Tour De Fleece 2012

When the Tour de France starts next Saturday, spinners from around the world will be cheering on the cyclists by getting out their spindles and wheels.  These spinners challenge themselves to be better spinners by creating extra special, to them, yarn. This is called the Tour de Fleece and is on Ravelry.  I will be one of the Tour De Fleece spinners and have set myself several goals as I am a member of several teams.

As a member of Team Suck Less I am going to suck less at hand-carding and get Marta Jacob’s fleece carded up as much as possible. This has been hanging over me since last year’s TDF!  Team Suck Less is sponsored by Friend’s of Abby’s Yarns, an awesome group of very supportive Ravelry members.

As a member of Team Black & Beyond with Fleece Fiber Source Book, I have a fiber sampler challenge.  For this I will spin some new to me fibers. In particular, fibers I purchased last month at All About Ewe: Babydoll, Romney, and Dorset-Corriedale X.  If that isn’t enough I have some llama, yak and alpaca to try.

I am also a member of the Peloton, with walking with my spindle while spinning as my challenge.  I especially want to spin on my Jenkins Kuchulu Turkish Spindle which I purchased earlier this year.   Look isn’t the Kuchulu sweet:

As part of my training, I carded the fibers for my fiber sampler challenge and got my arms all good and ready for carding Marta Jacob.  Here are my puni-rolags, which I made after carding by rolling over a spindle shaft.  Here are the three fibers:

L-R Babydoll, Dorset-Corriedale X, Romney

I also cheated a  little bit.  I have got into hand carding so much that I didn’t want to stop.  So I started on Marta’s fleece mentioned above.  I have quite a lot of her fleece to card and I do want to get it done this year, so I carded the light gray fiber and started on the mid grays.  I did all the darker colors last year.

Marta Jacob Puni-Rolags in Light Gray

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Spinning

I feel in love with some Icelandic fiber that I got in a friend’s destash, I am probably about half way through spinning and then I want it to become part of this vest (rav link) or similar but not felted.  I am not sure what to do about the other colors. I spent along time at KDO market looking for the right blues to go with the gray-brown yarn as I want[ed] it to be a study in blue.  One question is whether this project, and other handspun projects, should be spun and knitted all from the same breed of fiber or should I mix and match.  I haven’t looked further for other Icelandic fibers so probably is will be a mixed breed vest.

In the meantime a friend on Rav started her own dyeing business, Schafenfreude Fibers, and I couldn’t resist being one of the first of her online purchasers especially with this polwarth dyed in grassy. My order number was 4.  I am so keeping that receipt.

I am still spinning the Fabulous Fibers BFL I purchased in Vermont over the summer. Slowly getting through it. This yarn also wants to be a vest but I don’t think it will work with the Icelandic yarn above.

Tour de Fleece 2011 Round Up

Ooof. I think I am spun out for a while.

Top LH corner: Jacob from Marta – gold batts, mid dark singles, white batts, white yarn 3ply and 2 ply
Top RH: Mad Colors: Wild Side
Middle L: Fabulous Fibers: Summit
Middle: Drying Shetland fleeces
Bottom L + Middle: Drachenwolle
Bottom R: Dad’s cardigan

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If you remember I had goals. So how did I do?

Goal 1: Prepare lots of Jacob. I got about 100 g carded and a further 20 g waiting for the carder. Still have a long way to go before it is all finished.

Goal 2: Wash fleeces. Thanks to members of Team Suck Less and the FOAY group on Ravelry, I found out that my water is not hot enough to dissolve lanolin. So I had to change my methods and rewash the first few lots. Despite that I am only 3.5 mesh bags away from finishing the second fleece! For this fleece I got fancy and sorted out the fiber into different categories:

Where:
A) Least compacted and long clear locks
B) Back like A but compacted
C) Sides are slightly dirty and not as soft as A or B
D) End of legs – very compacted and not soft
E) Worst, as in dirtiest, locks. Fleece was skirted which means the really nasty bits were already removed.

Goal 3: Spin on my Trindle every day. I span every day but not always on my Trindle. I did, however, spin all the fiber I intended for the Trindle.

Goal 4: Knit Dad’s cardigan. Unfortunately, the last few days have been too hot too knit a thick cardigan but before the heat dome arrived I finished the left sleeve and I’m about a third into the right sleeve.

So all in all tour de fleece 2011 was a success.

