Targhee Take 2

I found another bump of yummy fiber in my closet – it turns out I bought this online in 2008, when I was a brand new spinner! I’m not sure why I didn’t try spinning it right away. Maybe I thought I wasn’t good enough yet? That happened a lot back then. (If you are a new spinner, my advice to you is: get over it. Just spin what you have - the sheep are growing more and you can get it!) Anyway, this is 4 ounces of Targhee top from Mountain Colors. Targhee is a finewool (same category as merino).

This top sat on my coffee table for a few days while we reacquainted ourselves. As I pondered it, I got a shipment of the Sheepspot Fiber Club. This month we received Teeswater, which is a longwool. I was struck by how different these two top preparations are:

They aren’t exactly the same weight (Targhee on the left is 111 grams; the Teeswater came in at 94 g), but you can see a huge difference in their mass. The Targhee is puffy; the Teeswater is smooth and slinky.

I started to spin the Targhee from the fold, but I found it was actually easier to draft longdraw. Even though it is top, it seemed doughy and not very slippery. I spun it fairly fine and here are my two finished bobbins of singles:

I wanted the colors to blend as much as possible, so I prepared the fiber in advance. First, I split the entire braid down the middle, because it was quite wide. I spun one half as it came – that’s all on one bobbin. With the next half, I split it lengthwise again into four sections before spinning – this meant the colors shifted four times as fast. On the left is a piece I spun for bobbin #1; on the right is a piece split 4x for bobbin #2:

When I prepared the fiber for bobbin #2, I mixed up the sections to distribute the color as much as possible. In other words, I did not spin those four skinny pieces in the above photo one after the other. They were interspersed among the other skinny pieces. I warned everyone in the house not to touch my fiber ottoman!!

In the end, my 2-ply skein contains 424 yards and weighs 109 grams:

It’s really soft. This simply must become something for the neck. I suppose a hat would be fine, too, but the yardage is making me think scarf or shawl.