Same fleece, new skein

Early this year, I obtained a handful of fleece from an indeterminate breed of sheep, which was lovely to work with. It was beautifully fine, and soft, and a joy to touch. I combed every lock carefully, keeping them all aligned, and spun it all on my spindle from the cut end. Of course, it had to be very fine!

I like good texture when I use a yarn for knitting, so I spun them with a lot of twist. You can see what happened when I plied the yarns! But they came out very nice when I washed the skeins. So it was all well in the end.

However, while working with the fleece, I kept thinking that I would like to spin a soft yarn too, just for comparison, and to see if I can do it. So I also combed the locks, and spun it true worsted as before on the spindle. The spindle kept falling to the floor because I didn't have enough twist in the yarns! It was a delicate operation to put in just enough to hold together and not much more. I had to concentrate to hard!

The plying was not much better. Because you lost about half the twist when plying, the singles would come apart very often, so I had to splice them together many times. I wanted to use up all the singles in the skein, so I made it as big as possible. The singles also had to be aligned, so there is a definite direction to the yarn. I wonder how I should knit it?

Here is a pic of my finished skein, with a penny for comparison. I do like this yarn, it is nice and soft, and looks like a yarn. I think it would be nice for next-to-skin wear... maybe a scarf or shawl of some kind. That will be determined later.

I want to wish you all the very warmest of Christmases, and much happiness (and good knitting) in the New Year. It must have been the end of an age last week, so we are now starting something new.Let's all have renewed energy, and new outlooks on life. It does get better!