Merino Angora Sweater

This sweater is hand knit from yarn I spun myself. It's the first fruits of my first fleece purchase...which I bought, washed, carded, and processed almost a year ago. I've not finished the spinning of the entire fleece, but I'm very tempted to drag out the wool box today and do a bit of spinning so I can work with more yarn. Then again, I'm a realist and I don't think I quite have time for spinning right now. So just admiring the fruits of my hard work might have to suffice for today.

This little girls is getting this sweater for her birthday in a couple weeks. It's not a surprise, but she's very happy with the turn out non-the-less.

Most importantly, "it's not an itchy sweater...it's a soft sweater." Praise the Lord!

Voila, yarn!

So here's my first 350 yards (give or take), double ply, loosely spun, variegated weight, Merino/Cormo cross lamb and English Angora wool yarn.

The yarn is twisted into two hanks. The first hank is really large, and the second one is smaller, but the yarn is all about the same.

Carding and Spinning

Once I was able to find some of the wool was dry (not all of it is dry, but some of the locks on the top of the bag were dry) I didn't hesitate to start carding the wool.

This is my first experience carding sheep's wool, as well as trying my hand at blending wool fibers. So I would estimate that this blend is 70% lambs wool 30% angora...maybe? I'm just sort of putting two to three fist full of wool to each fist full of angora fiber. I know that's perhaps a bit haphazard. It's turning into a very fluffy batting.
And thus far it's spinning up nice enough. Now, I've got to decide what to knit with this. I wonder if this is soft enough for my son's sensitivities. (He doesn't like itchy wool). I might make a sweater for him. If this doesn't do the trick I don't know what would. This is angel soft!

Pre-soak the wool

My lovely wool came with washing instructions. I'm so glad too, cause I'm pretty green at this part. My first fleece ya know!

So the first step is to run out and buy some laundry bags. I dashed off to the PX where they gave me a $5 off coupon for spending 10 minutes to fill out a survey. So I got 6 bags for the price of 4!

Once home, put wool into bags.

Fill tub with warm water (and I added some euclan wool wash) and allow to soak for at least an hour...or over night.

Tomorrow we wash!

Pearl my wool

I've found the most scrumptious wool fleece, it arrived today. The most beautiful part is it's so clean, soft and fully lanolized, and I didn't have to feed or tend to the dear little lamb who produced it for me. I love my fluffy bunny, but he is stinky. I'm so glad he's partly potty trained though. He uses a littler box and helps to ease his clean up to some degree. Still, when I'm ill or super busy, and the cage needs to be cleaned, I wonder if it's all really worth it. Growing fine wool is hard work. It's a dirty job, but someone has got to do it.

Cause, yes, in the end the fluffy clouds of wool, are so worth it.

This big box is going to take a while to process, and it's a good thing too because my wheel is broken again. And we've got to take it back into town and have another new piece made for it. Yeah!

Spinning Merino

I also spin...well know that my spinning wheel is repaired I do. Oh, I think it was about two years ago someone reclined the lazy boy into my spinning wheel and broke one of the wood peices that was instramental in the operation. I wasn't really actively spinning anyhow, so the wheel has sat collecting dust for the past three years. Yes, It's really been three years since I've completed anything. I've give you one guess as to why I was too busy to sit and spin three years ago.

This weekend I spun up the rest of this purple merino wool roving, which I purchased over three years ago in hopes of spinning and knitting up into a pretty sweater for Charlotte. We all know that didn't happen, and now I'm not sure what will become of this, but either way, I'm finished with the spinning part.

It's sort of lumpy and not the finest sample of spinning ever. However, I fell back in love with spinning, and have a wonderful 3+ pound Merino/ cormo cross fleece coming my way. I'll be blending Pearl's fleece with some of the angora wool I've been collecting over the last few years. Just you wait, it's going to be the softest wooly yarn ever!