Dying for beautiful wool.

A few weeks ago, my boss told me that my company had hired someone to head a new project. Little did I know, this person would not only be a knitter, but a spinner!!! I heard through the grapevine that I needed to introduce myself. And introduce myself I did!

I love the knitting world. It only took 10 seconds and I thought I had known her forever. We met for lunch and she gave me my first spinning lesson and loaned me an extra top whorl spindle and gave me three types of roving to get started. Oh and am I hooked. I went home that night and ordered my own spindle and 16 ounces -- yes, ONE POUND -- of Bluefaced Leicester wool.

Bluefaced Leicester are a long wool breed of sheep. longwool types are easier to spin. The "blue" is due to the color of the skin, not the color of the wool. Their faces are bald and their noses are "roman" which makes them look a little sad. According to the breed standard, "On both white and natural colored Bluefaced Leicesters, the wool should be tightly purled, fine, dense, semi-lustrous, and when parted, it should open cleanly to the skin. There should be an even, consistent fleece coverage on the body, and the fleece should be free of hair and kemp. There should be no tendency for the main body of fleece to “peel” (the fleece breaking and sloughing off).

The Bluefaced Leicester is classified as a longwool breed with a staple length of 3-6 inches, a fleece weight of 2½-4½ lbs., and a fiber diameter of 56s–60s count, or 24-28 microns. It creates high-quality semi-lustre yarns with soft hand, beautiful drape, and excellent dyeing properties."

I separated the wool into 12 pieces of 35 to 45 grams of roving and ran out to 3 different grocery stores to pick up a variety of Kool-Aid packages. Yes, Kool-Aid. Yes, you can dye wool with Kool-Aid. I just started with two colors tonight and will blog about the dyeing tomorrow.

Happy Knitting, errrr, Spinning, no Dyeing!!!