Silver Romney, a mission

So, you guys know by now that I'll be going to Fiber Market Day at the end of the month. It's on March 25th. And that I'll be sharing a booth with a couple friends while I'm down there. That was the actual launching point to my dream of providing handspun yarn, fiber, and other fiber notions kinds of things.

Now I'm just making sure that I have things to bring down there to sell from the booth!

I do actually have a bit of handspun that I can bring, but I also have to send off a couple skeins of handspun for my half of a barter (I talked about this back on February 16th. and I really need to get those skeins in the mail ASAP! It's been far too long).

I've been spinning the lovely silvery Romney that I got at Black Sheep Gathering last June. It's so different from the medium grey Romney that I spun for my shawl!

It's shorter fiber. I know that some people will shear twice a year - I'm wondering if that's the case for this particular fleece? Or maybe the sheep just had a coat that doesn't grow as quickly? Or the sheep was extra wiggly during shearing? Or maybe the shearer was new or learning? Whatever the case may be, I'm enjoying the spin, even if I'm finding more second cuts and weird bits that have been cut what looks like three times. I am using my combs to comb a section of fiber at a time, and then spinning straight from the combs. It's creating quite a bit less waste than the flicking I've been doing for the Shetland lamb fleece. I'll have to do some weighing to see exactly how much "loss" I'm getting with both methods. Don't worry, I'll report back here! Eventually... lol

Here's a video of me prepping the fiber, combing, and then spinning straight from the comb. It takes about 20 minutes start to finish for a pretty good bit of fiber. Never fear, though, I sped up the video by 4x so you don't have to sit there and watch forever! I admit that it's a bit mesmerizing...