Fortunately, the fleece was fairly clean to start with, but, after a wash, it combed up really smoothly. To me, the staple length seems the longest of any fleece that I've worked with so far, including the Bluefaced Leicester. I don't know whether this is a feature of this particular animal or the breed as a whole.
I spun the rovings on my Turkish drop spindle, then I tried out some Andean plying with the help of Shiela's very useful video, followed by some experimentation with rainbow dyeing. I ended up with two very psychedelic skeins of wool. The first was very bright indeed. The one pictured here is the second skein, dyed after I had diluted the dyebath slightly. I started off using 1 whole teaspoon of dye to one 250ml jam jar of water and vinegar solution which is way too deep for what I wanted to achieve. Next time, I'll try just one quarter of a teaspoon, maybe even less. I'm using Ashford wool dyes and I notice on the page about microwave dyeing on their website that they suggest one eighth of a teaspoon of dye per jam jar with two tablespoons of vinegar.
I'm so enamoured with my Lleyn spinning experience, though, that the breed has just shot to the top of my shortlist for sheep to keep on the field.
