Fall showers bring May flowers?

After a long period of very dry conditions here in Pennsylvania, we have had some much-needed rain during the past week. Some of it has been slow and drizzly, some heavy. It has kept me inside finishing up some projects – including the May 2016 Sheepspot Breed School shipment of Targhee in colorway “May Flowers.” You may remember that I started spinning this lovely top on a spindle:

Well, that didn’t really stick. First off, I had abdominal surgery, which meant I could not hold my arm up to spin on a spindle. But it also just didn’t feel right. I wonder if the weight of the spindle was wrong. Maybe too light? It didn’t seem to keep spinning for long. So I looked at the pile of lovely fiber that was left…

…and ripped it into pieces. Boy 2 and I sorted it by color and arranged it in sort of a gradient:

I started spinning with the blues and here are some shots of the singles bobbin along the way. You can see that I tried to spin quite fine, knowing I was going to make a 3-ply yarn.

Then I chain-plied it to preserve the color progression. I had a little trouble in the beginning with the single breaking (AGAIN) so I stopped to regroup. I looked at some photos and videos online, and made a slight adjustment in my technique. Then things went better.

And finally, I have this skein. It weighs only 90 grams (some of it is still on the spindle) and is 352 yards – OF THREE-PLY YARN. This is perhaps the finest yarn I have ever spun and it pleases me.

Now I am all caught up on my Sheepspot Fiber Club fiber. I know we’re getting another shipment very soon. Sasha sent some sneak peeks of the colorways and they are GORGEOUS…but I have no idea what the breed is. Some things must remain a mystery before the mail arrives.

Dyeing a very rare breed for the fiber club! #ilovemyjob

A photo posted by Breed-specific yarns + fibers (@sheepspot) on Sep 22, 2016 at 6:11pm PDT