DAPHNE - A LEICESTER LONGWOOL FLEECE

 

This lovely Leicester Longwool fleece is 1.6kg with 5inch staple.

 I bought through the Facebook group Rare Breed Sheep Fleece UK

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/898829940297091

It came from Yew tree Farm Seighford https://www.facebook.com/YTFSeighford/

The locks were easy to select and I chose to wash about a handful at a time in separate boxes in two washing up bowls each day as per earlier preparation

 https://orangecottagescrafts.blogspot.com/2020/11/dorothy-leicester-longwool-locks.html

I opened each end of the locks with a dog comb placed on one hand carder then took off with the other  hand carder and rolled straight away into rolags.

The rolags spin beautifully.

After plying I store on toilet rolls then make small skeins using hand and elbow method then wash and dry in the airing cupboard.

This wool is for a project to make a throw for my daughter she chose to have it in it's natural colour which is lovely of course. She also chose to have it crocheted.
I made two samples to get an idea of crochet hook size the one recommended for this width of wool I have spun which is about 10 wraps per inch would be 7mm, the one on the right but I decided the one on the left 10mm would be more to my liking because the looseness of the crochet makes it softer and more flexible.

I decided to do the first chain row in an even bigger hook 12mm because it tends to pull in at the start and spread out as it grows,

I chose to do 100 crochets using treble crochet stitch. Which was about 120 cms wide.

So far I have only done about 40cms depth and less than half of the fleece left so I will be needing more to finish to about 120-180 cms.

This has spread to about 140cms wide with 100 treble crochet stitches.
This is about 60cms deep and has used up the whole fleece 1.6kg unwashed. So at least one more fleece to go.