Friday 13 December 2013

Angelo - the Cotswold lamb - Part II

So, Angelo's fleece was 1950g when it arrived and after having the second cuts removed and being washed I am left with 1413g, which needs to be hand combed.  Look at the lovely pillowcase full of gorgeous locks.  Please see Part I for more info.


Now to the combs.  With this fleece I made sure that I loaded the combs up with the cut end on the comb and the tip hanging down like it was on the sheep.


As you can see the tips are still a bit tight and a bit mucky but the combs should get these loosened and opened up.  The photo on the right I think looks like Santa's beard.


Slowly turning locks into fluff...


We have fluff.  Wow, look at the white fluff.  Beautiful!


A hand-combed nest and a small sample of spinning.  Not quite got it right but it was good to practice so I know how to adjust my spinning to this fleece and what I want to get from it.


Spinning the singles ready for plying and showing fineness with the UK 1 pence coin.


I plied the singles and skeined them up into just over 100g in each skein because they still looked a little dirty to me, something I really noticed  just as I was about to wash the second batch of 3 skeins and so I lay one of the first 3 skeins, which was all nice and clean, in amongst the yarns waiting to be washed.  As you can see from the photo on the left, there was a bit of a difference in colour.  This is down to those tips still being a little stuck together and discoloured as I combed them but its all come out in the wash.


I got 10 skeins of yarn, all around the 100g or thereabouts mark and all in the sport weight range, all absolutely beautiful and soft with high lustre.  The last photo shows them all lined up in number order, Skein 1 on the left, Skein 10 on the right.


These are going to make some fabulous wedding shawls, can't wait to get cracking on these but I have so many other things to do first.