first shetland fleece! (on my own)

i washed 4.2 oz, which came out beautifully, yesterday morning.

dry, it came out as 3.2oz, of which i put 0.7 oz directly on the blending board around midnight, as i couldn't sleep, and made a loose rolag to spin up this morning.

i seemed to have made laceweight without trying for anything in particular (mine's the white on the right; the pink on the left is commercial alpaca laceweight)  so then i trec again, to make it more like fingering.

of course, who knows what it will turn out in the end, but i separated the single on the bobbin (it's down at the bottom end) with some fox colored commercial roving that i used for leader, spun up the rest and transferred it to the plying bobbin to set the twist overnight.

here's my ingenious plying system:

all this took about two hours this morning. next i want to try lightly carding the fleece before blending, to see how that spins up tomorrow, after i ply this.  i spun this, mostly, long draw, with some difficulty with tufty bits, so i want to see it i can smooth that out some.  i want to make  a soft fingering, but soft of what i'm really going for, whatever weight it comes out at this point.  trying to remember if i'm supposed to weight woolen while drying...need to find out before tomorrow