Baby, it's Cold Outside!

I welcomed the cold this year with open, albeit well-bundled, arms. It's the only excuse I have to motivate myself to stay inside, not get frostbite, and make a dent in my Romeny fleece from Rhinebeck.



It was the first really nice fleece that I got my hands on at the mad rush of the fleece sale. It's a silver-gray color and super clean. It has the big, open crimp typical of romney, but it's so soft. I always thought of Romney as a long-stapled, coarse easy-to-spin beginner's wool, but some of the fleeces I saw and touched at the sale have convinced me otherwise.



I can't find the farm tag, but I remember it came from a farm in Maine that doesn't have a website.

I flicked each lock open and ran it through the drum carder, and carded the resulting batt three times.



It was a lot of work, but in the end, i had a basket full of this:





drool

I spun up some samples before I settled on a 3-ply. I'm getting about 13 wpi.



Which, incidentally , is a good weight to try for the Oatmeal Cardigan from the Winter Spin-Off:



Fleece to Sweater projects are real time commitments, but they are a perfect long winter project. I'm having so much fun spinning this, I'm really looking forward to the next day where it's too cold and snowy to deal with going outside (unless it means going outside will get me some cantonese noodle soup).