The past few weeks have been filled with all the wool. I played a bit with the Icelandic fleece that I got. I made a few things and I even scoured, combed, and carded wool.

Sock Update

First up in my wooly adventures is a sock update. I now have 1.75 socks! Sock number one is finished and I have just the toe left for sock number 2. I may even have enough yarn to make a third sock! Which I mean to be fair sounds silly because who needs 3 socks. I am hoping to get 4 but who knows I will take 3 if that’s all I get because why not. I had a fun adventure with sock #2 because I accidentally decreased too many stitches at the instep. This lead to me adding in my 1st lifeline to pull back to the row that had the correct number of stitches. That did set me back like a whole evenings of work though. Also it had to be done in the color that is hardest to see because life must be difficult. A lifeline is essentially picking up the knitting loops on a piece of string or another needle so that when you pull the working yarn to unravel your work it will stop when you get the place you have the string or needle.

Icelandic Adventures

I got excited and pulled a portion of the Icelandic wool to scour and play with. Especially because I ordered some basic combs from Good and Basic to try combing wool as well. Part of the reason I got the combs is specifically to go with the Icelandic wool. This is because Icelandic sheep are dual coated meaning that they have an overcoat (tog) and an undercoat (thel). The tog has more of the feel of what people imagine wool to feel like, a bit scratchy, I guess. The thel is very soft and is more next to skin than the tog. Using wool combs you can seperate the tog and the thel making two different kinds of yarns. Or you could choose to card them together to make a soft but slightly scratchy yarn. Some people find the combination of coats to be a bit scratchy (me included) but there are benefits to carding them together. The thel is soft and warm and the tog is long and water-repellent.

So I took about half of the scoured test portion, carded and spun it. I found it to be too irritating to my skin to wear directly next to skin but it did make a lovely yarn. The other half got combed and I attempted to separate the tog and thel. I spun up the thel portion and found that when separated, even if not done perfectly, that I could wear it next to skin. I have not yet spun the tog I separated out so I am not sure how much of that I will get or what I will do with it quite yet.

Today it was about 60 degrees outside and so I decided to pull out the whole of the Icelandic fleece and check it out. It turned into me separating the fleece into locks and sorting through it. The process in general was quite meditative and satisfying. I then put a large chunk in the bathtub to rinse and scour it.

Other Current Projects

I finished my mystery project with the purple Wool of the Andes homespun! It was turned into a cardigan for Grammy Littlewood. I am silly and didn’t grab a picture of it fully finished but I have it sans sleeves. I gave it to her and she loved it so yay on that front.

I spun up a bit of the pink merino I got to make mittens for Gwen. I did not particularly enjoy spinning 100% merino combed top so that was fun to learn. Though it may also just have been that I was not super hyped about the color. I also managed to do something funky when I plied this and I am unsure if I accidentally plied it in the same direction I spun it or if I just didn’t give it enough twist. But it should still work for kid mittens.

I also made some more yarn from Pip’s wool. There is I think about one more bag of little rolags of her wool. I also did a two ply yarn from two different bobbins which was fun. I filled my bobbin with plied yarn before I emptied either of the bobbins with singles on them. Oops.

And last but not least. I was not having fun spinning the flax on the drop spindle and actually found myself thinking about it like a chore. So I decided to just spin it on the wheel and see what happens. Turns out I like that way more and it goes much faster, surprise. I still have a lot of flax to go and no clue what I want to make out of the linen once it is spun.

Possible Future Projects

Oh man do I have a giant list of future projects. I am going to break this down into sections depending of the type of project. Things to Make: The mittens for Gwen, obviously. A pair of socks for Gwen. The linen something. Ben really wants a pair of wool socks. I really want to try knitting a sweater. I also want to start working through projects that have been started but not finished as well. Things to Spin: The Icelandic wool, the shetland and alpaca batt, the rest of Pip’s wool, I have some wool from my distaff day exchange that I want to try, the mohair I need to scour, and the alpaca which also needs a scour. Things around the house: Switch the office and the craft room, finish cleaning out the attached garage, move boxes out of the guest room, set up the guest room, clean out the front porch, rearrange the girls room, and clean out the attic. So there are no shortage of projects and I am unsure what order any of this will get done.

Thanks for joining on our adventure!

Lots of Love,

The McMullins