I have of late...

Don't worry, I haven't lost all my mirth (unlike my good friend Hamlet). In fact, the house has been haunted by the smell of wet wool... and wet alpaca, which is less romantic, since to me it smells like wet dog. But I digress.

I finally finished the last of my Romney yarn - the finest I've spun yet. Don't get too excited lace spinners... it's hardly even sport.



It did not come out quite as planned. I started with a little under 4 oz of Romney and wanted to spin it at a lace weight. I spun up two bobbins and plied them together. And when I say plied, I mean I REALLY added some twist. Even after the initial wash, whack, and dry the yarn had some kinks. Though they seem to have settled out now.

So all that resulted in the skein of yarn to the left. Which came out to 200 yards - exactly half of the yardage I needed for my shawl. All was not lost though. I had more fiber, sort of. You see when I fell in love with the fiber originally, I realized that I probably didn't have enough, and I requested more from the lovely local lady at the farmer's market. So theoretically my second batch probably even came from the same one sheep. However, there was a marked difference in the quality of the second batch. It was much rougher. So either it was from a different year, or the first 4oz bump I got had a proportionally greater selection of the soft areas of the fleece.

Hope springs eternal though, so off I went to spin some more. The second 4oz yielded 230 yards. Not surprisingly, over the months I slowly gave into the temptation to spin thinner even though I used my cue card fairly regularly. I'm also wondering if my failure to ply the second skein as severely could have resulted in more yardage. The more the yarn is twisting around itself, the thicker it gets. Anyway: skein one, positively plump. Skein two, relaxed.

Finally, the second skein is really *just* at touch lighter in color. Interesting that that wasn't apparent to the eye until the twist was added, but is is discernible now. Although the overall color itself is hard to pin down. The brownness/greyness of this fiber has a certain phantasmagorical property. The camera doesn't ever see quite what the eye sees...

So, once again, another project where half the fun has been learning from the unexpected. I'm thinking I might try the shawl anyway alternating between the two skeins for a more rustic feel, but right now I'm distracted by a project that has previously fallen under a blog jinx.



Do you think a photo was permissible, or are the sleeves now in big trouble?