Thursday Spinning...Or Adventures In Fiber And Photography

Don't have a heart attack, but I actually did some Thursday Spinning yesterday :-o.  I had some beautiful dark gray mohair from Tombstone Livestock to inspire me and after I got some "work" spinning done, I started to "play".  

Mohair comes from Angora goats.  Angora comes from Angora rabbits.  Cotswold is often called "poor man's mohair" and that is a comparison to the goat fiber - it has a similar feel, curl and shine factor.  I enjoyed getting to try it out.

First I spun some just on its own.  Yes, it was a little slippery and needed a bit more twist to keep it together (yarn is just any sort of fiber with twist added to it to make it strong so it won't drift apart) but it was not hard to handle even on a super humid day with sweaty fingers.  Probably too much information there ;-).

Next I decided to blend it with some Jacob roving.  I'd done this once before, years ago, using Ford's silky wool.  This time I used a completely different type of Jacob wool, the finer, almost spongy "rescue fleece".  I chose that mostly because I wanted to use a white wool...and it was handy ;-).

I fed the two completely different fibers into the drum carder in layers.  This is after one pass through.  Look what happened to the mohair!  It went back to its original curly form.  Is this from carding or maybe from the humidity? 

This is after a second pass through the carder.  Much more homogenized, but not completely.  I maybe should have made a third pass, but wanted to try it like this.  

As an interesting (at least to me) aside, these first three pictures were taken on an old wooden chair positioned in front of a window in the wool house.  I put down a black cloth for the background so the fibers would stand out...and that's it.  I think that second picture especially is really neat.  Okay, back to spinning.

Keep in mind that it was awful humid even with the AC running it's little heart out.  Probably nothing would have been super fun to spin like that.  Also keep in mind that I'm a coarse wool girl and soft and spongy doesn't tend to really wow me even on a good day.  The mohair did "upgrade" that finer Jacob wool, but still, at the end of the sample I was not thrilled with my yarn.

Until I started knitting.  And the yarn I didn't especially like knit up into a beautiful swatch!

This is freshly knit and before I washed it.  Again, black cloth on chair in front of window - my new go to shooting spot I believe. 

And this is after a quick wash.  I wish you could see the fuzzy halo and feel how soft it is.  It's definitely a luxury yarn and I can see why it's a popular blend.  Thanks Audrey  :-).