Carding and spinning sock yarn

Ever since I found this blog tutorial on how to spin your own sock yarn, I’ve been keen to give it a try. She recommended blending BFL and mohair, because mohair gives the yarn some strength, like nylon does. She also said you can add other things, as long as you keep your ratios reasonable. So I got some BFL, some kid mohair, and some (50/50) angora/merino.

I dyed the mohair a pale brown, and the angora mix a pale yellow, so I could see if they were mixing well.

Measured out about 100g of BFL, 20g of mohair and 13g of angora/merino for a percentage mix of B/M/A 75/15/10, and carded together half at a time. Then I split those two batts in half, and mixed a half from each into two new batts (for an extra mixing).

That angora sure is fluffy. The fibres are short, and they like to clump together like a little rabbitfur Union. The batts came off the carder well, at least. Last time I tried the carder, I had trouble cleaning it all off.

Then I sat down to figure out how on earth to spin a batt…  You're supposed to be able to split it lengthwise (which was fine) and then stretch out the split bits, like stretching elastic. But when my stretched out batt bits got slightly long, they'd break under their own weight. So I just split the batts into fairly thin sections and spun from those.

Those bits of bunny still tried to stick together, and the end result was kind of lumpy. At least "sock yarn" doesn't have to be that thin 4ply/ fingering weight stuff, because this is 3 or 4 times thicker than that! hehe. But I have 130g of it, so one day I'll make it into some slippers and test it out.

Next on the agenda: Stage one of the Tour de Sock. Saint Michel socks. So far I've done 4 inches (two at a time) and I have 5 days, 10 hours left. I'm not sure I can make it, but I'll finish the socks anyway. These are my first socks made of Wollmeise!

Looks like the sheep on my sock blockers are grazing around on some fancy-shmancy grass, there :)