Targhee is an American breed of sheep, developed at the Experimental Sheep Station in Dubois, Idaho in the early 1900s. They wanted a versatile sheep that would be good for wool or lamb meat, so they chose foundation stock of Rambouillet (Spanish/French/German), Corriedale from New Zealand, and the British longwool Lincoln breed. This particular fiber blend was from the Nest Fiber Studio fiber club in February 2021, hence the name Mon Coeur (My Heart).

I intended to spin this for a big handspun throw blanket I’m knitting. I think I have enough yarn but wanted to make a bit more just in case. Once I started spinning this up, though, I remembered that I don’t love targhee’s frizziness. I intentionally spun it a bit finer than the previous yarn for this blanket (a superwash merino) because if I recall correctly, targhee poofs up a lot in the finishing process. On the plus side, the bamboo and silk in this fiber provide a lovely smooth balance. In some places they have picked up the dye, but in other places it just looks like beautiful silvery threads in the fiber.

After working on this project intermittently for a while, I really started to lose steam and abandoned it. Sometimes I lose my spinning mojo, for whatever reason. It always comes back though; this time it took about 4 months. The good thing is that when I started up again, I absolutely fell in love with the colors, and fully enjoyed the rest of the spin.

After spinning, plying, washing, snapping, and drying, I ended up with a little over 300 yards of chain ply. Somehow I forgot to measure WPI but I suspect it’s a light sport weight. Will need to measure when I get ready to use it.