#ouessant

Tour de Fleece Day 1!

This Ouessant is FILTHY I tell you!

Given that it's from a sheep that wasn't shorn for its wool quality, and they probably fished it out of the compost heap after I asked, I think it's ok. I also suspect I got some of the ass-end of the fleece because.... somehow it smells of pee a bit. AND YOU GUYS THIS THING IS SO GREASY I've never seen something like it before. BUT I'm not here to complain!

Got to sort out the worst VM and the second cuts this morning, and now doing the first cold soak with half of it. In an hour I'll go check how it fares and whether it needs a second cold rinse to get all the gunk out, and then off to a warm one. If I am lucky, tomorrow I can try and comb out the rest of the VM..? And Monday off to the drum carder.

Pendant le long week-end de l'Ascension, je suis allé visiter mon copain Christian à Brest (Bretagne). Il y avait aussi Brigitte et Sylviane (Nous quatre avions été collègues au collège d'Escaudain).

Left: the comb for palm combing. This is just a cheap plastic hair comb--the only crucial thing that I'm aware of so far is that the tines need to be evenly spaced (so not one of those graded combs that are fine at one end) and not too close together.

Right: my hand combs. These are just standard two row combs, nothing special or particular about them.

The fibers, from left to right:

1. Ouessant. Stand in for your average fairly fine medium length wool.

2. Cormo (looks all weird bc it's been dyed with baking soda as a modifier, which tends to clump it. Not felted). Very short stapled wool, very fine.

3. Jacob. This particular Jacob is a little greasy and quite strong. Stand in for any coarse wool.

4. Rambouillet. Very fine, but also tons of fine vm. Want to see if I can get any of that out--it's the kind that's too fine to pick out by hand, so.

I already know the palm comb can produce a somewhat worsted prep--but I never did figure out how to spin true worsted yarn on spindles of any kind, and can only do it on my wheel. So I'm going to try spinning all three preps on my wheel into a worsted yarn, and see how they compare.

I also want to figure out a little bit more about speed--I think the palm combs are slightly faster, so if they're almost as good a prep, that would be a good advantage !

"Lorsqu'entre deux nuages, apparaît la lumière et qu'explose le vert éclatant des prairies, faisant suinter les arbres de perles de pluie et ruisseler les pentes imbibées de la terre, je veux croire aux légendes teintées de magie qui parlent de chaleur et de robes légères..."

Aurélie Prouff extrait de: "Où vivent les filles de la pluie..."