The Story
This breed of sheep originated in the Burgundy region of France, specifically in Charolles canton, during the 19th century. The book I'm using as a reference describes the sheep as "muscular" which I do find a bit weird. Mostly bred for meat, they were officially recognised in 1974, and spread from France to North America via Britain in the mid 1990s.
The Spin
The wool is soft with bounce, it has excellent squish. I'm not convinced this would be great for next-to-skin projects, but definitely a cosy jumper. I spun this mostly long draw on a supported spindle; this wasn't for any particular reason, I just felt comfortable doing it that way. I plied it on my espinner because I find plying on a spindle far too painful to do. When spinning on the spindle, I knew I was spinning thin as is my preference, but I didn't realise just how thin.
The Statistics
With an average micron count of 23-27, it is a soft wool of a similar thickness to merino, but with a very short staple length of 1.5-2.5 inches. The wool I have is combed top, so all of the fibres are aligned and processed, making the staple length I'm working with around 4 inches. I did a two ply, and it's at 32 wpi [i.e.: it has 32 wraps per inch, it goes around an inch 32 times]. That... That's quite thin. Granted I did lose some yardage to what I refer to as "plying profanity" - namely when I'm plying and things go wrong (I sneeze, my hand tremors decide to happen, you get the idea) and I have to rejoin the singles together again before continuing to ply. With that in mind, I managed to get 114 yards out of a 25g sample. For context, 50g of double knit acrylic yarn averages (in my experience) at around 190 yards.
The Slides
All in all, I'd probably use this wool for a cardigan or a shawl that would not be next-to-skin. While I think this would make great gloves, I personally find it too textured for my hands to tolerate unless I had another pair of gloves underneath for extra warmth and layers. It was an easy fibre to spin comfortably, I didn't have to do anything extra, I just spun as I usually would. I am ridiculously impressed at how thin I managed to get this. I was not expecting to spin this lace weight consistently. I'm so happy with it.
The Sources
The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook. C. Ekarius, and D. Robson. Storey Publishing, 2011. Kobo and StoryGraph links
The Field Guide to Fleece. C. Ekarius, and D. Robson. Storey Publishing, 2013. Kobo and StoryGraph links
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