The Story
Corriedale was developed in the 1880s in New Zealand by breeding merino sheep with Lincoln and perhaps Leicester to create a breed of sheep that would do well in the areas between the grasslands of the country. A popular choice for recommending to beginner spinners, Corriedale is medium soft with a long staple length, and a lovely elasticity from the defined crimp.
The Spin
I've spun quite a lot of Corriedale. I prefer it over merino, and I know that's almost sacrilege to say. Humbug is also a particular favourite blend, so this has been delightful. Spinning this across the top means the dark brown and the white blended; I could've split them for an interesting ply, to have one dark brown ply with one white ply, but I adore the subtle shifts of colour. Once again I spun this on my supported spindle, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to do this for all the samples. Don't hold me to that though.
The Statistics
Corriedale has a huge variety in micron count, ranging from the low 20s for lambs, and up to the mid 40s for adults. Below 25 microns tends to be considered next-to-skin soft, with over 40s being a fairly rough fibre. This particular Corriedale is listed as 25-30 microns, but it is wonderfully soft. I don't want to think how many yards of Corriedale I've spun in my two and a half years of spinning. It's too much but also not enough. With a staple length of around seven inches, this is a gorgeous wool to spin. At 32 WPI and 126 yards from 25g, this is quite thin. I think I've found my default for supported spindles, and it appears to be lace weight.
The Slides
I'll always love Corriedale. You can pry this from my cold dead hands, I have several sweater spins planned that are just Corriedale. In fact, I've been working on a Corriedale support spindle spin for some time, but pictures of that will be posted when I've got progress to share. The humbug blend gives it an exceptional beauty, and I can imagine this being striped with plain sections of white and dark brown to create a weird ripple/spectrum/gradient effect... and I think I just decided to do a sweater spin doing just that. Whoops. That won't be any time soon, thankfully, but it is now on the idea list.
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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