Saturday, January 31, 2015

Shetland Sock Yarn


The Shetland fleeces I was having spun have returned to me from the mill. I've got many colours in the flock, but my numbers of any one colour aren't high enough to process such a variety yet, so I divided the fleeces into white-ish and brown-ish.

From 90 lbs of skirted fleece I got 71.5 lbs of finished yarn (which includes 30% nylon added at the mill). So, about 68.5 lbs net fleece. This means I did a good job skirting to get such a high yield.

The yarn is a single ply lace weight, 70% wool 30% nylon. It is actually a single ply of what would ordinarily be plied double to make a sport yarn.





It gives about 23 wraps per inch. This is a little finer than my Columbia lamb 1 ply which runs around 21 wpi. 

Now for the test drive:




Here is a pair of Size Large, knit for me with the 72 cylinder and 36 ribber on the Verdun 47. I knit is a quarter turn looser on tension than my typical sock yarn setting - because this is the setting I use for the 70/30 Columbia lamb. The knit was a little looser than I like, so next pair I will use my standard tension setting.






With the lace weight yarn, wearability is always my concern - which is why I had this spun with a nylon content. I'll wear these socks for a while and see how they hold up or if I need to add wooly nylon to heels and toes, or whatever else presents itself in the trial.

This pair of socks weighs only 46 grams. Yikes! That's fine. Typical sock yarn would be ~90 grams in this size and pattern.

This is actually the first pair of socks I've knit since Christmas. Puppy training is my full time distraction at the moment, and the wool shack is definitely not the place for a teething mid-training puppy.

I am excited, however, to finally have my first pair of natural coloured home grown socks!




4 comments:

  1. Very nice .They should wear well even in your rubber boots.

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  2. Lovely yarn, lovely socks!
    Blogless Mary Lou

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  3. That is quite the accomplishment, Doug! Well done! Home-grown Shetland socks.

    I am very happy for you. Wear them well!

    Hope that Jonah's training is going well, and that's he's a good boy...

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  4. They are beautiful...swoon...
    What if you knit with two strands at once?

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