Velma's World: wool breeds

Monday, October 12, 2009

It's a Variegated Mutant!

CVM Lock
Originally uploaded by Velma's World

Yep, that's right, a California Variegated Mutant. No, no, not ME, the WOOL! Today I carefully scoured some caremel-colored locks of a CVM/Merino cross fleece to send to a friend in Australia, & this be them.

Not familiar with CVM? Let me tell you all about it, then! CVMs are a badger-faced color variation of Romeldale, which itself is a cross of Rambouillet with Romney. CVM is therefore quite soft & fine: ~60-64 on the Bradford Scale & approximately 20-25 microns, with an exceptionally fine crimp. First bred in California (hence the name), CVM is fairly uncommon, but I'm lucky to have a friend in my local fiber guild that raises the breed; this fleece came from one of her sheep. (Visit the American Romeldale/CVM Association website for more info).

I only processed a bit of the fiber to send out, as I really abhor scouring (somewhat allergic to lanolin; ironic, huh?), particularly with wool as fine as this which wants to felt if looked at crosswise; I'm putting the rest of the raw fleece into my Etsy shop. I will also be offering a very dark brown, almost black fleece as well.

Besides several hours of work cleaning this wool, I also put away my outdoor dye studio in anticipation of tomorrow's predicted rains. Now I need to figure out if I want to schlep all that stuff in & out to suit the weather this winter, or if I can/want to set up in the garage. Hmmm... Finally, Cole & I shook most of the apples out of our tree today, trying to beat that rain; time to figure out what to do with 3 bushels of apples! All in all a very productive day. See what happens when you don't spend all your time on Twitter, Velma?

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Cormo Love

My first new fiber experiment out of the Big Pile O' Fiber (see yesterday's post) was to try the Cormo wool. After following jsandell around Ravelry, hearing her extoll the virtues of Cormo, and drooling over her beautiful Cormo batts, I decided that was a good place to start. So I pulled out the bag that contained red dyed, unpicked locks and sat down at the wheel.

Not red as much as it is a lovely salmon pink, as it turns out, the wool still has a bit of lanolin in it, so I spun it "in the grease" to yield a water-resistant yarn. The small amount of VM came out pretty easily, too, as I teased it open a lot as I spun, because it was fairly well-felted. What a dream though! It is soooo soft, with a cotton-y hand, and spongy (I think that is due to the high crimp, which I tried to show in this photo; it can be seen best in the large version).

After reading this thread on Ravelry, I'm wondering if maybe my prep-method and style of spinning for this yarn didn't really take advantage of the wonderful properties of Cormo. I think I might card the rest of it before spinning. But I still like the yarn that came out of it. The Cormo yielded the

lovely WoolyBear style yarn shown here on the bobbin. (Sorry the color seems to be off slightly; its not such a deep pink.)

Wanna try it yourself? Here's a list of breeders in the US, which will provide some links to farms selling Cormo fiber. Have fun!