Skein #37: Yarn of Consistent Quality in the Applicant's Choice of Plied Design (Must Include More Than One Plying Operation)

Image 1: Fiber Sample Image 2: Yarn Skein Image 3: Yarn Detail

Fiber

Wool

Type

Mixed breed fleece

Reason for choice of this sample:

This fleece has a fine wool crimp with a down breed handle: too short to comb and too crimpy to draft an even woolen single. But it makes an incredibly lofty, fuzzy yarn. It is not from a fiber flock.

Source

Forest Home Farms shearing day — San Ramon, California

Preparation for spinning

Scoured, flicked, drum carded and pulled into sliver.

Equipment Used

Dog brush, drum carder, flyer spinning wheel, large drop spindle.

Type of spinning

Unsupported long draw

Direction of Twist

Z/S/Z

Number of plies

16

Finishing

Lightly felted and blocked

Suggested uses

This yarn is designed for knitting on large needles, for a weekend sweater project without the heft of typical commercial yarns. The already fulled yarn is easier to wash later in a garment. It could also be used for crochet or woven blankets.

Notes

Maximum 54 points

Examiner 1: 54

Examiner 2: 54

Examiner 1 noted that the yarn on the wpi card had the plying twist removed. I tried to not do that while I was winding the card, but there just isn't much twist in that final plying to begin with. In fact, there isn't much twist in this whole thing, the yarn is held together more by felting than anything else. As for spinning technique, this is about as woolen as you can get.

I like this yarn, even if working with short, nasty mystery fleece was a big pain. The singles were fast to spin and I am amused by the idea of huge yarn like the commercial stuff but one that is far easier to wear. I still wouldn't put one stitch per cm over my big rear-end, but at least it doesn't weigh a ton on top of it.

I was guessing that "more than one plying operation" would assume a novelty structure, but then there was the "consistent quality" part. I've seen people who consider cabled yarns a novelty technique, but I don't — it's just another way of making yarn, one that happens to be particularly stable and durable. And I think of "consistent" to be even, which is usually not the point of a novelty yarn. So I came up with this. It also used up a large quantity of free (and worth every penny) fiber.