The Fiber Sampler Project
For five dollars I picked up a fiber sample pack online. It contained 21 types of fiber, almost all of it in raw form, about three quarters of it wool. This weekend I decided to work with it, and here are the results.
First I spread the fibers out on the back porch and prepared them for spinning. While I was doing this I took notes on my impressions of the fiber--its hand, staple length and crimp, etc. I did as little preparation as possible, mostly just opening the fibers up with a little flick carding. Some fibers I didn't need to prepare at all, some I processed into mini rolags using a pair of small dog slicker brushes as carders. Here's a photo of the fibers before I started to spin.
From left to right, top to bottom, here are the fibers shown: 1. Navajo-Churro, 2. Cotswold, 3. Wensleydale, 4. Romney (1-4 are wool types), 5. Yak hair, 6. Llama, 7. Merino, 8. Shetland, 9. Romeldale, 10. Rambouillet, 11. Targhee (7-11 are wool types), 12. Pygora (the fiber resulting from a cross between Pygmy and Angora goats), 13. Alpaca, 14. Corriedale (wool), 15. Angora (rabbit fur), 16. Camel, 17. Polypay (wool), 18. Katahdin (a breed of hair sheep, not really wool), 19. Icelandic, 20. Lincoln, 21. Border Leicester (19-21 are wool types). When I spun them up, I switched the order of 9 and 10, 18 and 19 so that the colors would be less alike and I could tell where each fiber type started and ended.
Most samples were fairly small. In two cases, the Romeldale and Polypay wools, I spun only a small portion of my sample because I loved the wool so much I wanted to spin the rest for a different project. The two pictures following show me spinning--a picture taken early in the morning; I believe I was saying, "Wait, I haven't brushed my hair yet, don't take my picture"--and the spindle filled with all 21 sample fibers, sitting next to my notes.
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It was an interesting challenge when using such a lot of different fibers to try and keep the yarn reasonably homogenous in thickness and twist. As every spinner knows, each particular fiber has a thickness it wants to be spun to. The finer the fiber, the thinner it wants to be spun. So the pygora, alpaca, and angora all ended up thread-thin no matter what I did (in the case of the angora, I had to spin it thinly and put in lots of twist because of the short staple, otherwise it would have drifted apart), and the yak ended up very thick indeed.
Once I was done I washed the resulting skein in two changes of hot water with Woolite (ordinarily I don't use Woolite on my handspun yarn because it strips all the natural oils out and makes the yarn feel harsh, but in this case I needed to remove all the oils completely for storage purposes), then rinsed three times in hot water until all the suds were gone. Then I dried the skein and crocheted it into a sampler scarf using a very big hook (J, I think); I chained 25 or so and double crocheted loosely. And here's the very interesting result:
