Lincoln Longwool Lamb Part I - Maroon

I bought 1kg of Lincoln Longwool Lambs fleece in July 2014 from a guy in Sleaford, Lincs, who was selling quite a few of these fleece.

It arrived in "unusual" packaging, it was inside a cereal box which was wrapped in paper.  The packaging was dry on the outside but the fleece felt really damp and the locks felt heavy.  When it first arrived it was really filthy and after taking photographs of the fleece, I weighed it at 1kg and the put the fleece into a carrier bag and left it in our laundry room, leaving the bag open for the air to get to it and dry it out.  I weighed it again about 24 hours later and it had lost 100g in weight and smelt musty but was now quite dry, as you would expect it to have arrived.

I sorted through it and threw away 112g of rubbish and then washed it as soon as my hanging drier was available - it was summer and I take advantage of washing/drying/dyeing fleece whilst its dry and warm and so its almost in constant use.  I was left with 621g of clean fleece after washing and drying it.

This fleece was then stored for a while until, on 10th April 2015, I split the fleece into 3 equal parts and dyed each lot a different colour; maroon, deep violet and purple.

The first lot, I dyed using Colour Craft All In One Easyfix dye in Maroon.  I started out with 206g of fleece and after I had combed this I was left with about 150g of nests to be spun, a yield of almost 73%

This made a Light Fingering yarn, 140g/490m that has wonderful lustre.

There are two more lots of this fleece in other colours and I can't wait to get my hands on them.