Back at it

During the week I have so little time to get fiber things done other than feed critters.

So, I am back at getting the yarn made up for my '100 likes' on my face book farm page.

The Icelandic and Mohair dried beautifully! I could just sit and play with washed mohair all day long!! It is just so soft!!

The following are several different charts. When I wash a fleece I always try and get the raw weight and the washed weight and see how much was lost.

Fiber                      Raw weight        Washed weight        
White Mohair           21.3 oz               19.0 oz
Light Shetland             6.3 oz                 4.8 oz
Black Shetland          15.0 oz               11.1 oz
Black Icelandic          21.3 oz               17.1 oz


I wanted my yarn to have equal parts of all three fibers, but as you can see they did not wash up that way. I also wanted a balance between the white and black. So to figure this out I did some calculations. I don't know if every one does this or if I am just being kinda of picky.

So I broke it down in to just Mohair, Shetland and Icelandic to begin with and figured out the percentages of each.

Fiber                         Washed weight               Percentage of total
Mohair                          19.0 oz                           36.5 %
Shetland                        15.9 oz                           30.6 %
Icelandic                        17.1 oz                           32.9 %

With the Shetland, the light made up 30 % of total Shetland and the black 70 % of total Shetland.

I want to start out with 4 ounces of fiber to spin so I took the percentage of the fiber and multiplied it by 4 and got the amount of fiber for each.

Fiber                          Weight    
Mohair                         1.5 oz
Light Shetland                 .4 oz
Black Shetland                .8 oz
Icelandic                       1.3 oz

Have I lost you yet!!

Here is a picture of the 4 ounces of fiber waiting to be drum carded!!

But before I can start spinning I need to get my wheel free!! I am plying gray alpaca with a beautiful pink/purple merino.

Probably won't get to spin until this evening, though. It is a beautiful January day and there are lots of things calling my name outside!!