Author: @jillianmoreno

I’m still spinning from Deb Robson’s Must Spin list. I have learned so much about fibers I would never have spun and a whole lot about my spinning skills. This week’s spins are Angora rabbit, Romeldale and CVM. Angora was easy to prep because there isn’t any. But that’s where easy stops. Angora hair is very short and slippery. I spun from a cloud of angora with lots of twist. It was hard to keep it even, and boy,oh, boy it was fly away – there was angora hair flying all over. Of all of the fibers I’ve spun this was the one most interesting to my little boy and my dog. So I ...

This week’s spins in the great Must Spin spinathon are Alpaca and Jacob.   First up Huacaya Alpaca: The Alpaca fiber I have is more dusty than dirty, and since Alpacas have no lanolin I opted for a quick warm soak in SOAK wash, and it worked fine. The clean fiber had a fair amount of vm, but it’s so silky that I was sure it would all fall out when I combed it. I was right. It was almost magic and I wish vm would fall out of wool that way! I have never processed Alpaca before and have never spun from anything but commercially processed top. I spun straight from the comb, worsted, with just a little ...

Today’s Must Spin is a double. Southdown is on both Deb Robson’s list of animal fibers to spin and on her rare and endangered wools list. Southdown was another springy down fiber. This fleece was dirty, but I learned my lesson from my last down type fiber and didn’t over wash. I was in a hurry to spin this one [soft! springy! must spin!] and I learned a different lesson this week. When prepping elastic fibers, they don’t like to be rushed. I carded the fiber on my drumcarder and I did it quickly. The result was a whole lot of nepps in my batt. I wish I had flicked instead of carding, or had ...

This week I’ve spun adult Mohair and American Tunis from Deb Robson’s list of Must Spins. Mohair: Mohair is everywhere, blended into lots of commercial yarns for a little shine and a little fuzzy halo. I’ve never worked with adult mohair by itself before. The locks took 3 washings with Power Scour before they were clean and shiny. I combed the locks and boy are they tough! I never really understood how a spinner could bend or break combs before and now I do. I overloaded my combs on my first go round and ended up taking almost half off, rather than tug and fight with it. Once I used a smaller ...