TdF2015 Before Inventory

Tour de Fleece starts in, well 65 minutes, but I'm not that dedicated, so it'll wait until I get up tomorrow. But before the spinning starts, I had to go through and see what I had to work with and just how much of it there was. So the rest of this is just going to be photos and captions. We'll see how it changes by the end of the tour.

I've got two nice sets of flax. That might not get much attention this time.

Here's my silk collection. I've already got some of the black done on a drop spindle. I would like to get through a bit more of that.

Some angelina, someday it will get blended into something, maybe if I spin for the Celestarium.

Yak! Two colors, to be spun with other things. It's going pretty well on the spindle.

Camel and cashmere! The cashmere is the whiter fiber on the right. It's going to be spun and then plied with the lighter yak.

My own dying of the Border Leicester/Cotswold from my friends. I have 21 birds' nests of the blue green.

Two different sets of natural BFL.

Various other wools including Shetland, Romney, Corridale, Polsworth, and Wensleydale.

Alpaca, from the same purchase. I just didn't get around to dying all of it.

Mohairs

An abundance of Merinos

Random and brightly colored wools

Merino blended with flax, yak, alpaca/silk, and silk respectively.

Merino/silk and Polsworth/silk to be plied together

Blended and unblended Siberian Husky

Cotton and rose

April Fiber Club

New shipment from the Fiber Club! Warm tones and interesting fibers almost all around.

 For some reason, bags were not labeled this month, but with some help from the other spinners on Ravelry, I think the above fiber is some rose that I was sent. Yep, rose. Apparently you can make yarn out of flower. Who knew?
Below, I think is the cotton, if not then reverse the order, but same fibers. I'm even taking the cotton and joining a cotton spinning challenge put on by Jennifer of Expertly Dyed. This will certainly help me get the wedding blanket done on time! But it should be fun to try a new kind of fiber.

 Here we have some amazing red mohair and gold wool. These are going to go together in a thin (we'll see how thin I can get it- there are rumors about mohair) worsted yarn with each fiber spun on its own and plied together. As you can see, I already started the gold, and I can't wait for this to be a fiery shawl just perfect for fall! 

I broke down and just bought a new one...

A new card reader, so here is the back log of pictures that were promised, what in January. Though I have to admit, once I lost the card reader, I didn't really keep up with the pictures, so I still won't be caught up after this...sorry.

Here is an old(er) picture of the wedding blanket. I'm much farther now. This was about 40 or so rows in, now I'm at about 115 rows. It's starting to look really good, though some of my knit/purl transitions are a bit loose. I'm also a few days behind, but hopefully I can catch up by next week.

 Here is some merino and...um... firestar (?) that I got a few months ago in the fiber club.

I decided to use my hand combs to blend them.

And then I spun them. I did get it all spun and knit a little hat for my daughter. It's pretty cute, but .5 ounce of firestar is too much to blend into 3 ounces of merino and it no longer has the hand it should...lesson learned, but the blending itself wasn't too hard.

 

Yes, that says cashmere. It also says .5 ounces. Not sure what is going to happen with it, but it is amazingly soft! Possibly soft enough for me to break down and buy some myself.

 This is some dyed...merino I think. I got about 6 ounces. Luckily for me Tiny loves it; now I just need to get it spun. It would be a good wool to continue to work on the woolen yarn.

 Speaking of woolen, I decided to try some very bulky woolen with my stashed and additional fawn Shetland, totaling 8 ounces. It's been working pretty well, but it is no where near my worsted standards. More practice needed.

I tried some more dyeing. I like how this came out, and it should work out pretty well for a certain colored knitting technique. Now I just need to finish the blanket so I have time to knit it.

So those are all the old photos I have. Now I just need to take pictures of all the new stuff I've done since then, get posts up about those, and oh yeah, find my charger for the camera battery...Can I just blame the dog?

Fiber Club Monet

Wow, another shipment from the PF Fiber Club. Man these guys are good. I know I'm a shipment behind, but I promise I have those photos on the camera. Anyway, March.

This is some amazingly dyed Polwarth and silk, 75/25 respectively. It is sooooo pretty! I want more! I'm not sure how I'm going to spin it, what I want to make with, or if I just want to leave it as is and look at it.

