Days 6-9

Wow, I'm actually spinning every day! I'm pretty impressed with myself for this one. Where were we last time? I believe I had just started spinning up the red Cormo. On Thursday I finished up the singles.

I really wasn't too confident about this one when I finished the bobbin. The singles weren't as even as I would have liked and I really wasn't sure what the finished yarn was going to look like.  Since I only had an ounce of this particular batch, I figured it would make a great test yarn. I decided to navajo-ply the singles because it's easy, to be perfectly honest. I didn't want to make an andean plying bracelet (aka a tourniquet for my middle finger) and I thought keeping the colors together would be nice.

And indeed it was.

That's the pre-wash shot. This one turned out far nicer than I had expected. And here's the post-bath pic:

Look at that bloom! (And the color difference is due entirely to taking pictures at different times of the day, the yarn didn't bleed at all.)

I suppose I should have looked up the Cormo section in my new book before I started spinning. This particular breed is a recent development, begun by breeding Corriedale with Merino (hence the name), with a focus on producing consistent fleeces. Did you know that true Cormo sheep have fleeces whose fibers don't vary by more than 2 microns from the average fiber width of the fleece? That sort of consistency is amazing. The fibers have a fine crimp and, as I discovered and the book reminded me, bloom quite a bit when washed.

This was such a fun transformation that I had to start spinning up my second batch of Cormo next. Saturday I got the bobbin going.

And today I finished the first half of the bump. I'm shooting for a lace-weight (ish). We'll see what happens after it hits the water.

Speaking of giving yarn a bath, the Polwarth got a little soak to set the twist (err, wash the drool off).

The drool didn't stay off for long, though.