A bit of a pig

That's how I've come to think of the second half of a 150g braid of merino fibre I bought from Colinette.

This is what I've got left to spin up:

But, can you see those two lumpy bits?  Here's a pic of them a bit closer-up:

Lumpy, a bit matted and despite fluffing and floofing to separate the fibres, it's not going well and I'm ending up with a little pile of bits that I've pulled out each time I get past those sections.

I'm going to have a go at combing it to see if that helps, but if not, I've decided I'm going to chop those two bits out because life's too short to be wrestling with a bit of fibre that won't behave.

This started out as a braid of merino that was 5  metres long, so as I'd planned on spinning it into two singles and then ply those together, I folded the braid in half and cut it so I'd got two lengths, each of 2.5m.  The first half spun up quite nicely, but this half really is being a bit of a pig.  I've even asked on the UK Spinners group on Ravelry because there are people there who really do know what they're talking about when it comes to spinning and one response I've received says that it could be the saturation of the dye that's causing the problem, or the fibre could have become a bit fulled during the dyeing process.  It's a bit disappointing though as the colours are very nice.

This is the first half, spun up onto a bobbin:

And this is what I've spun so far of the second half:

There's definitely more dark green in the first half, so once it's plyed it will hopefully look nice.  Actually, I have no idea what it's going to look like: I just spun away without any thought or planning as to how I was going to spin it, other than it was going to be a 2ply.

Lunchtime now and then I'll get back to wrestling with the sticky bit as I'm getting to the point where I want this off my wheel so I can spin something that's a bit more friendly!

This spinning activity means that I haven't done much of anything else.  I really must try to concentrate on one thing at a time, although I probably won't!