Spinning yarn for Sweaters

When the Tour de Fleece (June 29-July 21) was going on my personal challenge was to spin 2 pounds of Jacob fiber for a sweater for one of the boys.   As I spun I decided to ply the Jacob, not with itself, (as I had planned) but with some grey Romney that I also had.  So the project went from 2 pounds to over 4 pounds of fiber.

Jacob singles

 The Jacob was full, absolutely full of grass and burrs so I had to spin all of it out on the porch.  It was all completed during the T de F period.

Romney singles

The Romney was so much more fun to spin having much less vegetable matter in the roving.  It did have considerable spinning oil in it which left black grease on my fingers but washing solves that.

Plied Jacob/Romney

After spinning 3 bobbins of the Jacob I spun a bobbin of Romney and plied it because I was anxious to see what it looked like.  It has more brown than I really wanted but I do like it and it will make a very masculine, rustic looking sweater.

After 3 skeins of plying the flyer on the Roberta broke and plying came to a halt, so I finished spinning the Romney, (the Jacob was finished by this time, and wound plying balls with the Jacob and Romney together.

Plying balls 1 and 2

 There are 4 "cakes" of plying balls, 3 large skeins of plied yarn and one small skein (that is when the flyer broke) which I washed and hung.

There is a little Jacob left on the toilet paper tube that is still a single, if I run out of yarn I can ply it to some Romney (have quite a bit left) but I don't think I will need to.  That is a lot of yarn.  Once I get it all plied and washed I will measure the skeins again and find out just how much.

Plying balls 3 and 4

Jacob Romney as of today