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Thursday, October 1, 2020

Show And Tell

The prompt for today's Kentucky Wool Week photo challenge is Show and Tell, so I'm going to use this as an opportunity to show something I did over the summer and tell how I did it.  If I keep this up, I might eventually get the blog caught back up :-).

Instagram followers might remember taking a video tour of some fleeces getting ready to be shipped off to Stonehedge Fiber Mill and then seeing the following picture a few weeks later.  The project in the works is a new Lamb Camp yarn that for now I'm calling The Bottle Lamb Edition.  It will be a blend of every single bottle lamb I've ever raised.

I should say the video tour showed at least a tiny bit of wool left from every lamb...except Punkin.  I really, really wanted to include Punkin, the lamb who started it all.  While I didn't have any wool left, I did have some leftover yarn from way back when I paid someone to spin for me before I learned that I liked doing such things.  I wondered if it would be possible to un-spin some of that yarn.

In 25 words or less...yarn is really nothing more than fiber held together by twist.  You spin two singles and then you spin those two singles together to get a two ply yarn.  Without getting really complicated, that's all you really need to know to follow what I decided to try.


The first step was to un-twist the two plies.  I tried to do this as a whole skein, but it got way too messy and was headed for disaster, so I started cutting off a yard or so at a time.


I then tied it to the hook on a drop spindle and started twirling it backwards to untwist the plies.


Then I pulled the two plies away from each other.


So far, so good.


Next I tied one of the singles to the drop spindle and twirled it backwards to take out the spinning twist. 


After the twist was removed, I pulled the now unspun yarn apart into 4" pieces and lashed them all onto my hand cards and then brushed the pieces to make sure everything was loose and flowing.  The yarn had been sitting for 18 years so it was a bit compressed and felted.  

This was a Huge Job.



Crossing that last and most special name off the board?  Worth every hour.

13 comments:

Marcy said...

A labor of love!

Vandermolen said...

Love...love...love...ly

sophy0075 said...

A labor of love.

Anonymous said...

Well, well, well.......quite the unwinding. Why not eh?

karen said...

gorgeous! I have not tried to drop spindle....yet. Maybe in my future's future!

Anonymous said...

Every animal is blessed to have/had you and Sir Tim as their family.

Dee

Goatldi said...

Love this. ❤️

Linda said...

This will be a special blend indeed.

Laurie Douglass-Wilson said...

This is so touching! It shows how much you love your sheep!

Michelle said...

Doesn't surprise me at all that you would do this – and it NEEDED to be done! Part of me would love a skein of the resulting yarn, but I don't think I'd be able to bring myself to USE it, and I'm trying real hard to declutter before I die.

Far Side of Fifty said...

A labor of love for sure!! Well done!!

Deb said...

Long story, short version: you made yarn back into wool.

You are good!

Although without the story, I don't think I could have figured it out myself.

Deb

Cappy said...

How cool is that! A little of all of them! Wonder what you will make with it. A nice snugly afghan or sweater? A lacy shawl? The possibilities...

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