Monday, May 16, 2011

A Hair of the Dog

Just quickly
[ because Blogger has been temperamental, and also it's past time for me to jump in the shower and do all those things associated with getting on with my day ]


this is 220 metres of pale blue-grey alpaca from the back room at BWM with some of last week's wonderful white [obviously] Samoyed. This was seasoned with a hint of Wendy Dennis' dark brown raw Polwarth fleece.
Not the easiest mix to work with, but my fondness for working with alpaca stood me in good stead with the puppy dawg wool which has a similar feel and 'handleability' to the alpaca.

The whole lot was lightly drum carded, before spinning on my Sheridan Celtic

... initially the Celtic and I were having some 'issues' but a clean-and-oil in all the right places worked wonders for her 'tude. Shouldn't be surprised I guess. A good oiling does me the world of good :)
Anyway, the resultant yarn varies quite a bit in weight, mainly dependant on whether it was the stuff I spun on Saturday night, before I figured out the problems with the wheel, or yesterday's lot.
Some of it is almost an aran/worsted, most is about what we Aussies would call 8ply [ DK or Sport ] and some of it is about sock/4ply.

Yarn with character !!

and now I'm late ... buggerit

EDITED TO ADD:

Okay so here are the thoughts that occurred after I pushed 'publish':

The yarn is a 2ply construction. Only one of those plies is the alpaca/samoyed/polwarth mix and the other is the carded alpaca. You can hardly see the dark brown wool but it has added a certain little extra something.
The magnificent animals whose wool it is are the Aussie Champion 'Taj' and his mum 'Grace'. If you'd like to find out more about them, you'll find the Snowbrook Samoyeds here

4 comments:

Lynne said...

Or "art yarn"!

Was it soft to work with (obviously the alpaca was, I meant the Samoyed)?

Congratulations on a job well done.

Dorothy said...

Interesting looking yarn - sounds lovely. You may not be late after all - have a look at the clock on your blog - to me it looks as if its still on daylight saving time!!! Enjoy your day.

catsmum said...

yes Ms Dorothy a friend pointed out a few days ago that the clock hadn't updated [ it's supposed to ]
when i went into the site to change it thinfs just got too complicated so it's staying as is for the time being
and Lynnie m'love, yes it was soft to spin, although the resultant yarn not quite so much.

colleen said...

Looks lovely and soft.