Through thick and thin

Thick and thin yarn, that is. I have spun four skeins of yarn so far this month as part of the Tour de Fleece. Two are heavy laceweight and the other two are chunky! I've enjoyed the spinning and learned some interesting things along the way.

This is the heavy lace and is a gorgeous merino/silk blend. My first non-Corriedale yarn, and I have about another 80g of fibre left to spin. It's so soft, very slick to draft, but the very thin yarn takes a lot of twist to hold together. I also found out that it's slightly sticky as a single ply. I tried using the Andean plying bracelet technique to make a 2-ply yarn, trying to avoid winding two separate bobbins. It wasn't a complete disaster but I won't be doing that again for a long length of this fibre type. I thought I was going to cut off the circulation to my middle finger permanently winding it, and then the slight stickiness of the fibre meant a lot of tangling as I tried to unravel the bracelet and I lost a fair amount of the singles to knots and felting. Annoying, to have so carefully spun all that yarn, only to have to throw the bird's nest of tangles in the bin.

At the other end of the scale, I've also spun this chunky yarn.

My first 3-ply, this is Corriedale fibre, spun to roughly a fingering weight singles and then chain-plied. The chain-plying was something else I learned during the Tour de Fleece and I'll definitely use that technique again. It's quick, easy, and produces a gorgeously squishy yarn. It is a little over-twisted in places, but I prefer the tighter twisted yarns rather than an undertwisted one.

​So here is my total TdF achievement.

I have more of both fibres still to spin. Ultimately I plan to make a shawl from the red, and a hat (and mitts if there's enough yarn) from the grey. It's likely to be a while before I get enough yarn made for either of those projects yet but watch this space!