A Tale of Two Sweaters - Part 2

A couple of months ago, I told you about the CVM/Romeldale fleece my friend Diane and I bought at the California Wool Festival. I showed you the wool when it came back all clean and fluffy from Morro Fleece Works. It's time for an update.
I finished spinning my half of the fleece last week.  I ended up with just over 2100 yards of yarn.  It is soft and springy and I an quite enamored.

 What's interesting, though, is how Diane and I have taken the same raw material and come up with two very different results.

In the middle is a staple length of the wool, ready for spinning. On the left is my yarn. On the right is Diane's. I spun a very airy woolen single with minimal twist, then made a 4-ply. With washing, the plies have fused into a lovely, cohesive yarn that knits like a dream. Diane spun a much smoother single, then plied it with a natural brown merino. The merino is slightly lighter in color than our CVM, and the 2 plies are much more clearly defined. Her yarn is also soft and elastic, but has a smoother surface, producing better stitch definition in the finished fabric.

Diane is knitting a gorgeous seed stitch pullover with staghorn cables. Sorry, no link to a pattern. Diane is designing this for herself, because that's how she rolls. You can see how her choice of yarn structure produced a cable that is crisply defined against the background texture.

My yarn is destined to make Crane Creek.

See how my woolen spun yarn makes a blurrier, less defined texture?
I'll show you both sweaters when they are done, but it may be awhile. Diane is nearly finished with hers, with only a sleeve and a half to go. My Crane Creek has not progressed past the swatch stage, and is likely to remain on hold for a while. I came back from Stitches West with tonnage of yarn for new design commissions (hooray!), so personal knitting is on the back burner.