A nice surprise

While Liz and I were in the basement yesterday, I refound some fleeces that I had forgotten were there. The mystery fleece on yesterday's post, for example, is what I called "Mark's fleece" as Mark picked it out in the fleece sale tent at the NYS&WF last October. It's a Cotswold, thus the scratchy nature.

Another fleece that I forgot was there had a piece of paper in it that said "Blackie-Lincoln/Coopworth Lamb". It looked ok, it was a pretty nearly black, but no big deal. Well, today while I was waiting for the washer to fill to wash another fleece to dye, I started carding some of Blackie. Talk about "poofy", the fiber length was short, there were fly away fibers everywhere, and I was thinking it wasn't going to be any fun. When I went to take the batt off the carder, it didn't come off as a batt either, it had to be coaxed out of the tines of the carder with my doffer brush. What a mess. But I decided since it was so very soft to do a sample skein just to see how it would turn out. It was like spinning yak, very short and kind of a "pull it out of the bag and spin", fibers in every direction. But this stuff spun up nicely, albeit not as easily as roving or off a nicely carded batt.

What a surprise, the color is really nice too, and it's not too scratchy, perfect for a hat! I just downloaded a free fair isles pattern, it might someday become part of that, honestly I haven't decided yet. I have too many UFO's right now to worry about another one!

Tomorrow I have to get back to working on my dyed fleeces to take to the processor. I don't think I'm going to be getting much personal knitting or spinning done.