This summer I tested my spinning abilities and the limits of my Icelandic fiber preparation by making fine singles and plying them into a fingering-weight yarn for colorwork. Yes, I proudly refer to the sheep’s natural white, gray and dark-brown (aka black) hues as colors.

This task took many tools, much time, and a loving shepherd’s amount of patience.

First, about the tools. I separated the tog from the thel and carded the thel into roving. Then I used the Lendrum double-treadle wheel gifted by my aunt to achieve a wraps per inch (WPI) of 36 in the singles. A Fiber Sprite control card helped me spin consistently across multiple bobbins of yarn.

Time began to seem unlimited as I treadled away, the barely visible white, gray and dark-brown (yes, almost black!) threads inching through my increasingly sensitive and adept fingertips. The white and gray yarn was easier to spin than the black. I spent entire mornings over coffee, then days and weeks carefully ushering through the orifice a thread so time consuming I began to think of it as gold. Neck wool from a black-and-white-spotted sheep named Checkmate, even after careful preparation and multiple cardings, the black still had minute bits of fluff and foreign matter that I meticulously picked from the drafting triangle before it could be captured in the twist. Who would ever pay enough to cover the labor costs of such a fine yarn?

Only the shepherd who raised the sheep, I decided. Spun over a summer of record-breaking heat, copious rain and other farming challenges, this yarn will become swatches, samples and prototype hats, headbands and mittens. Watch this creative space for finished products!