One of my favorite places to stop at MS&W is the booth for the American Cormo Association. Cormo sheep are relatively rare (from what I can tell) and are a cross between Corriedales and Merinos. I'm not very familiar with the former breed, but I've come in contact with enough Merino wool to know how soft and wonderful it is. However, I've been told it's very short staple, and that can make for frustrating spinning for a novice like myself. I don't think Cormo is considered to be a long staple yarn, but it's incredibly soft. I just couldn't resist getting three bags of hand-dyed Cormo-Silk blend roving to stash away for when I was ready to try something special.
Of course, the problem with having something wonderful like that is that you really don't want to leave it buried away, at least not if you're me. You want to get it out and revel in it a little bit, even if you know it's not exactly the right time for this particular party. So I started this spindle-ful when I was doing my dying experiment with Julie, continued to work on it in Ann Arbor over Father's Day weekend, and finished it up tonight.
This picture is a bit deceptive. This last bit I spun without spinning and parking and it's much finer and more sophisticated looking than most of the rest of it. But having had my success with the Blue Faced Leicester, I wanted to see how I would do with the Cormo (I also wanted to get that spindle back so that I could try some more Cormo spinning using the same technique all the way through). After another Andean plying bracelet and some quality time wiht my tulipwood Bosworth, I had this sitting on my itty bitty niddy noddy.
It doesn't look so bad from a distance, but it's pretty rustic looking stuff.
Rustic, but very, very soft. It's a bit on the homely side (especially compared to yesterday's yarn) but so nice to the touch it's almost hard to put down. It also taught me something. Creating a two ply from an unevenly spun yarn (from the perspective of the variation in the diameter of the single over time) made it a lot harder for me to balance the stuff and ended up in what I consider to be a relatively loosely plied yarn.
Have a great weekend, everyone! I probably won't be back until after the 4th of July. And I most certainly am likely to be spinning!
Homely? That's gorgeous, and it looks soooo soft and cozy. What do you think you'll make out of it?
Look how nice that is.
I'm so proud.
:-)
very nice spinning. bfl was the first stuff i spun up too, and i am still very fond of it :)
Oooh Cormo is the BEST! Your cormo is very pretty so keep on cormo-ing.
Both of your skeins are wonderful. Aren't you thinking about what you can make them all into now? I recently took up spinning, and I don't know if you're going to get a wheel but learning on a spindle helped me a lot when I had to get my feet involved, too. Knowing how the fiber works made the process a lot less awkward for me. I didn't know Cormo was part merino. I have a sample and it's very soft, so that might explain it.
That colour is gorgeous! and the sheen of silk...
Yum. Great job!