I think I left you hanging in February after I learned to hand spin. In an effort to catch you up, entertain you, and take you along on this journey of mine as I continue to learn to spin, I thought I would post some of the different yarns I have finished between then and now. Pretty colors coming your way!

The “Cat Couch”

Like many of you, I saw the Yarnspirations free Crochet Kitty Couch pattern and decided I had to make it. I hadn’t spun any really great length of yarn yet and I needed a project where I needed to make multiple hanks of yarn and they didn’t have to be perfect. I thought a cat couch would be a great idea! I needed to have 365 yards of yarn for the couch itself.

My spinning mentor, Liese, had given me a giant bag of BlueFaced Leicester (BFL) roving to practice on, so I got to spinning! I also had a lot of Gulf Coast Robin Egg blue dyed locks leftover from a big dye job, which I started to comb. This was the perfect project to really get some “miles” (yards) on the spinning wheel, get to know how it works better, as well as understand the difficulty making separate hanks to match! I started on this in March and finished it all in June.

Here are the results!

A Dusty Rose

I was dyeing some milled yarn for a cowl/hood I was crocheting and had leftover dye still in the dye bath. I quick washed some wool locks and threw them in and I ended up with some dusty rose/lavender-colored locks. I decided I wanted to try hand spinning a 3-ply yarn instead of using the dyed yarn in the cowl/hood. It was my first time making a 3-ply yarn and it was challenging to spin an equal of amount of 3 separate single plies and I had to learn to use my lazy kate for the first time to accomplish the task. In the end, I think it came out alright, but I was really shocked how FEW yards (45 yards) I ended up with! The dusty rose yarn was the first 100% Gulf Coast solid color yarn I’ve ever spun.

Dandelion Yellow

I don’t remember what made me dye a pound of wool bright dandelion yellow? Maybe I needed to play with a cheery color on a cold spring day? Anyways, I decided I should spin a quintessential 100% Gulf Coast 2-ply solid color yarn, so I could see what type of yarn the wool from my primary ram, Heron, would make. I love how it turned out, all 113 yards of it. The yarn has bounce from the crimp and it’s a very soft and squishy hank. I love Heron’s yarn!

Neon Green

This yarn was the product of another situation where I had leftover dye in the pot from dyeing milled yarn and threw in some washed locks. I call those “bonus” locks. I spun this 2-ply like the dandelion yellow yarn and ended up with about 50 yards. This yarn has a bit of a different feel because the locks were britch/hip wool. That wool tends to be a little stiffer and has less crimp, but it makes a shinier yarn for some reason. It’s still a very nice yarn, which dispels the myth that britch wool is just trash, stuffing, or compost. I do think it depends on the individual sheep in my flock. Some sheeps’ britch wool really isn’t worth working with.

Warbler’s Black

I’ve never worked with Warbler’s fleece until now. (I think she is almost 5 years old?) I wanted a black yarn for a crochet project and I wanted to try it working from Warbler’s fleece. Warbler’s 2025 fleece went to my spinning mentor, Liese, this year, who has been having the best time with it! Her 2025 fleece is gray! The fleece I used to make this yarn was Warbler’s baby fleece, which is black! Interesting, huh?!

Warbler’s fleece has bleached tips, so I had to cut off the tips in order to get black fiber. This definitely added time to the combing, but went fast enough. I feel like I got a pretty good, dark black from her fleece. It also really shows up the cat hair, of course!

A note about black sheep in general. At least in my flock, black/dark colored sheep have a coarser, stiffer, denser fleece. It’s not the right fleece to try to make a fat, fluffy yarn from.

Let’s talk about mistakes! I made mistakes spinning this yarn. I was trying to draft a fatter single ply, but I spun this on the smaller whorl and the smaller part of the wheel, which added too much spin for the thickness of the single ply. It yielded a heavier, denser, stiffer yarn, which I didn’t like. I still have LOTS of fleece leftover, so I need to try to make a black 2-ply yarn from it again, but draft a much thinner single ply. I ended up with 77 yards in this hank.

Jewel Tone Barber Pole

At this point, I think it looks like my spinning is improving. I feel a lot more confident and am wanting to keep trying new ideas and techniques. I do have an affinity towards fractals. It is hard to never be allowed to buy pretty hand-dyed braids of roving. I have TOO much fleece in the basement! So, if I want a braid, I have to make it.

In an effort to see how fat of a braid I could make, I got the hackle out, combed up all the colored locks I could muster, and dizzed off some fat and some thin variegated combed top. I’m not sure there is a way to recreate a commercial braid of combed top, they are so thick. I’m going to keep trying though!

I didn’t have enough of the colored roving, so I couldn’t spin a fractal. Good thing I had some white single ply ready to go! I ended up running out of the maroon/purple colored combed top and had to finish with some pink (ewww…sorry, I hate pink). I ended up with 130 yards. Thankfully, I think I have enough of the other colored combed top along with the pink (*grumble*) to make another hank, so that’s what I’m working on now.

It’s really hard to end up with enough length to crochet something (other than random granny squares) when you start with a bunch of random locks. I’m learning my lesson to identify what I want to make and THEN go and spin the yarn for it. It’s just really fun to let the yarn organically create itself, too. Happy little accidents.