I have finished spinning a 4-ounce batch of Debouillet roving. It seemed to be taking a long time. I understand why now. The 4 ounces of Debouillet (give or take a bit) yielded about 665-670 yards of 2-ply yarn.
The roving had some VM and a few neps and noils. But it drafted beautifully. It was relatively short-stapled though not excessively short, very fine and soft, and kind of sproingy/bouncy, a bit like merino though lacking its cottony texture and more like Rambouillet. Well, duh -- the Debouillet breed of sheep was started with a Rambouillet-Merino cross. (The Delaine Merino, to be precise, thus the name Debouillet.)
I've spun Debouillet before -- a bit of brown roving that gave me 365-ish yards of a somewhat shiny 2-ply from about 3 ounces of roving.
The white yarn I just spun is more matte than shiny, even though both rovings were from sheep of the same breed.
Dunno what I'll do with the yarn.
I'm not sure what I'll spin next, but hopefully the default yarn from that future batch won't be so fine! (Default yarn meaning the yarn I naturally spin without having to think about it, which is a function of the roving and the wheel and my mood, but mostly the roving and its drafting friction and how that interacts with the wheel I'm using to spin it.) I don't mind having fine yarn, but it takes longer to spin than thicker yarn. And sometimes I want that quicker gratification. I don't really want to engineer my yarn, either, since I spin for the sheer enjoyment of it rather than to create a specific yarn. I like zoning out as I spin rather than counting treadles and continuously referring to a reference sample for thickness and all those other things needed to create a consciously designed yarn.
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