For the past almost a week, I’ve been working on finishing up a project last summer. I’ve been spinning up the remaining Mocha Swirl blend. This is a blend I created two or three years ago, but I’ve never worked with more than a sample.

This blend is 60% suri alpaca and 40% huacaya alpaca. The suri is not particularly good fiber – in fact the first time I spun the suri, my yarn approximated baling twine in texture, color, and oder. I have since learned to work with this batch of fiber. I wash it more. I make sure it’s well carded. I try to avoid folding the fiber because when it folds, it really pokes. In addition, there are buzzy bits in the suri – weak spots or partial shedding or something. I can’t card those out, so I have to work with them. One of the things I have discovered over the years is that this fiber does well when blended with huacaya. I can take not-very-good suri fiber, not-very-soft huacaya fiber, and achieve a yarn that feels softer than either of the input fibers.

I finished spinning the singles Thursday evening, and started plying. I kept plying and plying and plying. My legs started getting sore. The bobbin kept getting full. I did really well, not breaking a strand in plying.

The bobbin got really full. I wasn’t sure the yarn would all fit, but then one bobbin of singles ran out.

And I did a pretty good job of balancing the singles between the two bobbins.

I almost didn’t get the whole thing on one bobbin. If you look close, you can see light between the flyer and the yarn – in places. It was that close!

This evening, I pulled the yarn off the bobbin into a skein. Make that two skeins. After being so careful in the spinning and so careful in the plying and not breaking a strand, I broke the yarn while skeining it off the bobbin.

1132 yards. 12.4 ounces. Yes, I got it all on a single Louet bobbin and I almost got it all into one skein.

It’s spun fairly fine. As you can see in some of the pictures, it’s a rather hairy yarn. That’s a function of the fiber – and this yarn is a case of taking what the fiber gave me. I’m looking for a good project for the yarn. The yarn is uneven and has slubs, bumps, and a lot of hair. The project must work with those terms. You can see from the picture that the yarn is fairly fine. The suri content means the yarn won’t have a lot of memory, but ought to have great drape. I don’t want to be trying to rip this yarn back very much, so if it’s a knit project, it needs to be simple enough I don’t make a lot of mistakes. Any thoughts?

Mark the mocha swirl roving out of the stash. It’s yarn in need of a project. I spun one bobbin of singles and did all the plying in 2008, so I’ll credit myself with 6.2 ounces of spinning for the year.