Mystery fleece, and more mittens

We moved recently, and in doing so unearthed a couple of fleeces of unknown provenance in dusty plastic bags. One of them is a lovely reddy brown, greyish-reddy-brown in places, that was already washed. Excellent. I spent a few hours one afternoon pulling it apart into locks:



This is my favourite part, because you get to do some quality control and some colour sorting and really get acquainted with the wool before you put any more effort into it. I feel a lot of love for this one. It is very wooly and a little bit crisp, not soft, and the little sample I spun and plied (from a flicked lock) was very substantial-feeling yarn. I'm not really fussed about not knowing what it is, but if anyone wants to have a shot at identifying it, here's a representative lock:



Delicious.

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In other news, I am indeed knitting Liidia's gloves, with some modifications:

1. There's no way that a 90-stitch mitten at this gauge would fit my hand. The main pattern repeat is 18 stitches, so I'm just taking one out, and working them over 72 stitches instead. The cuff pattern is a 6-stitch repeat so it's not an issue there.
2. Because mine is smaller around than the pattern says, I'll only reserve 16 stitches for the thumb when I get to that point.
3. I'll make them mittens instead of gloves! In keeping with the mitten vow.

I present this photograph as part one of a lesson in why you should block all your knitting even things that aren't lace even things that are small even parts nobody will see. It's lumpy and ugly now, but just you wait.