This is what happens when I try to spin wool to make socks.

I originally purchased the wool to spin this yarn intending to make socks. after spinning the yarn (I hadn’t yet mastered, at that point, the art of controlling the type of yarn that I spun,) I decided that it wasn’t strong enough to sustain the wear that are required of socks. Since socks were out of the question, I decided to weave a shawl with the yarn.

The warp and the weft for this shawl is yarn that I spun from the purple and golden orange wool batts that I purchased at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. The yarn was spun on a Louet S10, and is a single that was washed and blocked before being used for weaving. Four skeins resulted for the spinning of the pound of wool, with the two larger skeins being used for winding the warp and the two smaller skeins used as weft.

Below is a close up view of the weave structure. It is a 3-1 rib twill. The pattern requires 8 harnesses, and the sett is 16 e.p.i.