#jacob fleece

[milkweedman]

Carding this olive green jacob into rolags for another belt... i only have 2 ounces (60ish grams) so it's just been sitting in my stash since i dyed it this winter with old thyme from the garden. It looks a little lighter and more yellow in these pictures than it really is.

[milkweedman]

really love this gradient !!!

[milkweedman]

The start of a linen stitch base for a bag, using some handspun jacob that was originally supposed to be sock yarn. I love linen stitch a lot but every time i make something in it i wonder why im not just weaving the damn thing...

[milkweedman]

February's pair of handspun socks are done !

they're made from some of the Jacob fleece i washed earlier this year, mixed with a little bit of mohair fleece that i washed a few years back. the mohair is for durability; while jacob is generally a fairly robust wool, this particular fleece was a first shearing and very soft, and i was worried it wasn't suitable for socks on it's own. it's perhaps 5% mohair by volume (estimating based on what it looked like while carding it).

the singles were all spun to around 25 WPI (i think?), and the yarn itself is worsted weight cabled 4 ply knit on size US 8 needles. i did try a little bit of cabling for decoration, but the yarn was dark enough that i just couldn't see what i was doing, so the only real decoration is farmer's seed stitch instead of my usual 2x2 rib for the cuff. I'm hoping that for March I'll be able to spin and knit a much more interesting looking yarn for that months socks. that said, I'm fond of this pair already !

[milkweedman]

posts that make you realize how dusty your spinning wheel is ...

[milkweedman]

an attempt at dyeing 2 ounces (60 grams) of the white jacob fleece with some very overgrown thyme in my front yard. i cooked the thyme in salt water for a few hours and drained it.

disclaimer: i have never dyed with thyme and couldn't find any info on it other than the color it makes (yellows and greens), so there might be a much better way to work with this specific material, but in the absence of more information, i just did my usual thing !

the wool was still a little greasy for easy spinning, so i washed it quickly in dish soap. then i cooked the wool in a water, vinegar and copper mordant solution for another 45 minutes, removed most of the mordant solution and added in all the dye. i then cooked it for another few hours, until there was very little color in the water (about half an hour after i took the second to last photo). then i removed the wool, rinsed throughly, and let it dry.

I'm not sure if the fact that this is old thyme that's been out in the snow and rain all winter has affected the color, so i definitely want to try this again in the summer and see what color i get.

washing the wool one more time also definitely got rid of most of the grease, and it's kind of rough now. so it was a good call to wash the fleece the way i did and keep it nice and soft.

i also did very little fleece with a lot of dye material, so either it's a very weak dyestuff or else the age of the thyme affected the strength as well.

i might overdye this stuff and try and get a deeper color (it's currently olive green) but I'm actually quite liking it as it is. not sure what I'll do with it since i have so little, though. maybe a hat ? i was hoping for enough for socks, lol.

[milkweedman]

Didn't realize how long it's been since i did any serious carding, but about 15 rolags in my arms started getting sore. So it must have been a while, lol

[milkweedman]

Grocery bag ive been making from some early attempts at sock yarn. It's very strong (due to being VERY overtwisted) and seems to be pretty well suited for bags.