Rough Fiber Day

I got my hands on 3 lbs of raw Suffolk x Corriedale wool for very cheap and I was so excited about it. I didn't look too closely, just fingered a couple locks and found it delightful. It was full of bounce and energy but much softer than I expected. I bought it and set it aside to wait until I had time to love it properly. I was headed up to see Jaime over the weekend so I washed it all Thursday and laid it out to dry while I was out of town. Visiting Jaime makes for a long Monday - I leave his place at around 6:30 am to get to work on time and then there's a long day (to make up for all the goofing around we do on Fridays, see? :P). I got through the day in good spirits by reminding myself what a delightful pile of fluff was waiting for me at home.

So you can imagine my sadness when I got home and started picking the wool... and discovered it was full of nepps and short cuts. Little bits and tangles that spoiled what should have been a lovely carding and spinning experience.

Here you can see some of the snarls and lumps

A hand carded rolag, full of "texture".

I tried to live in denial - I drum carded, I hand carded, I combed... If I worked really, really hard and picked out all the nepps I could spin a lovely single... but finally I had to stop and face facts. Some people would really love this sort of "texture" for their spinning, people who like to make artsy yarns. But I'm not one of those people (yet) and the sheer amount of time it would take to make this into something I want to spin, well. You have to put a value on your own time, right? And I've decided my time is worth more than what I spent on this fleece. Now I just have to force myself to get rid of it.

So after all that brouhaha I was in a bit of a mood. I should have had a glass of wine and gone to bed early, and I totally tried to. But after an hour of grumpy tossing and turning I finally got up, returned to the craft room, and really tackled my drum carder.

I picked three colours, based on how they suited my mood and wound up with these delightful puni style rolags:

I made them with merino wool, a little bit of bamboo, and a tiny, tiny bit of firestar in the purple for sparkle. They are so soft and the texture changes subtly as you run through the colours making them a tactile joy to spin.

It perked me right back up.