#any jacob fleece is enjoyable to me but the lambswool is always nice and soft

[milkweedman]

TDF DAYS 5 & 6 (July 3 & 4)

On day 5 I combed and spun some of the Jacob lambswool.

I didn't take a picture of it in progress apparently, but I did take some notes.

This lambswool has a lot of dandruff and potentially a little scurf. I'm not very familiar with scurf but there were a few sections where the flakes were much bigger, ragged, and more tenacious than the rest. Sounds like scurf to me. The combs were able to remove the majority of it, but I think it might need an extra pass or two to get fully clean. Otherwise, it was very pleasant and felt both strong and soft.

On day 6 I carded a rolag from the same fleece and spun that.

It was a very pretty rolag.

The carded wool caused more problems with scurf, if that is what it was. The cards didn't remove them and also left a fair amount of vm in.

With this fiber, it kind of needs to be spun finely because of the dandruff already--it will only come out as you draft it finely. So the vm doesn't matter that much, because those largely fall out at the same time.

I spun today's batch on the wheel, which was probably too much for me given how much my knees hurt lol. I also wasn't really able to add enough twist because I struggle so much with treadling. It only got enough twist right at the end when I was desperate to finish it and started treadling as hard as I could. I definitely couldn't sustain that though. I think I might need a flyer with a smaller whorl so I can get drive ratio to work in my favor. Augh. Anyway:

Look at them ! I love them, this fleece is going to make such nice yarn. I'd love to do a sweater tbh. And a shawl. And maybe a hat. Its so soft.

Comparisons between the two: the combed wool has much more twist, maybe slightly overtwisted but still next to skin soft. Very beautiful and crisp looking. Also much much more dense. More even.

(These pics are post steam blocking btw.) The carded wool is very undertwisted. I will need to do another test on supported spindles to get it right, I think. But even so, it's a beautiful yarn. Very very soft, and I love the barberpoling. Much more slubby. Much more fuzzy.

Anyway, that's another good set of tests. I've been jumping from fleece to fleece a lot and will probably keep doing so... so I may come back to the supported spin later. We'll see.