Shrinkage

So here's the tough thing about spinning some large portion of a fleece-- in my case it's half of this Merino fleece Jenny Jo and I split at Maryland Sheep and Wool last year. It is a whole lot of the same color. And although it's a lovely natural color, it sure does have me wishing Emma the sheep had been born teal or fuchsia.

I divided it all up by weight into what I thought would be one third of a bobbinsworth (boy was I wrong) and put them in this fun container.



That's alotta brown/grey.

But my best hope for actually getting all the fleece spun was to power through. I spun to the exclusion of all my other spinning devices, rocking out to audiobooks and podcasts, and just getting it done.

Here's when I was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.



And here's what I ended up with. It's a traditional 3 ply except for the tiny skein which is chain-plied from leftovers.



Now here's the interesting part. I noticed, as soon as I pulled the yarn of the niddy-noddy, that it shrank up to much less than the two yard hank the tool is designed to measure. So after the yarn was all spun and plied, I washed them, doing an alternating soapy hot/clear cold/vigorous agitation treatment to full the yarn a little, since it honestly doesn't seem like the most stable yarn I've ever spun.

Once it had dried I remeasured the distance around the skein, counted the strands, and calculated a true yardage. I got about 1,228 yds of a DK-ish weight yarn. Pretty good! Had the yarn not sprung back so dramatically? It would have been 1,842 yards. WHOA.

I lost over 600 yards to SPROIOIOIOINNNNG!

I have a few projects I am trying to finish up first, but getting started on this yarn is my next priority. I'm aiming for an honest to goodness Rhinebeck sweater this year, and given how long it takes me to finish sweaters, 6 months lead time sounds about right.