TdF Yarn #2 and a Rest Day

My second TdF project was/is 1.5 lbs of Romney from Hello Yarn.

So I started in on the spinning. And I spun. And spun. And spun. And all my bobbins were filling up, and it didn't really feel like I was getting anywhere. Here's a photographic rundown of multiple days of spinning:

Day 5:

Day 6:

Day 7:

By Friday I was over the Neverending Romneying. Over. It. So after I finished that third bobbin, I totally jumped ship, threw the plying maiden on the wheel, and banged out this.

1.5 hours, 227 yds/4 oz of my first attempt at thick and thin singles. The fiber is Amy's Corriedale in the "Twenty Ten" colorway (from my 4 Oz Challenge prize last fall). Fun colors, quick yarn, end product is soft and squishy. Love it.

And then it was back to the Romney, Day 9:

Today is a rest day, and so far I have: read on the porch with the girls.

Played with (and bathed) the dog.

Gone raspberry picking.

Made raspberry chocolate chip ice cream.

As yet, there has been no spinning. I suspect that won't last, as I'm on a tear to get all these singles done so I can start the neverending plying. The extra special good news is that I've cracked open the last bag of fiber, so the end is in sight!

Now I just have to decide what's going to be next...

Tdf Yarn #1: SCF Cairns Polwarth

Fiber: Southern Cross Fibre's Polwarth, in the Cairns colorway, 115 gr
Spun/plied: 12:1, 15:1, short forward draw (worsted)
Stats: 3-ply skein: 168 yds/3.5 oz, ~10 wpi. 2-ply skein: 49 yds/0.7 oz, ~14 wpi.

This was my maiden voyage spinning Polwarth, and I wasn't really sure what to do with it. Out came my handy dandy copy of "In Sheeps Clothing", which recommended worsted-style spinning. Okey dokey. I prepped the fiber Saturday night while the girls were having a bath: I split the entire length of top into three equal pieces by weight (40 gr, 40 gr, 39 gr). One length I left alone, one I split in half and one I split into fourths - hello fractal spinning!

Spinning on back porch while girls/dog played in sprinkler = win/win

This particular braid of fiber was also my maiden voyage into David's world, and was part of my prize pack from last year's 4 Oz Challenge event. I enjoyed every single moment of this spin, and it went by far too quickly! I managed the to finish the three bobbins by yesterday morning, and started plying last night. Finished off the plying today - I ended up with extra singles from the half-width and quarter-width bobbins, and put those into a 2-ply mini-skein.

3-ply

2-ply

I wasn't sure as to the provenance of the colorway name - living in the UK, all the cairns I've ever seen are mostly rock colored. Or covered in moss. But a quick Wikipedia glance reveals that Cairns is actually a city in Queensland that serves as a starting off point for going to the Great Barrier Reef (among other things). So the images of coral reefs and gorgeous blue and turquoise oceans that were floating through my brain while I spun this weren't far off. Well done David!

Fiber Friday returns: Devil's Sprout

Fiber: Hello Yarn Fiber Club April 2011, "Sprout" Targhee
Spun/plied: 15:1, 12:1, 2-ply
Final stats: 946 yds/~8 oz, around sportweight.

I knew as soon as this fiber darkened my doorstep that it was destined for one person, and one person only:
Is there any way that could match her eyes better?

 

I split each 4 oz piece of top into three pieces, then stripped those down to 4 pieces each. I threw it all in a bowl bag (the Wee Ridiculous Dog LOVES fiber, and I had several heartbreaking instances of finding him on the floor gnawing on a large hunk of Targhee - wretched creature!) and spun the sections at random using a short forward (worsted) draw.

I was hoping to finish all the singles before RAB, but such was not to be. The day we got back from Cornwall, I started back in, and managed to finish up the plying by this past weekend. I tried to ply a little more loosely then I usually do, hoping for a less dense finished yarn. It seems to have worked out - almost a thousand yards from half a pound is pretty good!

I think Dev is pretty pleased with the result. She wants a simple crewneck cardigan out of this stuff, which I think will be gorgeous. Although the prospect of a sportweight cardigan for a 6 year old who will grow out of it nano-seconds after it is finished is a bit daunting. Thankfully Boo's eyes seem to be tending towards a similar color, so maybe she'll get some use out of it as well!

I can't wait to start. Maybe by September - there are too many projects already in the works! Like this pile o' wool:

This is my pile for the TdF (detailed notes on the Flickr page). It works out to 2.75 lbs total, which is just over last year's total (39 oz vs 44 oz). That is, provided this plan doesn't get completely thrown out the window because of a super secret handspun project(TM) that may be in the works. We'll see...but a weekend with Wimbledon and Le Tour? Bliss!

