Mystery Wool Project for Bill

My used Ashford Traveller wheel was purchased from a woman in New Zealand, home of Ashford wheels.  Included with the wheel was some mystery wool: a white fleece, dark brown fleece and a small bag of what looks like angora.  She never replied to my query about the fleeces, so I'll never know exactly what they are.

I didn't know when I'd get to spinning the yarn and had no purpose for the fleeces.  However, lanolin will go rancid, so as soon as the weather permitted, I washed the fleeces.  They sat on the shelf for about 2 years before a plan came to me. 

This post is about the yarn I'm spinning for a sweater vest for Bill from the dark brown fleece. He gave me a picture of the vest he wanted - a basic button down vest, with black trim.  The inspiration came from the movie, "Call Me Bruce."  One of the characters was wearing a button down knit vest with a Stetson.

The brown mystery wool is raw fleece, which requires carding prior to spinning.  I'll take a short detour to tell you about Pam, the woman who taught me to spin.  Pam like to spin in the grease, which meant no washing.  We did drum card the fleece first.  What a dusty mess.  I recommend washing first.  I'm not sure it's possible to spin without carding.  Washed fleece is just a gnarly wad of wool. 

I wanted to make a sample skein first, so I carded as much as I could stand.  I find carding to be the most boring of the spinning tasks.  Even with my drum carder, it takes time.  I spent 2.5 hours carding and the result was 6 batts, which is about 1.5 ounces.  One bobbin's worth, as it turns out.

There is nearly a pound of fleece to card, less 10% for waste.  When I opened the box, I found the fleece was neither cleaned nor picked over.

I might go so far as to say that it wasn't skirted, except I'm not completely sure what that means and I'm just too lazy at this moment, to google it.  So if you know, feel free to 'splain it, k?

I'm thinking not skirted because there is a fair amount of very short bits of fleect that just won't card - these are less than an inch long, which, I would guess, the person shearing the sheep took another pass over the critter.

With 16 ounces of fleece, let's say 2 hours per ounce to card, and it's going to take 32 hours of carding.  This is a manual drum carder, which means I can't do anything else while I'm carding. It's also worth mentioning that carding cannot be done quickly, otherwise, more fiber is lost to waste.

The singles spun quite finely and it seemed to take forever to fill two bobbins.  In fact, it takes me 2.5 hours to spin/ply 1 ounce of lace weight yarn.  I ended up with 3.1 ounces of 2 ply yarn at 24 wraps per inch and 1700 yards per pound.  Total time to spin and ply the first two bobbins: 7.75 hours. 

Good thing Bill wants a black border, because I estimate that I will need 2000 yards of laceweight yarn for his vest.  The black with be placed along the neckline, waistband and armholes.

I make that 40 hours to spin the brown fleece, plus another 5 to spin and ply the black border yarn. It's also about 40 hours of knitting.

This project is going to take me about 107 hours to complete.  Now that my sample skein is complete, washed, and spec'd, I've started the carding.  I've decided that I will work through all the carding.  It will give me the opportunity to check the time at each stage of the project.

Happy crafting.