If You Want To Get All Technical About It

With enough cute corgi pictures to keep it interesting ;-).  And some stats at the end that will probably surprise you.

Even 20 looks overwhelmed with trying to decide how to decide which singles to ply to which to get the most evenly matched skeins in the end. 

Here is what we did:

We re-weighed each finished ball.  The reason?  A big fluffy pile of wool doesn't necessarily weigh the same as a compressed ball of wool.  I used my "science" scale to get really fussy technical.

I then put each ball in a water pitcher (so it wouldn't bounce all around the room) and pulling from the outside of the ball carefully wound it into a two yard skein.

Noted yardage.  I love, love, love having a counter on my skein winder*.  It's life changing...well spinning life at least...but spinning is life...no wait, sheeps are life... ;-)

I tied a piece of yarn to the loose end of the single.  I did that so I'd easily know which end I was supposed to start with for plying.

I also tied a couple of tight bow knots to secure the rest of the skein.  I used the bows to be easy to untie but also to help keep track of the outsides of each skein.  

Next, the Jethro cipherin'.  Skein #11 actually weighted 2.024 ounces.  It is 220 yards long.  Solve for x to get the yards per ounce, in this case 108.7.

You can do the next part by hand...or use a spreadsheet.  I like math, but love spreadsheets ;-).

I sorted the skeins by yards per ounce and then paired of skein #6 with skein #17, #4 with #9, #3 with #7...  

Making sure you have the two loose ends facing the same direction...

 ...and the bows are all facing up (if facing down then the skein is twisted)...

...and your skein winder securely anchored with a corgi butt...

...ply as usual.  My skein winder has a tensioning feature and I cranked it down pretty tight so I didn't go free wheeling off into space.  

The final results?  

First I re-weighed all the plied skeins.  The yardage of each skein could only be as long as the shortest single so there were leftovers on several of the skeins.  The leftover singles were all on the thinner side (longer yardage per ounce) so when they were plied together, the resulting two ply is significantly thinner, hence separated out at the bottom.

Ply shrinkage - when you ply the two singles, the plied yard will end up shorter than the original singles because as you twist the two yarns together, the yarns are no longer straight.  The more you twist them, the shorter the yarn will become.  

That skein with the shrinkage of 14 was either plied with more twist or I wrote something down wrong.  Just looking at the finished skein I can't see a significant difference from the others so regardless it will knit up just fine.  Likewise with the shrinkage of 4 yards.  

Verdict?  I am much, much happier with my finished yarn.  The difference between skeins now is much less than any yarns I've spun previously.  Plus I found it interesting to track all the stats.  

While I was thinking along the lines of statistics, I decided to track my time spinning and plying.  It took me 27 hours to spin the singles and 6 hours to ply them.  I didn't figure in my time cipherin'.  That would have been an embarrassing number ;-).

Want to take this a little further?  If I paid myself $10 an hour, that's $330 just for the spinning work.  It costs $10 per sheep for shearing and about an hour for skirting, so another $10 there.  $24 to wash and $27.50 for processing into roving, not counting gas and time going up to the mill and back.  

Just counting BASIC yearly costs for hay, grain, bedding, vet work...it costs us $100 to produce a fleece.  That doesn't include mortgage, insurance, utilities, fuel, buying the sheep, farm equipment... Also, spinning wheels aren't cheap.  Neither are the workshops I've traveled to take to learn to spin the yarn...

The moral of this story?  I might just print this out and hand it to the next person who can't believe I can't sell them a hand spun and hand knit sweater.  That's $501.50 Just. For. The. Yarn.  Figure in the weeks I spent knitting the Muffin sweater?  Even if it wasn't Muffin...it would be priceless.

*     *     *     *     *

*My skein winder is from Nistock Farms.  Even if they weren't good friends of ours, I would say this is the very best skein winder I have ever used.  It's solid and stable, easy to use winding on or off and being able to easily count yardage is...life changing ;-).

The 2019 Tour de Fleece

Mini Maisie and Big Maisie did a great job cheerleading and occasionally threatening the My Favorite Sheep team this year.  I loved seeing posts from people reporting in to that affect :-D.  A little power in the wrong hands - I made the mistake of letting her come out into the aisleway for a private Cheerio party one night...and have been fighting that battle every night since :-o.

