I mentioned in my last post that the mods to the eSpinner were the second frenetic project of the year.  This is the first one.  The first spin of the year was a really unusual one for me.

Back in 2016 or 2017, a friend gave me a couple of shopping bags of llama clippings.  This is literally clipped from the animals with scissors. I stored them for some time while I decided what I wanted to do with it.  As you do.

In 2020, I washed and carded all of it to batts as one of my Tour de Fleece challenges and it sat again until around November of last year when I realized that every time I spun alpaca or llama, I would end up with migraines and severe congestion.

The plan became to spin this and return it to the person who’d gifted it to me.  (Hi Elaine!)

I budgeted about 2-3 weeks for the 470+ g (a little over 1lb) of fibre and planned to try to spin it thicker than my usual light fingering to lace weight. I spun the white up then as usual, I got busy and couldn’t spin the rest.

In January, I finally got around to giving away almost all of the camelid fibres and yarns I had here but these batts needed to be spun first to give them the best chance of ever being used.

I donned a valved N95 mask and set to work. 4 seriously long days (an estimated 20ish hours) later, the skeins were finished. This resulted in only minor congestion and the lightest of headaches each night but some really sore shoulders, neck and back thanks to peering over the mask while spinning. It’s a significant change to my usual spinning posture and not for the better.

The brown skeins are around 560yds/352g spun supported longdraw. They look about Aran weight to me. The white is about 280yds and about 120g (from memory. I gave the skeins back and didn’t keep any notes on the one skein before that but I do remember close to 850yds of yarn).  It will come out somewhere in the worsted range, I think. This is way thicker than I usually spin and it shows a little in the consistency but I’m really happy it’s finished and came out as well as it did.

That last pic is a little soft.  I realized that after I’d returned the yarn.

Since this year started, I’ve started 5 spinning projects.  This is not something I usually do.  In normal years, I have one home project and one travel project.  Finishing this spin felt necessary because 7 (including 2 carry overs from last year) feels too chaotic for me.  I’m now down to 5 with the completion of the first test skein off the eSpinner with a possible 3rd finish before the end of the month.

That will feel a lot more “normal” for me, especially since the cotton/charkha project and the flax both feel like summer projects.

I’m hoping I got my big projects out of the way for the year and will slow down now but I sort of know myself.  It’s unlikely.  I’ll find something else to obsess about.