Stringcat Knits!

So, I have this Grafton Batt…

I started to spin it a couple days ago, and now I have about two thirds of a bobbin filled with it.  The fiber doesn’t look shiny, but it really is!  Just look at this picture of the yarn!

There’s only wool in there.  No sparkle fiber, no glitter.  The corriedale is just… naturally shiny. :)  I like it.  The fiber is so smooth that it sparkles in the light!

Enough about the shinyness of the fiber, now look at the actual yarn!  This is one of the smoothest, most even yarns that I’ve spun.  I haven’t measured the wraps per inch of it yet, but I’m guessing it’s somewhere around fingering or sport weight.  This yarn will be left as singles when I finish spinning. it.  The singles are slightly overtwisted.  I’ve seen a lot of things knitted with overtwisted singles, and I wanted to give it a try myself.  So, here’s what I’m doing. :)

The batt seemed to go on forever when I unrolled it.  It is The.  Biggest.  Batt.  That.  I.  Have.  Ever.  Seen.  Seriously.  Biggest batt ever.  The thing was about a yard square.  But it’s spinning pretty fast, I have around a third spun.

What I did to spin the yarn was this.  First, I stripped the batt into strips about 2-3 inches wide.  Then I pre-drafted each strip just a tiny bit to straighten out the fibers a little more.  I wanted to spin the yarn worsted style.  So, that’s what I did.  starting at one end of a strip, I spun the fiber with short backward draft.  And I just kept spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and…

And the color!  It’s so pretty!  It’s different shades of blue and black carded together into the batt.  The bright blue is shinier than the rest of the colors.  And the black really makes the yarn look pretty.  I think it evens out the brighter colors a little. :)