Anyway, I also got some grey Romney and white BFL. Good stable wools, but not much to photograph. I might go ahead and spin the BFL for Etsy. Not sure if I will try to dye it or not...
I've never worked with Romney before, to that may prove interesting, but if it's good for fingering weight worsted, we're certainly in business (it may be headed for Etsy too).

That's about it for now. Gotta keep chugging on the blanket!

Pacman Rug

Here is the beginning of the newest project. That whole no new projects until my brother-in-laws afghan gets done worked out real well didn't it...

Here's the deal, I'm working the Ten Stitch Twist with a whole bunch of handspun longwools that I had in my stash, along with spinning a bunch of my friends wool for it.  So my basement is really cold and has tile floors, so it needs a nice squishy wool rug for the floor. I have a fairly large stash of course(ish) longwools, some already spun, some still as fiber, but I figured this would be a good project for them.

The plan is to work up a reasonable amount and then throw it down and use it while I spin more yarn. The fact that it only has 10 working stitches was a big draw. I was thinking about crocheting a rug, but I'm not very good, and I didn't feel like learning a whole new craft for one project, though I'm sure it'll happen some day.

I'm not sure if this rug will ever get "finished." The room it's planned for is, I think, about 12 feet wide, so I certainly have plenty of room to work with. I do want it to be a rather large rug, but mostly it's just a home for all my courser handspun yarn. We'll see how it goes.

Fiber Club Win

So now I remember why I didn't really knit while I was working full time. I'm still knitting and spinning, but between working 4 jobs that I get paid for, plus homeschooling Tiny, keeping up the house, and being the new librarian at church, finding time to post has been difficult.

But, I got a new shipment from the PF Fiber Club a week or so ago, and I was in love. I was also sent some natural mohair and shetland, but this dyed merino was so amazing I had to get more.

It's by Becoming Art, who is apparently a local to PF indie dyer who has become their in house dyer. Yay for all of us, these colors are awesome!

This colorway is called Time, Time and is reported to be one in a line of Alice in Wonderland inspired colors (is it just me or are Alice and her friends popping up all over lately?).

This is the first time I've actually bought anything that was featured in the Fiber Club, though I certainly have plans to do so in the future. This color was just too amazing to get stuck with just 4 ounces, I needed more because I knew I was going to want something big out of it.

The plans for now are to fractal it in a sock/fingering weight and tackle another shawl from Malabrigo Book 4. It's going to be a while before all of that gets done, but now I have what I need to do it!

Day 4 Chunky Yarn

I used up my Targhee, and I am so thrilled! I think we need some comparisons for this one, probably not, I just want to.

Before

After

I went with a thicker yarn this time. I had a much better time stripping off very small sections rather than drafting, I think in the end I was working with 32nds of the yarn if not a few 64ths.  There's just one problem, clearly this is hat yarn, but I don't like hats... I don't know what I'm going to do with it...

The Targhee was very fluffy and a bit sticky, but it was great and I would love to spin more of it!

Anyway, it's been a while, well not really, but I felt like I needed to update the Progress chart.

 

So I guess tomorrow is the day to start on the alpaca. I've been working on dying it, but the yellow should be good to go for tomorrow.

Day 3 10:30 finish

Last night was a late one, but I did finish my 4 ounces of Gotland, which I am quite proud of since I only had 2 ounces spun in singles at 8:00. So I finished my other 2 ounces of singles and plied it last night too! Yay me!

Here's the finished skein. I love it so much! I can't wait to wash it and see how it finishes. I went a bit slower on the second set of singles to see if I could get fewer coils and then really worked on keeping coils out during the plying and in the end it just hung stick straight when I took it off the niddy noddy! Another first, yay TDF!

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. There isn't a ton of yardage, but I am so happy with it that it might end up being one of those yarns that gets hung on the wall.

The Gotland was fun, but interesting. It was very sleek and smooth in the singles, but then when plying the other direction, things got a bit rougher, again we'll have to see how it washes.

Overall, I am thrilled with this yarn. It's definitely going to the fair!

Now to start in on attempts at thicker yarn with that great Targhee...

Pre-Tour Nerdiness

So I guess I really am a massive nerd here. Though not enough to get all the formatting figured out...grrr. Anyway. The Tour de Fleece starts tomorrow and I wanted to make sure that I have some fiber stats so that I know how much I get done. This chart does not include my fleeces that may or may not get washed and spun during the Tour. 

