Spinning Lena

Over the past couple of days I’ve been playing with the Border Leicester/ Blue Faced Leicester roving I brought home from the mill a few weeks back. 

I had been spinning quite a bit of Shetland because it was easy to get locally and I had, had a good experience with it, but I was up for trying a new to me breed. It truly is amazing when you look at the variety of fleece characteristics available to the handspinner and it seems almost a crime not to add variety to your repertoir.

Finding ways to work with a fleece instead of against it while designing a yarn, I’ve found “In Sheep’s Clothing,A Handspinner’s Guide To Wool” a resource I reach for often.It’s a treasure trove of information on breeds of sheep and wool characteristics. It also has very useful chapters on selecting and processing fleece to make the most of it's special qualities. I like to look at the information as a starting point and then factor in my  personal experience.

Consulting a chart from the book this is how the two breeds represented in my fleece compare.Factoring in my experience with this particular fleece, I've listed my ratings under "Lena"- the name of the sheep my fleece was harvested from. 5 would be the highest you can score in a quality.

	Blue-faced Leicester	Border Leicester	Lena
Softness	3 ½	1 ½	4
Elasticity/ Loft	2 ½	1 ½	3
Staple Length	3	4	3 ½
Luster	3	4	2 ½
Felting Property	2 ½	2	?

In working with Lena’s processed fleece what it lacked in luster was made up for in softness and loft. It is very possible though that the carding process and my drafting technique contributed to the lack of luster- not being an issue with the fleece at all.I was aiming for soft and lofty yarn here, so luster was not as important to me. I haven’t tried felting this fleece but am curious as to how mittens knitted with this yarn will full with use.

For this yarn I have over dyed the brown /grey roving with shades of teal, turquoise, pine green and indigo blue. Together these colors remind me of Black Watch plaid.

While re-carding the colors together I added in bits of recycled denim.  The result is a rustic yarn with lots of character that I’ll be calling “Up North Yarn”.  

This afternoon I’ll cast on some mittens – the perfect project to give it a trial run.