Coopworth on the Lendrum

Lendrum-spun Louet dark Coopworth, navajo-plied.

It's my first Lendrum-spun yarn! Note that I got my Lendrum in March. Note that it has also not yet made an appearance on the blog. Which is not to say that I don't love and that I don't enjoy spinning on it - I do! - but I haven't been spinning as much as I should have, given that it's new equipment in the house and also given that I had so much time when I purchased it (strike! no class!). I blame the fibre. It's a 1/2lb bag of Louet dark Coopworth.

There's technically nothing wrong with the fibre. I just didn't enjoy spinning with it as much as I expected. And disappointed expectations are so much worse than simply having a sort of meh experience with something because you thought it was going to be the sort of amazing that makes you fall in love with it. It's much rougher than the merino I'm used to spinning with, for one, and I knew that going in, but the staple length was also much shorter than I thought it was going to be. I compared it against some merino and it was pretty similar! Which explained why the singles kept breaking while I was spinning at first: I was using the largest whorl and treadling really slowly because I was scared of going fast. Once I caught on to that, everything spun fine save for some knots I created in the fibre because of the way I handled it as I spun.

I didn't want to spin any more of this after I filled a bobbin to about 1/2 - 3/4 full, so I navajo-plied what I had, skeined it up, soaked it in water and beat it against the bathtub (so satisfying!) and hung it to dry with some hangers to weight it down. I feel like it softened up a bit after all that, so maybe I'll have the motivation to spin the rest of the bag sometime down the road?

As for right now, the rest of my SweetGeorgia fibre in Summer Skin (here and here) is being spun. Two out of three bobbins done. Much more enjoyable. Which means it should be done in much quicker fashion.