Wool of the week: Targhee edition

Targhee
This week, the wool breed I am highlighting is Targhee. All of the sheep breeds I have covered in my Wool of the Week series so far have been older breeds—consider last week’s merino from the 1200’s, consider even the Gulf Coast Native, which evolved circa the 1500’s-1600’s. The Targhee breed did of course come from older sheep breeds—Rambouillet, Lincoln, Corriedale, but it was actually cross-bred and developed in 1926 in Idaho by the USDA (Robson and Ekarius, 307). The breed is dual purpose (raised for meat and wool) and I thought it was really cool to be working with what I would consider a very American wool.
I thought the raw wool had a beautiful crimp to it, not like super super crimpy, but enough that it was unquestionable. The wool was (as it sits) my favorite I have spun in this series. It slipped from my fingers near-effortlessly, catching on itself just enough. I was happy with the evenness of twist, even if I didn’t have the most consistent diameter.
I dyed it with the merino from last week in a purple dyebath. And the same as the merino, there were areas that didn’t have total absorption of the dye—or rather, it absorbed all there was and I should’ve added more dye… but the fiber I dyed with it was even and vivid, and stayed that way spun-up. I spun the bit of dyed wool on my great wheel, which I needed to park and draft in order to keep the drive band on—even though I carded the wool into rolags. Again, could possibly be my rolag technique but I don’t really know…
I do have to say that I’m very happy with it and would definitely look into buying more raw Targhee wool—which is more than I can say for the merino… I would rather purchase that because the commercially available options for that breed are popular and material-relatively inexpensive. The Targhee wasn’t a hassle to get clean, prep was easy, it dized well and made the perfect little sweet rolls for spinning. The finished yarn looked clean and elegant, and made me feel much better about my skill set than last week’s spin. It’s all a learning process though! Thank you for reading this week and I hope you enjoy s but if a transition to weekly updates with this series on my website! I am still on my social media break, and it is treating me well. Hope all my readers are well, blessings!