Monday, July 4, 2011

tdf day 3

..and I'm losing my mind.
I posted this last night but apparently I forgot to hit save.

Black Welsh plied

I love naturally colored wool and this is a deep deep black. Even the tips were black.
I bought 4oz of raw wool from the Spinning Loft, washed it up, and hand carded it into rolags. The VM fell out of it very easily.

The little white fibers you see among the Black Welsh are from my stupid idea to wash black and white wool together. I have at least 20- 4ounce samples of wool so to save time, and my brain, I washed a bag of black in the same sink as a bag of white so I could easily tell them apart. As you can see, that is not a good idea. I was picking long white fibers out of this stuff all the way through.


This stuff sheds like mad. It's been very hot and humid here and I had little bits of Black Welsh all over my hands, arm, lap, clothes, floor.... It got everywhere. It was like getting a hair cut and not washing the little cut bits off your neck. Only I had them stuck all over me. If you're going to try to spin this fiber do it in the winter or at least in air conditioning.




I spun 2 singles on spindles and then plied them. I ended up with roughly 150 yards of sport weight yarn.

I picked this fiber as my first raw to yarn sample for the Spinner's Study because of it's color. I love naturally colored fibers and was instantly drawn to this one because it was such a uniformly jet black. After spinning it I'm not so fond of it. I still love the color, but the wool isn't all that fun to work with (see shedding), and the finished product is course and scratchy. This yarn could be used for rug or needle point but I certainly wouldn't want a pair of mittens made from it.

Watched: a show on Tom Petty, a Walton's marathon, Silence of the Lambs, Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog (we love that movie in this house), and Shutter Island.

eta: Black Welsh yarn picks up any and all stray cat hairs, passing dust, and random dust bunnies like the plague.