So on Sunday I got back into the challenge by carding about half of the washed fleece. I ended up with 12 big fluffy batts, totally over 10 oz. Here's a photo:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTC4X2OUOlGSaIoTI1P1sqMKvvJF0w8o80brVA8sfG6dOft8rSK6N9Cpk3qRy5FW42JMIVzi3gvt4B5vr6j2Du6qB-uvLpcKl6RS5L39Dx3D-Olu_5gt-EXPJU-sLlKkLWzgDhEg/s320/maineisland-batts.jpg)
Since I am working this fleece up for the breed notebook, I went ahead and combed a 1/4 oz of it to test spin. I shouldn't have done that, if you have listened to my podcasts you know I love combed top, and it was proven to me once again. There was _no_ VM in the top and the spinning was smooth and easy, since I didn't have to stop and pull out nubs and VM. I should comb the entire fleece, but if I truly want to do this over the Olympics, I need the faster processing of drum carding.
I spun up three sample skeins for the breed notebook, as well as to decide what size I wanted to spin for my Olympic challenge knitting. This is a photo of three of the skeins:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWHe-CGAto7mtNvqFF2Jxszku2p0Q12KKWaJZtI4UzjqODLdQBetZD5nH8_0x2eHqwaG0lLx8vEjw0e0nMoFfiLNqN8Les8xJ9SectuYhHvHMGRKklNpujoMzM65Ip6-KR99BMIw/s320/maine-island-skeins.jpg)
In the photo, there's an obvious difference in the color between the combed top on the far left, and the two carded samples. The combed top is whiter than the carded yarn proving once again it pulls out all the junk when you comb. It measured a 16 WPI but it doesn't look that thin in the photo. I think it may have relaxed some and bounced into a thicker yarn. The two carded skeins were done to see just how thick I could spin the yarn and still get a reasonably non slubby yarn. The answer is the middle yarn, around 9 WPI. The bulkier is just not that nice, because the slubs were not pulled out. So middle of the road yarn it will be, for the knitted project.
One other thing I did was browse through some of my knitting pattern books looking for ideas of what to knit with the yarn. Now some will be determined by just how many yards I finally end up with. I found several afghan ideas, like I originally thought about doing, but I also found two other ideas. Both are from the Folk Knitting books. One is a stole with pockets, and the other is a garter stitch vest. I like both because I could start knitting while still spinning more yarn.
But enough of all of this warm up work. It's time to get my nose to the wheel, so to speak, and get spinning.
CW
1 comment:
you are off to a good start!
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