The Tradition
Day 14 is called Misa de Gallo and the tradition comes from Spain and translates as Roosters Mass. The Festival of the Rooster has a few origin stories, the one we like tells of how they (we're not sure who they are!) were trying to work out when to have a mass to celebrate the birth of Jesus; it was hard to come up with an agreeable time so they settled on "when the cock crows".
The Fibre
The actual fibre content is 50% Corriedale (Amber & Crimson), 35% Manx Loagthan (natural), 15% Bambo (Ella). For this blend we've looked at a traditional barnyard cockerel and tried to pull as many colours as we can into this. I don't think we've done a bad job. The base of this is brown, like many chickens are and this brown is Manx Loaghtan which originally comes form the Isle of Man, they're always brown and they have four horns, two at the top and two down below. Quite a short staple but it is a remarkably soft fibre for something that you'd find from our shores. The rest of the fibres in here are Corriedale because we really didn't want to put Merino in with this, we wanted something that would be similar in handle to the Manx and we've also put a little bit of bamboo in here just to get that sheen that you see on the rooster tail feathers and if you look at a strutting rooster in the sunlight you will see all of these colours in this blend. For spinning, what I would probably do is split it along the length and do a nice loose spin to make sure I'm not muddying all the shades up. This is a nice springy versatile blend with a good amount of colours in and every time you spin it it will go differently. If you spin from the fold or if you spin from the lines (down the length).
My Thoughts
The colours are interesting, I didn't get excited or squeal at this one or anything, but I don't not like it. This isn't soft and squishy or luxurious but it is a hardworking kind of fibre blend that would make great winter accessories like hat, scarf and gloves. I'm not sure what I will be doing with this but I could maybe find some similar fibres and similar colours in my stash and make this braid go a little further.
The information that has been printed on the bags is not always correct and there are no fibre content percentages, these have been provided on the chat boards. The percentages that they gave on the chat boards seem to be correct, yay!
What I have done with my bags is to write the actual fibre content on the bag using a gold gel pen in the gap immediately below the printed details, pretty much the only thing that will show up on black are the metallic gel pens. This is why I have not taken "new" photos of the bags.
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