The Best Yet

I plied the first skein skein of my merino/tussah silk yarn yesterday, and I am in love with it. This is a 3-ply, worsted weight yarn, soft and relaxed. And the colors! Silvery gray with hints of pale pink and green, with occasional bits of white and camel brown. The skein has 182 yards of loveliness. I'm in the middle of plying a second skein, and still have approximately 4 ounces left to spin. That's probably NOT best practice - plying before spinning all the fiber, but I simply couldn't wait.

Here's a closeup of the finished yarn:

And here's what the fiber looks like before spinning:

I purchased one pound of the fiber from Sheepshed Studio/Mountain View Farm at the New York Sheep & Wool Festival last October. The subtlety of the colors, their sheen, and the softness of the fiber drew me in, and that settled it. I was a bit worried that the silk would present a severe shedding problem, but it was not much of a issue at all.

Still using my trusty Louet S15, purchased way back in 1983 or so! It's a simple (some might say unsophisticated and limited) wheel, and sometimes I am tempted to abandon it for a better one. But what would/should that be? Kromski, Ashford, Schacht, Majacraft? What I really need to do is take some lessons, preferably with someone who can provide a number of different wheels to test drive. Perhaps Halcyon Yarn in Bath.

But I do love my plain old S15, which is no longer in production. I'll be lugging it up to Maine on Friday, along with a big basket of fiber!