Meanwhile Back In 2021...

I spun a sweater amount of Jared during the 2021 Tour de Fleece...and somehow never documented a single thing about that here on the blog.  Big J is one of my most favorite sheep of all time, but even if he wasn't, just spinning a sweater amount of yarn should have received some note.  Luckily I did take some pictures.

This is an important sweater.  I spent a couple of years trying to pick a perfect pattern.  I knew I wanted it to be big and bulky, like the sheep himself.  I wanted the yarn to reflect his substantial size, but soft comfort as well.  

As per my normal I divided out two pounds of roving into two ounce bundles and spun each bundle, wound it off into a ball, numbered it and spun the next bundle... I no longer remember why I have 17 balls and a plied skein here.  Some notes would have been helpful :-/.

After all the bundles have been spun, I weigh them with my small, super detailed scale and then rewind them into skeins and note the yardage of each.  From there they hit a spreadsheet and get paired up with another skein that best balances out any differences in thickness to hopefully have closely matching plied skeins in the end.

Possum apparently helped.  It was probably good Archie wasn't here yet as I doubt he'd have been, um,  helpful ;-).

I ended up having to borrow a wheel from a friend because my Hansen miniSpinner was not working correctly.  I like to spin singles on my Ashfold Joy and ply on a faster wheel with bigger bobbins. The Hansen has been my workhorse for many years, but this big Lendrum was a treat to use.  It's the Lancelot of spinning wheels :-D.

The finished yarn, washed and hanging out to dry.

Each skein has a tag with re-calculated yards per ounce measurements.  If there are any differences (which there sadly were a couple) I can then decide what skeins should be used where in my sweater.  I picked out the thinnest skein for the thick, doubled over collar and used the thickest for the two sleeves as they are not covered by the vest I wear most of the winter unless it's super cold.

Overall I was happy with my yarn.  It's big and bulky, soft and fuzzy - just like Jared :-).  I'm now probably 3/4 of the way through knitting my sweater.  Of course there have been the usual knitting issues that only an over over over thinker can torture everyone with.  That will be for the next post!