August Project Completed - Finally!
Working through my stash I pulled out a couple more natural colored lots of fiber. The first is a bag of grey Finn wool I bought from Barb back when she still had her online yarn and fiber shop. It's funny how it was sold as grey and I always thought of it as grey yet when I finally got down to spinning it I realized it's actually an interesting brown color.
It was really nice top to spin - very clean of veg, no hair to speak of and the texture is downy fine. When I bought it there was supposed to be just over a pound. Six 4 ounce bobbins later I knew Barb had been her usual generous self! Originally I had toyed with the idea of chain plying it to make a worsted weight type yarn as it would have made a beautifully soft folksy brown yarn. However, I dug out this bag of Alpaca fiber top that had been sitting around forever and decided to spin it the same way and ply them together as I'm not keen on 100% Alpaca yarn.
The Alpaca is also an interesting natural color blend of white and brown which I suspect came from a bi-color animal and was simply homogenized when it was processed. It is very nice fiber but certainly not premium baby-bottom soft blanket fiber. I wasn't sure how much was left because I had blended quite a bit of it with white wool to make the Cookies 'N Cream spinning fiber in my Etsy Shop. I spun it about the same size as the Finn and filled 3 bobbins.
So it looked like a fairly obvious outcome; 3 skeins of blended and probably 2 small ones of straight Finn. Wrong! Once I started plying there seemed to be some sort of yardage voodoo going on! The Alpaca bobbins hardly went down but the Finn were emptying fast! I was absolutely baffled! The diameter of the singles seemed comparable. All I can think is that there was more loft in the Finn - otherwise, completely inexplicable to me!
All I know is I went from 9 four ounce bobbins to 4 eight ounce bobbins and 2 six ounce bobbins!
I was so right about the color too! The Alpaca really brings out the brown color of the Finn in the blended yarn and I'm so pleased it's not a loud tweed but a more subtle shaded yarn. The 2 bobbins of straight Finn look so much darker by comparison. It never ceases to amaze me how tweeding totally alters the appearance of yarn colors!
Here are the finished skeins. I didn't count the yardage since I'm keeping them for myself and not selling it. I'll sort that out when I get around to using it! The 4 blended skeins weigh 1 lb 10 ounces (approx 745 gms) so they're about 6 1/2 oz each and the 2 smaller Finn skeins weight 8 ounces (approx 250 gms) so they're about 4 oz each. So the grand total is just over 2 lbs of fiber. It's all about a fingering weight and I'm thinking it's a prime candidate for a sweater (eventually) or maybe a woven poncho or jacket (I can daydream can't I?).
Since this project took pretty much all my August spinning time I'm hesitating to dive into the Alpaca/Rambo x Merino rolls I have sitting here. I'm sort of itching to do a bit of color spinning before I settle into another long haul of natural fiber - more on that later!
And about the weaving - it's still on the back burner. I don't think I'm ready just yet and I certainly don't have room for a full blown floor loom! LOL! Maybe a 24" Knitter's Loom in the Spring, who knows? There's lots of time over the winter to mull over that subject! Cheers all!
I was so right about the color too! The Alpaca really brings out the brown color of the Finn in the blended yarn and I'm so pleased it's not a loud tweed but a more subtle shaded yarn. The 2 bobbins of straight Finn look so much darker by comparison. It never ceases to amaze me how tweeding totally alters the appearance of yarn colors!
Here are the finished skeins. I didn't count the yardage since I'm keeping them for myself and not selling it. I'll sort that out when I get around to using it! The 4 blended skeins weigh 1 lb 10 ounces (approx 745 gms) so they're about 6 1/2 oz each and the 2 smaller Finn skeins weight 8 ounces (approx 250 gms) so they're about 4 oz each. So the grand total is just over 2 lbs of fiber. It's all about a fingering weight and I'm thinking it's a prime candidate for a sweater (eventually) or maybe a woven poncho or jacket (I can daydream can't I?).
Since this project took pretty much all my August spinning time I'm hesitating to dive into the Alpaca/Rambo x Merino rolls I have sitting here. I'm sort of itching to do a bit of color spinning before I settle into another long haul of natural fiber - more on that later!
And about the weaving - it's still on the back burner. I don't think I'm ready just yet and I certainly don't have room for a full blown floor loom! LOL! Maybe a 24" Knitter's Loom in the Spring, who knows? There's lots of time over the winter to mull over that subject! Cheers all!
Posted by Gloria Patre at 9/8/2011 10:40 PM 
Categories: Yarn, Spinning, Fiber
Tags: finn sheep finn wool spinning fiber alpaca spinning fiber
Categories: Yarn, Spinning, Fiber
Tags: finn sheep finn wool spinning fiber alpaca spinning fiber
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