In the grease...

I've been pretty rubbish about posting on my blog recently (well so my mother keeps telling me), but it's more to do with wanting to be doing things other than sitting at the computer than not having anything to write.

A few weeks ago a kind colleague of my mum's gave me the fleeces from her 8 jacobs sheep, which she usually burns. They're now sitting in my garage in sacks. Noone else seems to want to take any off my hands and I was at a bit of a loss as to how to tackle this huge pile. I don't mind washing the fleeces but I hate carding fleece and so hardly ever make time to do it. On a rainy weekend two weeks ago I decided to have a go at spinning it in the grease.

I wanted to see how the yarn would come out and be able to knit a tension square and see how it washed. So I span two singles, plied them and washed the resulting skein a couple of times in washing up liquid and hung it on the line. I started off knitting a large tension square which was potentially to become a bag. Because the wool is jacobs it is relatively corse, but I was surprised that it didn't itch me that much. The square got a bit out of hand and I started to take a fancy to the colouring so the strip turned into a sleeve.

Now I have two sleeves and the bottom half of the back. I'm spinning as I knit which gives me a nice combination of activities and there's something pleasing about taking handspun and knitting with it straight away. Unfortunately this is barely making a dent on my pile of fleece but it's a start. I'm thinking I might try some 4 ply next and crochet something householdy. Maybe some table matts.