highlandheffalump

Tour de Fleece – a valuable lesson learned!

Since my last update I’ve done a couple more breeds but have learned a lesson I need to share.

I managed to spin the slightly greasy Romney I’d combed and it wasn’t too bad. It has quite a long staple and ended up quite thin (for me) 2 ply heavy DK.  I washed it straight after in hot water with scourer in. It’s soft and suitable next to my neck. A breed I’ll likely spin again.

Romney

The Castlemilk Moorit breed sample I’d been relucant to do anything with; the fleece clippings were unattractive and full of scurf (sheep skin flakes 🤮).  But I gave it a go. Lots of combing waste from it. It kept reminding me of Bob Ross (the late TV oil painter who made oil painting look so easy).

Castlemilk Moorit

It was similar to prepping and spinning the Blue Texel but not as enjoyable due to the skin flakes in it. The yarn when taken off my niddy noddy has sprung back to an even smaller loop than the Blue Texel did, so it’s squishy. I wonder if it being brown has put me off it.

At this point, as I had 4 clearly different coloured yarns, I set (soaked and snapped) the Zwartbles, Suffolk, Blue Texel and Castlemilk Moorit. Seeing them all hanging up on drying maiden I realised the way I measure my yarn length at the moment definitely needs to change. I usually wrap the yarn from the wheel onto my niddy noddy which has a 140cm circumference, I usually then multiply the wraps by 138cm and that’s the length I note down.

Niddy noddy

That 2cm adjustment clearly isn’t right when I see the huge difference in the loop size of the setting yarns! Wrapped around the same niddy noddy you’d think they’d be the same sized loops…but the spring back squishiness of the yarn makes it much shorter.

Z, S, BT, CM (left to right)

This has been a valuable learning experience and I realise all my breed sample lengths are wrong! Oops!

22 comments

  2. wow, that picture is so very instructive, thanks for sharing! I thought that the Zwartble had a lot of crimp, so I would have bet on it being the shortest/more elastic one, go figure!

    Also I have to ask you – where did you get that diz? It is lovely!

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      • A diz is basically something with a whole in, can be hard plastic but some people have used buttons or a shell with a hole in the centre. When the fleece is all combed on the hackle you poke a small amount of the fibre through the tiny hole. You then pull the fibre through the hole working your way along the hackle and it magically turns your combed fleece into one long continuous length of fibre!

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  4. I knew there was a good reason why I didn’t want to fall down the spinning hole 😁 Nearest I’ve been is sorting samples of tops for felting when I did a Fiona Duthie course 11 years ago. 🤪

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    • Oh I’m such a numpty, honestly I’ve been spinning for I think 6 or 7 years how could I have only just realised 🤦‍♀️ I’ve met a lot of friends through spinning so I’m glad I found it, but that then led to weaving and dyeing too. These hobbies snowball.

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  5. Always good things to know, thank you for that insight. Making sure I spin enough for a project is important and if it doesn’t have as much yardage as I thought on my niddy noddy and I don’t have enough yardage for the project, I would be disappointed. I have been thinking about getting a yardage measuring thing that you run the yarn through as you wind it into a ball. Might be nice :).

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    • I guess I’ve never actually spun for a specific item so length has never been important. A lot went into my Nightshift shawl and ranged from lace weight to Bulky but it looks good and used up lots. If I ever actually spin for a jumper I’m going to have to measure better . I may suggest our Guild buys one that people could hire as they are expensive

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      • There’s actually one by dreamingrobots dot com

        It’s just called yarn counter, it’s $65. I bought the EEW 6 electric spinning wheel he makes for my son (it’s a very modest price for an electric spinning wheel too) and he is enjoying it. Might want to check it out, his products seem to work very well. He makes them.

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      • Yeah I have their EEW nano 2 that I take to Guild meetings and spinning group. I just don’t think I can justify a yarn counter expense at the moment. Maybe it’ll go on a Christmas list in future. 😃

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  6. I have to say I’ve never thought of how the length changes after washing or springing back from the niddy noddy (I read a lot of spinning books when I was starting out and definitely don’t remember it being mentioned there)! Most of my yarn gets spun fleece by fleece so skeins coming off the niddy noddy generally look the same aside from art yarn which I don’t really bother about measuring. I came across a little vintage yardage counter last year that I’m trying to get working in time to measure my TDF skeins this year, so perhaps I’ll have to do a comparison of length measurement…

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    • I don’t remember reading it before and in cases where I’ve washed things they’ve usually been the same fibre. Like when I washed all the baby camel and silk advent. I only have 1 more breed to go! Then a lot of setting yarns and maybe re-measuring them…or maybe not worrying about it. We shall see.

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