I could burst

I'll try not to, but I could.

I made yarn from raw fleece! Skeinlets of trial run amounts, yes, but YARN!

Now, Peter Teal would doubtlessly say something about how this really is unskilled labor and a child could do it and yaddayadda.

Screw it. I grin like a fool every time I look at my little skeinlets and I'm not going to hide that.

So! Here's how it went.

First, raw fleece got a bath. A painstaking process since I'm keeping lock formation for combing. 

The washing process went undocumented (this time) so our first photo is of the gray Romney drying on a mesh sweater rack. Exciting, no?

Next phase:

Combs. I borrowed these from Margaret and am working on getting a hang of combing before I buy my own set. So far, I'm really enjoying it. After an evening of work, my arm is tired, but the fluffy wool that comes off these combs is so inspiring that it keeps me combing. Let's hope that carries through the mumblemumble pounds of fleece I need to comb.

The fleece comes off the combs like this! FLOOF!!! This is a loooong piece of sliver pulled off through a diz and then rolled up into a handy ball.

I made three of them, all Romney. The white one is from a white fleece, but the two colored ones come from the same grey fleece.

Spinning from these floofballs was DREAMY. I loved the feel - the fluff, the structure, the luster of the singles (undocumented). And when finished?

Yarn!

The glow is from the sun setting, but this really is lustrous yarn.  I've been spinning worsted pretty strictly for this project, and I LOVE the result. The white yarn is veeery close to next-to-skin soft, but also has a great sturdy feel to it.  The grays will be outwear only fibers - this fleece was definitely a coarser grade than the white, but I think they will be abfab in a multicolor natural cardigan (the eventual goal). 

Next up will be a border leicester skeinlet!