I went to the local spinning, weaving and dyeing guild’s fleece sale on Saturday. I honestly went intending to only have a look around. The sight of all that fibre sent me in to a bit of a frenzy and I ended up with the above mentioned alpaca, sheep’s fleece (unwashed) and a little tub of cream angora.

There were quite a few of these ice cream tubs of angora, who belonged to a spinner who is no longer with us. I took one of the boxes and made a charitable donation to the hospice that cared for the lady in her last days. I suspect that she may have kept the rabbits herself. The fibre is unbelievable fine and fluffy. I’ve been experimenting with blending it with the oatmeal bluefaced leicester I already had. If I run out of angora I think I might try one ply of blended and one or two plies of plain BFL.

The grey fleece is from a Zwartbles, and I bought it from the lady who bred the sheep. It’s a lovely shade of grey. I intended to only buy a couple of hundred grams for a scarf, but not knowing what a couple of hundred grams of fleece looks like I ended up with 500g (that’s around a pound for you non-metric people).

Then I spotted the alpaca. I wasn’t quick enough to get the tan stuff, that was snapped up by another spinner. What I did get is some black and it’s so soft that I’m convinced it must be suri alpaca. I got the business card of the breeder and I’m going to email them to find out. I don’t normally wear a lot of black but this is more like a very dark expresso brown so I think I’ll be ok. If I can spin enough yardage with this, I’m going to design a yoked cardigan to make from it.

I’ve also been spinning up the merino/silk blend:

I requested Wrap Style from the library yesterday so I should be able to swatch soon.

I’m on the neverending foot of the man-socks but my knitting group is tonight and I might be able to power through a few rounds there.