I'm just about ready to send my Spinning Secret Pal's skein of yarn off in the mail today. It is a combination of different naturally colored merino wool, llama, and a little mohair. This was not a commercially bought roving although commercial rovings are much easier to spin than if you start with raw fleece like I did.

The first thing I did was start with the wool and llama colors I wanted to work with. I already had them washed and stored in my fiber stash except for new white merino fleece I bought. Merino is full of lanolin. Unlike commercial scouring, I can't strip all the lanolin out. Actually, I don't think I would even if I could, because first of all it makes the garment practically water proof and secondly it keeps the fibers from getting a dry and brittle feeling. The Merino takes three washes and a rinse. The washes are done in hot a water as hot as I can get (we keep our hot water temperature hot enough to scald if you accidentally get it wrong in the shower). The first two washes are done with 15 minutes to half hour of each other to melt and remove the lanolin. The last wash is a long soak followed by a vinegar rinse.

Here are the various natural colors that I used. This includes blue grey and chocolate brown llama wool which is really yummy.
I carded these into variegated rovings. Again a commercial carder removes more of the noils and oddities in the wool. My carding doesn't do that well, but it still makes a fun little roving.

When I started to spin, I included small pinches of dyed wool in various colors. The smaller the bit of color is the more tweed like the fabric will be. I choose to put spatches of color in so that it would be three or for stitches of the worsted weight yarn. The yarn is two ply worsted. Nothing special about it. I don't have a jumbo spindle. However, it made about 75 yards 2 ply. I don't ply with a lazy kate because I am too lazy. I take the single ply, wind it on my ball winder and ply it from the center of the ball and the outside at the same time. Something I learned at a fiber fest.











The skein was set in a final wash that sets the twist. I made a swatch from a similar skein from some of the left over wool so you can get some idea of what the fabric will look like. And that's it! My Spin to Knit skein.