I got my whole 2 1/2 pounds finished.  The last six ounces were a bit of a slog mentally, but it's summer and most everything is a slog mentally right now.  All in all it was a challenging but fun spin.

I liked my 18 two ounce bundles plan.  That was a pretty do-able daily amount of spinning and a couple days I was able to spin two and catch up from days I didn't get as much done as I planned.  The other benefit was I knew when I plied two balls together they would still easily fit on my bobbins.

This has become my basic plan any time I spin a large amount of yarn.  I spin each bundle, trying hard to match the thickness and twist of each to the next to the next...  That never happens.  Even with a measuring card and sampling, I never keep consistent throughout :-/.

In the past I've wound off each ply into a ball and marked the order number.  Theoretically the practice is ply the first with the last, the second to the second from the last...  I can't even get that consistent so I've tried to eyeball it and match it accordingly.  

That plan doesn't work super well for me either because after it's in a ball I can only see the outer wraps of yarn.  What's inside could be totally different.  Yeah...  I got popped by that on a couple of the Muffin skeins and ended up with several skeins that were thicker than the others.  

I over thought that came up with a plan to counteract that...and it worked!  This is my most consistent spinning to date.  

Washed and drying - my favorite part of spinning.

1,850 yard of worsted weight yarn, skeined up and ready to become a sweater.

Exactly what I wanted :-D. 

Golden Oldies

My original paragraph started by stating "Renny is the youngest sheep in the Golden Oldies group...", but I wanted to make sure about Rebecca Boone and then started checking everyone and, yikes, time has flown.  

PPPP is 14, Ewen is 12, Billy Belly is 14, Rebecca Boone is 11, Woolliam is 11.  At 10, Renny is not the youngest sheep.  That would be B. Willard, who is just 9.

(!)

Ewen McTeagle.  It seems like just yesterday you were terrorizing the cat food on the back porch.

There's a new puzzle :-).

On The Subject Of Names

Several years ago (!) when Baaxter was a baby, it took forever to come up with his name.  A name that suited him and suited us and he could wear (or we could wear out ;-) for years to come.  In the interim I called him Lamby Lamby, which is what I call all lambs.  

Now, years later (!), if I'm trying to get his attention and he's not responding to Baaxter or Baby B, I quietly say Lamby Lamby and he immediately turns his head.  This has also been confusing for him with subsequent bottle lambs who I inevitably call Lamby Lamby in front of him.  Poor Baby B...

I should never be put in charge of names (Saint Tim comes up with all the good ones ;-).  While Big Moose is a name he can wear (and we can wear out...and already are :-o), Mini Moose...poor Mini Moose...  I think he's already learned Mini Moose and I'm not sure we could change it even if we came up with something perfect.  Poor Mini Moose...

He does seem to recognize the name Cute Lamby...but that might be confusing with subsequent lambs... ;-)

Two new puzzles :-).

Enjoy!

Sunny, Smiley...Cheeto...?

I wish I'd never called this pretty ewe "Cheeto".  It was cute nickname at the time...but surely we can come up with something better?  Help!

*      *      *      *      *

I first met "Cheeto" back in 2014 apparently.  I recently stumbled across an old photo of her in my sheep files.  She was snuggled up with a cute white ewe lamb and I'm wondering if she was one of the early Lamb Camp Calendar models?  I'm not sure why it was in a random folder with no similar pictures around her though.  I honestly think it was destiny.

The first time I actually remember meeting her was early last spring.  That morning she was just another ewe I was watching in the lambing field.  She was resting out in the field, legs crossed in front of her, and I thought she was cute...so I took her picture.  

Later that day and into the evening, every time I turned around I'd see her looking at me.  Sometimes standing right beside me.  "Hello there! Would you like to take my picture again?" This went on for a couple of weeks until she lambed...and I took pictures of her and her pretty lambs.

This spring she picked up right where she left off last year.  I'd be crouched down helping a lamb or taking a picture and I'd turn around and she'd be standing right next to me.  "Hi there!" It never failed to make me smile :-).  

She had two beautiful lambs this year, Big Moose and a sister who is staying at Final Frontier Farm as a replacement ewe.  She probably could have lambed one more year, but she has an arthritic knee and I wanted to retire her here...so I could see her smiley face every day. 

I don't know why we pick the friends we do or why they pick us.  I'm just glad we're friends.

"Hi there!"

"Would you like to take my picture?"

One of these is a new puzzle :-).

Enjoy!