Hung For A Sheep

Day 43: The final stage in spinning wool is setting the twist, done by soaking the yarn and then hanging it to dry with weights (Gatorade bottles again) at the bottom. After an hour or two, the skeins should be advanced a little, and again in another few hours until the yarn is fully dry.

This is the wool I purchased at the Washington State Fair. I was unable to find any bags of exactly the same colour, so picked two which were close and equal in weight. I spun the dye lots separately and then plied them together, resulting in the lovely "tweedy" effect. That said, I'm going to be a little more critical when it comes to buying wool at the Fair if I do it again. One bag was good; the other was "padded" with tag ends combed out of the carders and included flecks of mylar, worthless puffs of a much softer and shorter wool, second cuts, straw and neps (tiny mats of fiber which are almost impossible to comb out). Nevertheless, I got 7.25 ounces of usable yarn from 8 ounces of stock, and the finished product is as pretty as I'd imagined it would be.