Spinning Friday: August 14, 2015

This week, I decided to dig into deep deep stash and pulled out a set of batts from a club from 2009.  These are from Northwoods Dye Works, and are themed on the bald eagle.  Each 1-oz batt (total of 3 oz) was carded with superfine merino wool in a dark brown with light blue-gray silk noil and then a layer of natural (cream-colored) alpaca.

I really had a hard time deciding what to do with these.  I didn't want to get a barberpole-y yarn and I worried with the really high contrast between the 2 fibers, that's what I'd get.  I had thought about recarding, but then I worried the silk noil was going to cause neps with all the other superfine fibers - and honestly... handcarding these didn't sound like a whole lot of fun.  So I opted to split the batts and pulled off the alpaca section and separated the two colors.

I spun both of the fibers (I had 1.9 oz of the brown and 1 oz of the white) as a 2-ply fingering weight, semi-woolen technique.   Here's the brown with the silk noil.

And the white alpaca.

Technical Specs:
Fiber: Three 1-oz batts from Northwoods Dye Works (club fiber from 2009) with 55% wool, 40% alpaca, 5% silk.
Ply: 2-ply.
Weight: Fingering weight.
Yardage/Oz:  154 yards/1.9 oz of brown and 101 yards/1 oz of white.

The yarn is super soft and very drapey.  Since I don't have a ton of yardage from it, I'm thinking about knitting a simple striped cowl, like this one, to try to make the most of what I do have.

Up next week is a club fiber from the Wooly Wonka Mythical Creatures club: Dryad.