I finally finished a spinning project that has been 2 years in the making. In my defense, I have mainly only been spinning this fiber when at Tennessee Valley Handspinners Guild (https://tnvalleyhandspinners.org/) meetings or when at festivals or fairs. I’ll have to increase the amount of spinning I do at home…

2 years ago my sister-in-law brought back a skein of wool from her and her hubby’s cruise around the north of the UK. They went ashore on North Ronaldsy Island and knowing my interest in all things fiber and crafting they bought a skein of wool for me. I had heard of this wool previously when browsing my books on fiber types. It’s certainly up there in uniqueness as the sheep graze mostly on seaweed around the perimeter of the small island. They have evolved over centuries to enable them to process the nutrients they need from the seaweed to the extent that if they graze on too much grass they can be poisoned by the traces of copper it contains. Check out the numerous videos on You Tube about North Ronaldsy for more info.

Anyway, the single skein could have eventually be woven into a future project, but that didn’t seem enough. Anne and I had just bought some fiber at a guild ‘stash buster’ sale. It is a Merino/Targhee blend roving in natural white and was 2.2lbs in total. The cost on the original docket was $80 and we paid $20. The same roving is still available, but at twice the original price! The logical thing to do was to spin that, and use the Ronaldsy yarn as stripe or two in woven shawls for both Anne and my sister-in-law. That began the long process…

I spun the roving into two ply at about the same size as the Ronaldsy, but with a more consistent twist and ply as I plan on weaving a point twill and I want that to show even when in a single color. The skeins in the picture are mostly about 2 oz, but there are some much larger ones. This is because well into this project I purchased an update for my Ashford Traditional: a larger flyer and bobbin, just for plying. I can ply two full original Traditional bobbins onto it an make a 5+ oz skein. It also has sliding hooks. There is a story about the purchase but that and photo’s will be in a future blog post.

There will also be some small ‘highlight’ features in red – yet to be spun. I have woven a small sample to get the sett right – photo’s of that will follow when all this yarn moves onto a loom and the much quicker part of the overall project begins.