Fiber Progress

Last week I posted the beginning stages of making fiber into yarn: skirting, weighing, flicking and spinning. This past weekend I did the next stages: plying, making a skein, washing and drying.

Plying:



It's always a wonder, when plying, how the two strands will meet up at the end. Will they match up perfect, or will there be some left of one strand, and if so, how much? I actually like a little left over. Then I use it to tie off the skeins, and any extra from there is used for needle work on top of a knit project (like I did on that hat I posted last week), or seam sewing. So while I do weigh it out to be an even match, I am actually hoping for a bit more of one strand than the other.

Here it is mid-ply, it does seem like one strand has more than the other:



In the end, there wasn't that much more of the one strand, a perfect amount to have enough to tie up the skein and a little for seam sewing later on:



The yarn looks very nice!



I put it into a skein, using my swift. Then I washed it in the sink (15 minute soak in warm water with dawn dish soap, then twice in a sink full of plain very warm water). I hung it to dry in the living room. Who wouldn't want a fresh skein of home spun alpaca as their stocking:



That fiber came off of Cafe, a girl we owned up until this past summer. She is now owned by Ashton Stone Alpacas.

That wasn't the end of my fiber weekend work. I got all this done by Saturday evening. Sunday I began a new batch. I weighed and tumbled and flicked up a batch of Tehya's fiber. I didn't photograph this one, since it's much the same as what I showed with Cafe's fiber this past week.