TDF Week 2

Top: Finished the left sleeve of Dad’s cardigan
Color skeins: Mad Colors wild side chain plied. Well one was chained and then plied because I couldn’t chain fast enough. The singles were spun on Habetrot’s support spindle, plying on Bosworth mini.
Middle: Windswept Pippit moorit Shetland drying
White fibre and yarn: Marta Jacob fleece in batts and span as two ply (smaller skein) and three ply on Saacht Hi-lo Spindle

TDF Day 3: Other spinning

I span something not one of my goals this morning.  Before breakfast even. I have been spinning this:

On a support spindle I bought at New Hampshire sheep and wool.

I found having it by my bed gave me something to do that was relaxing. So this morning I had enough yarn to make a 3-ply on my Bosworth mini:

You can only see the green and that was just about the only color that stayed whole. The rest barber-poled through out the skein. However, I think I quite like it. I need to wash it as I think I over plied the yarn and I need to see if it still over plied after being thoroughly cleaned and whacked.

I also combed the fiber I washed yesterday. Pippit is beautiful to comb but hard to spin because it has such long staples.

The Shetland that was not cleaned properly on Saturday seems to have cleaned up properly after three more washes. However, I bought some Power Scour for future cleaning as it took five washes in total for the water to run clear with Dawn dishsoap.

Other goals are continuing slowly. Dad’s cardigan’s sleeve is growing and my Trindle is getting fatter and the white Jacob is getting flicked.

TDF Day 2

I have finished flicking and carding the Jacob I dyed yellow. My goal this week is to flick 200 g of white so that on Saturday I can dye fiber to make a color wheel.

MD398 is not clean enough so tomorrow I am going to rewash the locks I started yesterday. Combing was tough because the fiber was so greasy. I should also look for a source of power-scourer just in case more washing isn’t enough. However, spinning the top was lovely. I adore spinning Shetland wool and sometimes wonder why I bother with anything else.

I washed some of Pippit – I need a better way to take the locks from the fleece as last night it was too late to unroll the whole fleece so I just grabbed the nearest loss bits. However, I think it was the back leg as it is covered in VM. The fiber washed up nicely; I used lower temperature water, more soap and and extra rinse at the end.

I still have a few hours and hope to spin with my Trindle and knit on Dad’s cardigan.

Tour De Fleece Day 1

Adventures with Fleece

When to the Tour de France takes place, spinners of the fiber kind join in with a Tour de Fleece. The idea is to set hand spinning goals to achieve while watching the cyclists get hot and sweaty. I have joined too many goals but it should be fun trying:

Goal 1:

Jacob Fleece - Washed

Process as much of the Jacob as possible. It is all washed but I have about a pound of a half that needs flicking and carding.

Goal 2:

Maryland 398

Windswept Pippit

Wash two Shetland Fleeces and comb and spin a sample of each.

Goal 3:
Spin on my Trindle every day and while at it, spin enough Fabulous Fibers Summit for making two swatches; regular 3 ply and Navajo 3 ply.

BFL Summit from Fabulous Fibers

Goal 4:

Knit on Dad’s cardigan as much as possible. It would be nice to be finished when I visit in August.

Swatch for Dad's Cardigan

So I joined four teams on Ravelry as part of the TDF as my new Avatar shows:

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copyright ©2011 cdavies

Week 14: Motion

The theme for week 14 was motion. On the same week, there was a spinning challenge on my favorite group in Ravelry. I had to finish spinning a self-imposed amount of spinning by Sunday evening. Since spinning is motion I combined the weekly photo-theme with the spinning challenge.  I took the photo using  my camera on self-timer and tried to keep the spindle in front of the lens.  This was not easy as usually the spindle moves down while I try to keep my hands in the same place.  The picture above is where I was flicking the spindle to set it in motion.

Here is the other picture of me spinning that worked:

Both photos fit the theme really well but I chose the top one as I liked the blurred effect.  However, the comments showed me that non-spinners found it hard to both see and know what is going on, so perhaps the second picture would have been more helpful.  And the spindle is clearly in motion.

The fiber I am spinning was Gnomespun Shetland Combed Top.  I am currently plying two singles together and hope to knit the Juneberry Triangle when the yarn is ready.

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Copyright © 2011 cgadavies All rights reserved.

Week 10: Vanishing Point

I wanted to take a picture for this week’s topic (Vanishing Point) that wasn’t of a road or railway or river or path going off into the distance.  Mainly because the roads aren’t that exciting or straight around here. So after winding some hand-spun yarn onto my niddy noddy and staring at it over dinner, I realised its potential. The B&W shot is best as the yarn is white and pink, which was a little distracting from the theme.

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Copyright © 2011 cgadavies. All rights reserved.