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What kinds of spinning urges do you get?

Out of no where I started getting a hankering to use long draw method with baby camel down. No– not top, not roving: actual baby camel down. For those of you that haven’t spun camel you won’t be that impressed until you try, the fibers are slippy and grippy and very very short. If you’ve spun dehaired camel before let that sink in before moving on.

Ready?

Okay lets go one word at a time: Loose. Baby. Camel. Down. Long. Draw.

The first bobbin was an exercise in non-perfection for me. I stuck with it though and came up with a yarn. Not the prettiest yarn, not the ugliest, but ever so soft and moderately interesting. The second bobbin went much better and came out as a fairly even single. I haven’t plied it yet, but wound it into a ball and I’m letting it rest before plying.

Resting with it is a ball of stuff that Opal sent me many moons ago. It’s sort of a rustic looking single right now, I let the little neps and noils stay (usually I’d pick those out but I’m going for a homey yarn) and I am debating as to whether it should be a 2 or 3 ply.

I managed to earn a little money doing odd jobs so I promptly went to the Little Barn website and spent it all. Actually I was only going to order ramie from another website but that site’s shopping cart wasn’t working– so ummm. I didn’t order the ramie, that’ll have to wait until the next time I have some cash in my grubby little paws.

In the meantime I’m spinning some of the fleece I’ve been arguing with since last summer. It’s base color is cream with black peppered through it, very coarse, and I can’t find the thing where I wrote down the breed because I knew I’d forget (this is part of my MO when it comes to dealing with raw fleece) in short it looks like Churro but isn’t Churro and has longer less coarse staple.

This is a picture of the same wool from June 2004.

Anyway I am learning to like this wool, last summer I was overwhelmed with the urge to wash what was left of the raw fleeces and did this this one in cold water with salt, I put a galvenized tub in the shade next to the house, filled it with a garden hose and sunk the fleece down with some big rocks from my garden. The hard part was letting it soak over night, then pulling out the fleece, putting in clean water and letting it soak for a second night without messing with it. The salt water soak worked extremely well for removing the dirt and the excess lanolin, however it still has lanolin, so I do have to spin it when the room is warm otherwise it’s a battle.

My hands are super soft now.

Back to cravings. I’m always attracted to natural colored fibers first. I have plenty of white to work with but I like the honey color of natural tussah, I like the cinnamon and moorit colors of certain wools, black and gray and taupe that come straight from the animal, and the silvery gray of water retted flax. Even if I intend on dyeing over the fiber I like the depth and richness that naturally colored fibers take on when dyed.

I crave loose down over top with short fibers: cashmere, camel, cotton, quivit, and yak. I crave top over bells or caps or hankies with silk fibers. I crave locks over roving for hair type fibers. I crave roving over locks for wooly fibers.

I don’t really have preferences for long or short staple, fine or coarse, slick or crimpy or lofty– they all have their qualities, but some will wait around to be spun longer than others until I’ve figured out what’s the best thing to do with those qualities.