Please indulge my nerdiness as I make a few more charts and graphs...

 

Below is the big one. I hope to update it daily, slowly replacing the blue with the red. I will be getting another shipment from the Fiber Club soon, so then charts will have to be adjusted, but I think I can handle that. 

I think tomorrow will begin with the Triple Berry Jam Wool I have. I'm going to try to do a Thick/Thin single, so that should be interesting. Yay!

Tour De Fleece Day -1

Fleece Time Again

I have these great friends who have a small family farm with small breeding herds of beef cattle and meat sheep. The thing about sheep is that even if you aren't going to do anything with the wool, try still need to be sheered. Lucky me!

 

These are the same friends I got the Bella wool from last year, but this year, I got 7 fleeces, so... sorry, I don't know the names for each fleece. But above we have a great close up of the locks on one of the fleeces. I think this one was the ram.

 

I'm not going to try to wash them all myself this year, maybe in the future, but not now. A spinning friend is going to pitch in on mill fees in exchange for some of the processed wool. Because I seriously don't need 7 fleeces, but maybe it'll be a head start for inventory for my Easy store.

 

I have decided to skirt them myself.  It has been raining lately, so I've only been able to get one done, but in the process I was able to try some of the wool. I grabbed a bit of left over fluff, washed it, and spun it from locks- just kind of fluffing it as I went- I think they call it hand carding, and got some interesting, and certainly thicker yarn out of it. I'll have to try some more of that and see if I can get some decent results.

 

Before skirting

 

 

The Fiber Club Strikes Again!

 

I got my new shipment from the fiber club and wow, this stuff looks great! In addition to 12 ounces of fiber, they even sent me this great little Lantern Moon project bag!

Here's the first fiber. Mountain Colors 100% Targhee wool in the Sweet Current color way (sorry the photos are a bit dark today...). It's a beautiful combo of blues and purples. A friend of mine has used it before and he loves it. I can't wait to try it. I might have to start it even before the TDF!

Another great Ashland Bay Merino/Tussah blend. This one is 80/20 with dyed silk. It is so soft, just like all their blends, and I'm sure it will be beautiful when spun!

Last, but not least, is some amazing new Gotland wool, again by Ashland Bay. Here's what they have to say about it, "Ashland Bay Grey Gotland top is a lustrously beautiful silver grey color top. Traditionally a dual purpose sheep, this fiber was established by the Vikings by crossing Karakul, Ramnov, and native Swedish sheep. These three blends created the Gotland sheep with a surprisingly long staple length of 6.5 inches." 

 

 

So there we go, that is the run down for the month. Recap, a new project bag in a GREAT color, two new wool breeds to try, a GORGEOUS new color way, and more Merino/Tussah- seriously who has enough of that in their stash? I am so excited to see what can be done with these fibers. I'm even thinking about a bit of novelty spinning...

Tour De Fleece

A bit early for massive prep, but I have signed up for Revelry's Tour De Fleece in the Rookie Group! It'll be a challenge to have make time every day to spin, but I think I can do it. Here's what I currently have in the stash.

Here is some Merino/Silk that I got from a friend that no longer wants to spin. It's just over 6 ounces. I'm thinking Chain Plied; I am planning to Chain Ply a few of the braids I have, but I enjoy the process. 

This is 4.5 ounces of Shetland. I am doing some traveling during the Tour, and I think I will bring this one with me and spin it with my drop spindle. We'll see if it stays a single or gets plied.

I've got some pencil roving of merino, silk, nylon, and silverpoly. My daughter has already called the yarn for a scarf.

More vast quantities of alpaca in my life. I've got a pound. I think I am going to try to maximize length here. I've got a few big shawls that I want to make.

Another 4 ounces of pencil roving. I already mentioned in the Fiber Club post that I am thinking about trying a chunkier yarn with this.

More chain plying for this one!

Another 3 ounces of alpaca. It might get added into the other alpaca or saved for it's own project. I guess we'll see how much yardage I get out of my pound.




So that's the run down on my current fiber. I think it adds up to about 30 ounces. I will be getting another two packages from the Fiber Club before the Tour starts, or at least by the end of the first week.
I'm excited to see what kind of yarn I'll be making at the end of this. 20 days of consecutive spinning should really help!