Category: Corriedale

Vuelta haul so far, L-R:

Blue-yellow 2 ply fractal spin from a space-dyed braid (Unresolved School Uniform Trauma), 642m (roughly 2/12Nm, lace/sock);

Yellow-purple 2 ply fractal spin from a gradient-dyed braid (Golden Sunset), Aran-weight, 156m (abt 2/3Nm);

2 skeins of chain-plyed warping yarn from a cone (World Of Wool), over-spun for strength, Aran weight, for weaving with the orange centre-pull ball which I spun from a batt during TdF23 – procrastination much?

Still to come – more space-dyed braids from stephscraftybits! I’ve just started the sugared-almond Jean Harlow one, which is also coming up rather fine. And if you’ve been paying attention, I did say “more braidS”, plural.

Yes, I went off and bought another 3 braids and a batt from stephscraftybits. A bottle-green/wine combo on Bergschaf, which I have named The Parting Glass – I’ll definitely at least start this.

Then, this cheerful 100% Lonk braid, described as green/red/pink. The green is barely there, and a bit browny. I might take it out when I unwind the braid, depending on whether it looks okay.

The third, God forgive Steph for inflicting her irresistible colour choices on me, is BLUE, green and grey, on Charollais fleece. Charollais is a fibre I’ve wanted to try for a while, that’s not why I bought it. I… just… liked it??

The batt is a mystery blend of black, white and grey fibres – probably merino. They’re laid one on top of the other, so it’ll probably spin up as grey. It’ll be a relief from all this blue…

Allez-oop!

Spinning La Vuelta Dolce!

Which probably makes no sense whatsoever…

This lovely yellow-purple gradient (craftwithcolour on Etsy) has lots of tweedy nepps and wanted to be thick-and-thin, which is very much not me, but you gotta work with what you have. I have no idea what to do with it when it’s done – it’s not the kind of yarn I usually knit with… This is the first half completed.

Speaking of not me, the blue/yellow Corriedale is spinning up fine and taking forever. I’m about halfway through the first bobbin’s worth of flooff. I have decided to name it Unresolved School Uniform Trauma.

Tally-ho!

La Vuelta a España runs from 23 Aug to 14 Sept 2025, soooo…..

Naturally, La Vuelta a Lana does too!

I have only fun stuff to spin this time. The sparkly Golden Sunset braid from craftwithcolour is first up. I didn’t get around to it on TdF or TdFF, partly because it arrived late, having to travel with my niece when she came home from uni, but mostly because I loaded up on extra spins.

Then, because I enjoyed spinning the rose/olive Merino Tencel braid from stephscraftybits, I bought some more of her braids! One is a Merino Tencel braid in sugared-almond colours that remind me of Jean Harlow’s evening dresses, rose, brown, grey and powder blue.

The second is 100% Bergschaf in bottle-green and wine. I’ve never spun Bergschaf before – no idea what to expect there. Some people say it’s soft, others that it’s coarse. The braid itself doesn’t feel particularly soft to me, but not so bad that I’d put it in the to-be-socks box.

And the third… is blue. Royal & Prior uniform blue. And yellow, obviously. But the blue is nonetheless precisely the colour of the R&P gymslip that I had to wear 5 days a week for 5 years of my life, and which I hated with a passion that is unmatched to this day. But I kept coming back to this braid. It talked to me. It whispered that it wasn’t really that bad – just misunderstood – and wouldn’t it make a beautiful plaid shawl if I wove it on a continuous bias tri-loom…

So yah, I have that to look forward to…

The Golden Sunset and blue/yellow are divvied up into 1/2, 1/4 and 2 x 1/8 parts for fractal spinning. This time, I actually weighed everything to ensure they all worked out to be the appropriate weights when divided. Fiddly, and my scale isn’t cooperative with low-density volumes, but I got there. It’ll be interesting to see if it helps!