July 01, 2007

Dyeing and Spinning

Last week I received a beautiful Cormo fleece from Cormo Sheep and Wool Farm. The fleece is a beautiful variegated grey, and almost completely free of VM. IT is just a joy to work with! I really wanted to use this fleece for my Journey to a Shawl project. I spun the sample below and it was a bit heavier than I wanted. Then I broke out the dyes for more sampling!
I had some Romney/Dorset wool from Ewe and I Farm on hand, so I pulled that out to dye with the silk and angora for my shawl blend. I really like the way the blues and purples came out, and I know that I want a lot less green! But that's what sampling is for!
Here are the two batts that I carded, a base of grey Cormo, and a handful each of dyed silk and angora (I know, very exact measurements!). I didn't want to over card the blend because I really want some streaks of color in a mostly grey yarn, and it worked really well!

I spun one batt into a heavy laceweight, and the other into a light fingering weight. The Cormo makes a fantastic lace yarn, but I felt that the colors were a bit too muted, so I'll spin some plain laceweight at a later date! The fingering weight is springy and soft, and there were nice streaks of color too. Unfortunately we are having some computer issues, so I can't upload the photos of my samples! So now I need to dye the rest of my silk and angora, and wash up the rest of the fleece so that I can spin up 1200 or so yards of yarn that I'll need for my shawl. I don't have a pattern yet, but I'm sure that I'll devise one before I finish my spinning.

2 comments:

Tracy Batchelder said...

The yarn from the fleece spun up nicely. I haven't worked with a fleece yet or dyes either...all in good time.

Theresa said...

The Cormo is pretty! It came from my neck of the woods! :o) I have never felt Cormo. I love it with the bits of color.