The smell of spring is in the air...

While the northern hemisphere is about it go into cooler weather, the southern hemisphere is looking forward to some warmer weather after a winter with very variable conditions - from very light "snow", and extremely heavy rainfall with flooding in our Adelaide Hills and metropolitan areas, through to balmy days where short sleeves were necessary in place of beanies and scarves.

 

 

A couple of years ago I purchased some gorgeous fleece from Dani in Victoria who sent me some English Leicester which varies from brown/grey to chocolate brown. Finally, I've dug this out of my stash of fibre and been spinning this up. I'm very pleased with the minimal preparation required for this lovely fibre. I've really only needed to tease out with my fingers then spin. The fibre doesn't want to spin thick though, so some extra spin is required to hold the yarn together. Prior to spinning, I've attempted to sort the colours between the grey and the chocolate. I've spun up mostly the grey/brown which I'm really pleased with and plan to ply that together. Also, I'll keep some singles to ply with the chocolate later so there are essentially 3 different yarns. 1) grey/brown plied with grey/brown
2) grey/brown plied with chocolate 3) chocolate plied with chocolate.

The spin in progress. A pleasure to spin

The raw fleece (English Leicester)  

The feel of the fibre is not as soft as the merino I've been working with, but I do believe it will be perfect for socks - which requires a fibre which is harder wearing. I'm getting excited about the thought. I've not made socks before with my own handspun, so watch out for my future blogs.

I hope you enjoy reading my blogs and would be happy for you to follow and share. Thanks very much.

I must go now - listening to Sunnyboys "Happy Man" and spinning, is my happy place. :)

Until next time, take care, find your happy place and enjoy. :)