Spinning: Now with bits of Bactrian Camel!

I once spun and wove up a scarf made out of baby camel fiber.



The purple/yellow was a merino silk blend, but the camel colored yarn all came from a baby camel. Weaving doesn't bias if your yarn is out of sorts with balance, so you can use singles without worry.



It's fantastic to work with. Camels are double-coated, and this is the finest downy undercoat. It's like cashmere. The outer coat is terribly scratchy and rough, and much more hair-like. The undercoat is just buttery soft and wonderful to spin.

Here it is, blended with silk.



I had some of this tucked away in my stash that was leftover from my scarf project. Lucky me, my December AVFKW club also contained a bundle of camel silk blend, along with some dyed Polworth.



The color is "Rosemary". I took the opportunity to use up as much stash as possible in one hit and blended my existing 2 oz of Camel/silk with the club fiber.



I spun it up into an Aran-weight 3-ply. It's lovely- very slinky and drapey. I'm hoping the bit of Polworth gives it at least a little memory when knitted up.



The color is very subtle. It's overwhelmingly camel-colored, with just a hint of the purples and greens in the dyed bit of fiber.

Oh, and the static really killed me here. Every time I sat down to spin, I would get covered from head to toe with staticky bits of camel down. It clung to everything, and then after it came out of the wash I had bits of camel felt netted into my clothes. I really recommend spinning these downy fibers when the radiator has been turned off and the humidity is higher. It tames it and makes the whole process much more pleasant.

I keep a spray bottle with a mix of water, vodka (the cheapest stuff is just fine) and a few drops of essential oils (I'm a fan of a blend of lavender, eucalyptus and tea tree oil). I spray down the fiber before touching it- not to soak it but it does help with the flyaways. I also use this as my all-purpose "Smell Better" spray- yoga mats, shoes, linens- whatever has a bit of a funky odor, this will take care of it without overly perfuming.



I ended up with about 120 yards Aran weight from 4 oz of fiber. Not the best yardage, but enough to make an awesome warm hat.

FO- Oatmeal Cardigan

Last year at Rhinebeck, I found the most beautiful Romney fleece from the Prebles farm in Maine. I washed and processed this by myself.

Fleece:


In January, I started to make the Batts:


Laceweight Singles:


Which 3-plied up to a DK weight:


Which gave me a fabric that I was happy to work with:


Which then became my Oatmeal Cardigan:


I love it. It's by far my favorite handspun garment that I have made.

I started this on the train on my way down to DC for a weekend but worked on it in fits and starts as it soon because way too warm to touch a big woolly mess. I finished the sleeves when I was up in Maine this summer and the rest of the sweater just flew along.



I'm finding it the perfectly casual fall sweater that cuts the chill nicely.

I did do some modifications. Most of them had to do with the fact that I spun this yarn up woolen- light and lofty- as opposed to worsted, which would have given me a denser, heavier yarn with less drape but more stitch definition. There is a cable on the yoke but my yarn is really too fuzzy for it to pop the way I would have liked it to. The pattern called for a small cable detail on the sleeves, but I left that out after I realized that it looked like a fuzzy mistake. I did another modification on the sleeves as well- the pattern called for increases every 4 rows, and I changed that to every 6 rows to get a more fitted sleeve.





I also decided not to use buttons, but I found these delicate little pewter claps at M&J trimming on 6th ave.







I'm pretty much in love with it.

The specs:

I used about 1000 yards of handspun DK weight yarn for this project. I actually have another 300 yards leftover as well as I'm terrible at guessing how much I've actually spun. I used US size 6 (4mm) needles to get the gauge of 18 stitches per 4 inches.

I made the 40" size thinking it would be roomy, but ya know, with the variations of the handspun,the actual size was more like 38", which gives it some negative ease. The pattern was the Oatmeal Cardigan by Amy King from the Winter 2009 Spinoff magazine.