they do fall out on combing and the few lengths of top I've finished combing are pristine, so it's okay in the end.  That one is from Ranching Traditions Fibers, incidentally.
So if you don't hear from me for a couple of weeks, it's because I'm buried under fleece.

3 comments:

Chris said...

This looks absolutely beautiful Leesy,the spinning and the colour of the yarn is lovely and so worth all the work you have put into it.

dogbaker said...

amazing commitment to bring out the fibers beauty
i would so love to see it in person

dogbaker said...

so Amazing to read your description of the process