Cashmere, cashmere, cashmere

First let me start by saying that my parents are awesome for a million different reasons that I don't have space for in a blog post. But this Christmas one of the forms that said awesomeness took had to do with fiber. The Woolery, an excellent purveyor of all things fibery has a wishlist feature. So, when my mom asked what I wanted for Christmas, I pointed her to my wishlist at The Woolery. She wasn't able to find my wishlist, so she called them and put her gift budget in their very capable hands. What resulted was box of fiber that represented a sampler of almost everything they have to offer. There are several kinds of wool including Merino, alpaca, llama, angora, mohair, camel and cashmere. So, you will likely be seeing a posts about all of these fibers and what I'm choosing to do with them, but I thought I would start with cashmere.  It's a good thing that I got this as a gift, because at $20-$22/oz it's unlikely that I would have bought this fiber for myself (I'm cheap, remember.) I'm sooo glad though that I had the experience and if you're going to shell out that kind of dough for fiber, I can highly recommend the cashmere from The Woolery. It was a very high quality. You know when you go into a department store and see a sign for cashmere sweaters at some ridiculously low price and then you touch it and realize that the price isn't so ridiculous after all. This is not that cashmere. This stuff feels like heaven. It's so smooth and fine.

Since this was my first experience spinning cashmere, I decided not to blend it with anything, but to spin it by itself to get a feel for it. The carded roving drafts easily. Because the fibers are short, I recommend not treadling too fast or you'll lose your leader. But this fiber feels so good, you won't want to spin too fast, because 2 oz goes by quickly.

Cashmere varies in color from white to dark brown or medium gray. On their listing at The Woolery, they say the color is light brown although their picture looks sort of dishwater blonde. Thank goodness it's not that color. Honestly, seeing that picture next to that price would normally have turned me off, but mine was actually a very nice light woodsy brown with just a little bit of a sheen to it once it's spun.

I made about 140 yards of 2-ply sport weight yarn. I was pleasantly surprised at how much my yarn I got from my 2 oz of fiber. When I fulled it the twist seemed to tighten a little and the result is a very springy yarn.

Now I just need to figure out what I'm going to do with it. I could put the yarn in the shop to sell. Then again, it feels so good I might want to make a scarf just to keep my hands on it.