Spinning for a Sweater

I am newly in love with spinning (again). So soothing and mesmerizing to watch the fibre slip through your fingers. I love the fleece I'm working with. The natural colours range from silver to caramel to darker brown/grey. Isn't it lovely? Just a flick at either end and the staples are ready to spin. I love having a basket next to my chair, just waiting until I have a few moments to spin.



I am spinning this whole fleece to make the Sunrise Circle Jacket by Kate Gilbert. It's going to be a 2 ply. The sample which I plied and washed was a little too thin, so I'm aiming a for a bit more thickness in my singles which means I should be able to get gauge and a nice firm-ish jacket fabric without too much messing around. Optimistic, aren't I?

Here are my first 2 bobbins, numbered so I can remember to ply the first with the last. I get a ridiculous amount of satisfaction just looking at them. Another gratuitous close up of the singles.

Now, my only problem is I did not account for wastage when embarking on this project. I started with a 1.2 kg fleece. As someone who has never spun greasy fleece before, or spun for this large a project, I blithely thought that would be enough. Hmmmm, maybe not. Some of the weight is in the grease (duh!) which will be washed out and then you lose some fibre during preparation, short bits, matted locks, and swatching. I'm getting in the neighbourhood of 200 g spun fibre on each bobbin and originally thought I'd end up with 6 bobbins but as of today that estimate has come down to 5 bobbins. I'm starting to get a little feeling of panic. The yarn indicated in the pattern is put up in 50g balls, they have about 100 metres in each. The size I'll make calls for 10 balls. So, I need to end up with about 1000 metres of finished yarn, say 1200 to be safe. As the yarn in the pattern only comes out to 500g maybe I'll be okay, but it's very softly spun, and I think my yarn is going to be heavier per metre. Oh well, I guess I'll find out eventually. Stay tuned!