(Picture: Michelle Reilly’s Lincoln lamb fleece bought at Maryland Sheep and Wool a few years ago by my parents, who watched it being sheared and bought it on the spot, plied with mohair.)

I followed my stat links to discover a comment I’d left on someone else’s blog two years ago. I offer it here with a few tweaks for clarification, since it’s out of context, and with additions to the original.

One comment for people who’d like one of my favorite shortcuts: I’ve found that if I spin separately and then ply together two different fibers–merino and mohair, or even two different breeds of sheep–and then dye the plied skeins, each of the fibers will take up the color at a different rate from the other, and you get a mild barbershop-pole effect, knitting up into a heathery look. Silk takes up dye quite a bit more slowly than animal fibers; I was given some Kidsilk Haze that needed to be a deeper, brighter color than the original dusty lilac, and when I overdyed it, the silk just sparkled in the background, being quite a bit lighter than the mohair fuzz. Much prettier than the original unicolor yarn.

I have since then bought silk/animal fiber blend yarns in light colors a number of times simply for the joy of experimenting with them.