La Tricoteuse Bretonne

Toasty toes

Here in Brittany, we have the first below zero temperatures. Last week-end, the few flowers remaining in the garden were covered for the first time with iced dew :

One of the last touch of color in the garden, a sparkly marigold...

...and a dandelion seed ball, caught in the frost.

To fight this newly arrived cold and my fevery throat-nose ache, I realized my wool socks were not enough. For those special days, when nothing seems to warm you up, I needed something stronger.

And here comes the very warm socks :

They fit nice!

I followed the Smith pattern from Jane Ellison, using Silver Thaw and making a few minor changes:

- I didn't knit the leg as long
- After the heel, I added one decrease each side of the lower part, and one on the upper part. So I decreased to 40 sts instead of only 44, which made the fit less baggy for me.

Now, I think this yarn is composition wise, very interesting for socks : 50% wool for warm and confort, 25% angora for softness and much warmth, and 25% nylon for the durability. I do not think many bulky yarns fit as well the bill for thick, warm socks. And I love the colours.

I guess I am ready for another attack now ;-).

A mysterious wool

Well, it may not be a mysterious fiber to you, but for me, it was for quite a long time a question mark, something I wanted to know a bit more about. It all started a lot of years ago, as I was in one of those little shops we have in the area here in Brittany, where they sell mostly english, very classical styled clothes. This one was selling shirts and woolies for men, and I entered it to purchase a shirt as a gift for my brother. Curious as I am, I looked around as she was preparing the packet : the jumpers and cardigans were mostly in lambswool and cashmere, but I approached a particular one because of its color, and couldn't help to touch it.
It felt like cashmere, and I was very surprised to hear the lady telling me that it was geelong, didn't it feel like cashmere?

Sorry. Geelong...? A new animal, not alpaca, not sheep, not camel? What sort of animal is that? Nooo, she told me, it is wool from sheep, but sooo fine, it feels like cashmere.

I wasn't knitting at that time, but this name got imprintined in my mind. So, when I was already into knitting, I started a search for some geelong. I found some on ebay at that time, about 2, 2 1/2 years ago. Can't find the seller anymore, and there is nothing about that on the tags, though.
Going through the stash lately, for an...inventory, I found these neat little balls waiting quietly in the back of the stash. Since a few days, I am wondering why I do not have a self-knitted jumper of medium weight. Well, this would be a great yarn for this, so why not try and make a swatch?

Here are the before/after wash gauge sample. This yarn is obviously prepared for machine knitting because it feels quite dry, if softish, when knitting and during the wash, it almost didn't bleed at all, but the water got blurred like a cloud. I towel dried lightly first, then let it dry quietly. The gauge before the wash was about 20 1/2 sts/10 cm, and after the wash, only 20 sts/10 cm. So as the yarn blooms, the gauge relaxes a tiny bit. It also become really soft. I made a generous swatch, and measured it in different places, so I am quite confident with this swatch. (Ahem). I know we can still have surprises though.

Ok, so what is exactly this geelong? Through google search, I could find that geelong is a region in Australia, renowned for high quality merino wool. But does that make all wool produced in this area geelong wool? No, M'am. It is wool sheared from lambs not older than 7 months, from a particular fine wool bearing merino sheep, and from that particular area. The micron count goes as low as 17.5, when *regular* merino is 18 to 22 microns. If I found some results concerning manufactured products : there are lots of jumpers, blankets to buy, it was difficult to find much about the wool itself. What they also say is that this wool gets at its *top* from the 3rd or 4th wash. Even softer than after this blocking?

The only actual knitting yarn references I found were from Habu, a lace weight yarn(but it's discontinued), and the little knitting company with a single ply yarn named Loira.

In the book "In Sheep's Clothing", in which a lot different breeds are detailed, I found no mention about Geelong wool. What I found is another type of ultra fine merino wool, the Sharlea. In google, there is much more to find about that fiber : the fibers are finer than 17 microns, and the Sharlea ultra fine wool ranges from 12 micron to 15.5 micron. Amazing! They achieve this by carefull food, coating, sheding, and of course, carefull breeding. For comparison, high quality cashmere is less than 16 microns, so I do understand this sheep wool is as fine as cashmere. There is a Sharlea Association, and you can even sleep at a breeder's.

So this was a digression from Geelong wool, but as I was on the sheep's subject...

Now, what am I going to knit from this?

The Yarn meets the fiber maker

As my fairisle progresses only slowly, I won't inflict you with more of it, at least this time, when I have been doing some spinning : last week, I finally managed to ply the single I had spun from the Ouessant fleece Renée had gifted me. It filled only part of a bobin, because it was very difficult for me first, to tear some locks apart, then to wash & card correctly. So I achieved to get only a little bit from a fleece which was too felted, or too oily, I am not sure. As this was one of my first tries on the wheel, it was to be expected it wouldn't be as regular as I would like, but I had tremendous fun spinning these bits of wool, quite soft for most of it. I'm learning. I also added some accents of angora fiber I still have left from previous atempts on the spindle, so I hope it won't be a too scratchy yarn, once knit. Here is the resulting skein :

Funnily, the dark browny color comes out best with the flash. Without, it looks black, when in reality it is such a rich, deep, dark brown. The simgle being so irregular, I plied it navajo, as with 3 plys. This kind of plying is the main reason I needed a spinning wheel, because I never understood how to achieve this crochet-like plying with the spindle, and in the end I would like to be able to spin self-striping sock yarn.

With this skein in my hot little hands, I had to share the results with the owner, breeder, and friend of these particularly cute sheep, I name Renée. I already reported a previous visit back in June, but I can't help making more pictures when I see them. Not always easy as they tend to come very close for treats & cuddles.

This is Gary on the right, he's so friendly he will try to jump in your arms for more cuddles. But you have to bend to be at their height, so short they are :

Here a ram and his girls :

I tried some close up shots, but when too close, they want to be even closer (in the arms), and they came out blurry. Here a sample :

They are really cute and nice, and I can understand why this breed gets more and more attention, and not only in Brittany.

As for the sugar almonds : it slowly fills the bobin.