Shrinkage

The Rose Garden handspun Merino skein lost 5" after washing and drying, which is typical for Merino because washing lets the fiber revert to its proper elasticity (processing and spinning stretch the fibers out). I could have weighted the skein for drying, and it would have lost much less length, but hard yarn is no fun to knit with. It'll be blocked severely after I knit the lace scarf anyway, so the length now is sort of irrelevant.

This skein is 3.1 ozs and 267 yds (see? I have a hard time making 100yds per oz). Total yardage: 483 yds (5.1 ozs), plenty for whatever lace scarf pattern I decide to knit. Both skeins are in the pic.

I started spinning the cormo last night- it's coming along very nicely, though the 2-ply yarn is nowhere near as smooth as it would be if I was using professionally prepared roving or a more coarse wool. Cormo is also a fine, highly crimped wool, and the ends snap back and sometimes break off in carding, forming bumps (neps). Even carding carefully, I ended up with plenty of neps, and I'm not picking them all out as I spin. In the interest of not taking 6 months to spin 8 ozs of yarn, I decided that a lightly textured yarn would be fine. The lightest and darkest colors are just accents- the majority of this yarn will be the middle-range tan. This little skein is all of the lightest cream wool from that 1lb fleece- it's .6 ozs and 46 yds (again with the not making 100 yds per oz...) of extremely soft and squooshy yarn (and yes, a fingering weight yarn can be squooshy).