Two years ago a friend of a friend offered to teach me to spin. I borrowed her wheel and hand carders and she said I could have a this fleece if I learned to process it myself. I said SURE!! (seriously, full fleece, for FREE?!). This fleece came from a Romney sheep by the name of Frieda.
Over the last two years, Frieda and I have had our ups and downs. She really was a fleece to LEARN with. My first yarn with Frieda was bulky, not straight, and far from ready to knit with. That was okay. We were learning.
One night my roommate came home to find the rest of Frieda floating in the bathtub… We had decided it was time to finish processing her. The one problem was, I missed the step to “pick” the fleece. Everything I did I kept washing the fleece. I’m pretty sure by the end of my “processing” Frieda was OVERprocessed.
That’s okay, we learned together.
I’m done spinning Frieda now. I’ve spun all sorts of weights yarns with her, but they are all two ply. It’s not the softest yarn in the world, but I did it! My goal in spinning was to learn to spin sock weight yarn. I got close by the end when I spun about a sport weight yarn at 187 yards in a 2ply.
Frieda and I had our ups and downs. I was getting frustrated with the over processing but in the end pushed through to finish. It was a great learning experience.
For a learning fleece, I think we did pretty good.