Saturday, May 5, 2012

Spinner's Study

Now that I have my brand new spindle, I can finally start playing with the fiber sampler my mom gave me from Woolgatherings. Thus, being the scientist I am, I'm going to conduct my very own spinner's study!
Who's excited?!
As I spin each new breed I will read about it in my handy-dandy Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook and share some interesting factoids as well as my opinions on how the fiber feels during spinning. I'm going to spin them in the order shown, from left to right:
  • Black Jacob 
  • Finnish 
  • Polwarth -- this one is on the spindle 
  • Grey Gotland 
  • Cormo 
  • Icelandic 
  • Brown Merino 
  • Cheviot 
  • Devon 
  • Shetland Humbug 
  • Romeldale 
  • Wensleydale 
  • Grey Masham 
  • Falkland 
  • Corriedale Cross 
  • Black Welsh
I kind of jumped right in and started with Polwarth before I planned everything out, but I can fix the order later. This project will take quite a while (that's a full pound of fiber there!) but I think it will be fun. (Right? haha) The posts in which I discuss a new breed will be tagged with "SS" for spinner's study, in case anybody would like to read them all at once at some point. I'm thinking I will spin the fiber as singles and knit some kind of sheep-tastic lacy scarf with it at the end. Hopefully all the different kinds of fiber will work well together! The nice thing is if I get bored of all the white/neutrals, I can switch back and forth with the crazy colors of the Bugga fiber that is still currently on my other spindle.
Spindle love <3
Have any of you come across a study like this? What's your favorite fiber to spin or knit?

4 comments:

  1. Oh wow. That is so amazing, I love seeing all those fibers lined up like that, it's a dream! I can't wait to read more as you progress. My favorite fiber so far has got to be Alpaca, it's so soft and easy to draft. Good luck!

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    Replies
    1. I have a little bit of alpaca fiber, but have not really used it yet. Once I try all these sheep breeds I'll probably aim to try all the other kinds of fiber!

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  2. Sounds like a mostly qualitative study. Perhaps you should enter all your notes into atlas.ti so you can systematically code and analyze them. Yup, researcher over here, too.

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  3. Sounds just like my journey into spinning - however my approach is less scientific!
    Do have a go at Alpaca, it gives a lovely result. I dislike Devon - in my experience it's better for carpets.... My current favorite after BFL is Corriedale.
    I also have tried milk fibre. banana and bamboo as well as silk so far....

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