Monday, June 17, 2013

Icelandic Wool



I've had some Icelandic roving  from one of these beauties since last fall's Oregon Flock and Fiber Show and finally got around to spinning it.  


It turned out a gorgeous color, but hmmm ... it is a lot more rough and scratchy than I'd hoped!  Icelandic sheep have two layers of fleece - a soft under layer called the thel and a coarser outer layer called the tog.  The roving I bought had the thel and tog mixed together.  

I knitted up a small sample and I think it'd make wonderful outerwear like outer sweaters or caps and probably long lasting socks.  However, I wouldn't want it anywhere that touched my skin!  So I'll be making a trip to a Northwest farm that has thel roving and also some that has a little bit of tog mixed in and give those a try.  I did read that one of the traditional uses of finely spun tog was as embroidery thread, which sounds very intriguing - I'll definitely have to try that!

Happy Creating!  Deborah

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