23 Days in July (aka Tour de Fleece yarns 4-6 and a wrap up)

So, the last week or so of the Tour de Fleece I spent with a pound of Falklands top, half dyed in the colorway Five Plum Pie, and half in Grouch.

Grouch was the June 2010 Fiber Club offering, while Five Plum Pie came from May 2009. I decided to spin these two together when I browsed through my Hello Yarn stash and discovered that not only were they the same fiber, but they were very similar colorways. Five Plum Pie was mostly purples, with some greeny-yellow and brown accents, while Grouch was mostly greens and yellows, with a bit of purple.

I've been thinking of spinning up some yarn to knit a striped vest for a while now, using some lovely dark brown alpaca I've had sitting around for a long while. So I decided to do three different yarns: each colorway plied on itself, and one yarn that was one ply of each.

I prepped the fiber by splitting each 4 oz bump into five or six long strips and then mixing them together so they got spun in a random order.

Grouch got spun up first. I wasn't all that excited by the colors in the top, but as I spun up the singles, I got more excited about it. Yellow and greeny browns aren't really my thing, but these colors were amazing - mustard, bark brown, pea soup green, and dark plum.

I was aiming for a DK weight 2-ply, so I spun the singles a bit thicker then my default. Next up was Five Plum Pie.

This really could have been called Iris instead - beautiful blues and purples, with some bright green and beautiful dusty brown...gorgeous!

Then it was time to ply - first up was the mixture, Grouchy Pie.

After a warm soak, I ended up with 160 yds/3.4 oz of ~12 wpi yarn - right in the DK range. Then I did a bobbin of Grouch plied to itself:

Swoon...I ended up with 344 yds/6.6 oz of Grouch, and then did the rest of the Five Plum Pie plied together.

292 yds/6.3 oz. I was planning on alternating stripes of plain alpaca with each of the three colorways, but I'm not sure there will be enough variation between the Grouchy Pie and the other two to show up. So I may just use the 5PP/Grouch skeins for the vest, and save the combo for something else. But this is just another reason why this club is so good for me - I would never have picked out the Grouch on my own, and I think it's my favorite of the three yarns.

My 23 Days in July* ended up being pretty darned productive on the spinning front. Three different fibers, one of which (Wensleydale) I'd never spun before. Laceweight singles, matching skeins of 3-ply, color progression 2-ply and a colorway mixing experiment.

I ended up with 2420 yds of new yarn, 39.4 ounces spun, and a whole new level of inspiration for my spinning. This challenge was just what I needed to get my mojo back after the endless purple cabled yarn, and I had an absolute blast seeing what everyone else came up with. I even won a prize! I can see getting a bunch more yarn done before it gets cold, and then I'll have a wonderful fall and winter knitting with handspun!

*with apologies to John Wilcoxson

FF: Yarn #3

I'd like to introduce you to my five hour yarn:

Fiber: HYFC BFL in "Norway", previously seen on the blog in these mittens.
Spun/plied: 9.25:1/6:1, spun long draw from the fold.
Stats: 183 yds/4.4 oz (665 ypp) of lovely worsted-to-bulky squishtastic yarn

I was inspired by a number of the yarns in the HYFC Tour de Fleece team thread, and decided to do a 2-ply color progression with this fiber. I started by pulling the component color stretches apart, and ended up with six groups.

There was the red group, the orange group, royal blue, turquoise, light greyish blue and grey. I took each batch of fiber, split each chunk in half lengthwise, and made sure the two piles weighed the same (+/- 1 gr). Then I laid out the pieces for each group in the order I wanted to spin and started in on the first bobbin. After spinning the first little baggie of singles, I switched bobbins and spun up the same color group on the second bobbin.

I started with the grey, then went to light blue, turquoise, royal blue, red and finished up with the orange. One hour of Tour highlights one evening, and one viewing of Shrek 3 the next day, and the singles were all spun. I'd forgotten how much faster long draw is! It was also a relief to spin something thicker then the 60+ wpi singles I'd been doing for the previous two yarns...then it was time to ply. First the orange and red sections,

then the royal blue (my favorite!),

then the turquoise and finally the grey.

Plying took all of an hour. My obsessive fiber weighing paid off - most of the colors matched up really, really well, with a bit of bleed over to blend the transitions. I ended up with a few yards of singles left on one of the bobbins, but I just stopped there. No need to get silly about using it all, right?

A nice warm soak in Soak, and that's all she wrote! I was going to use this for hats for the girls, but now I'm leaning towards a nice scarf, maybe on the bias so the stripes slant? Or maybe worked lengthwise so there are really long skinny stripes? Decisions, decisions...

(yum)