Action plan

This blog is about to become an all-spinning, all-the-time zone, and for those of you with absolutely no interest in yarn making, I apologize! But Saturday is the first stage of the this year's edition of the Tour de France. Which also means that Saturday is the start of my favoritist -along of all time: the Tour de Fleece.

I've been participating in the Tour de Fleece since 2010, and each year I try to set some goals. In 2010, I had a list of fibers I wanted to spin. In 2011, my goal was to spin more fiber (measured by weight) then in 2010. Last year my output was somewhat hampered by the fact that I spent a week actually in the Pyrenees doing spinning of a different sort, so my trend of increasing weight of fiber spun came to a crashing halt.

This year I have again come up with some goals for the Tour de Fleece, and in the interests of accountability, here they are:

1) For Team Hello Yarn/Southern Cross Fibre/Spunky Eclectic, my plan is to spin up my Winter Storage Finn (of which I have 1.25 lbs...)

into 6x100 yd skeins of single colored yarns for Brenda's Now in a Minute shawl.

I will also (for variation and instant gratification amongst the other goals) spin up some more of my Amy stash. Maybe some Shetland in Tundra?

Or this BFL? (The name of the colorway escapes me at the moment...)


2) For my other team, Team Craftlit: spin up my "black"* Shetland fleece into a 3-ply sweater yarn.

All of the fleece is washed, and last night I drove two hours round trip (and a grand total of 40 miles - thanks London!) to borrow a drum carder. And then I stayed up until midnight playing around with said carder, giving me a lovely sleep-deprived day, but that's a different problem**.

I split the fleece into two main colors before washing - black and grey/brown. Probably a third of the fleece was black, and I'm about one third of the way through the first pass on the grey/brown, so this isn't going to be an early player in the Tour for me this year. I still need to decide whether I'm going to keep the colors separate or blend them together. Initially I wanted to keep them separate, but now I'm thinking that I'll need the yardage I'll get from combining them. Hmmm...

3) also for Team Craftlit: some silk top on my new spindle, as a running around, mobile project.



So that's it. Hah. Clearly last year's raw fleece failure experiment wasn't enough to deter me from doing it again this year. Or maybe I've just blocked it out...the drum carder should make things move quite a bit faster then the hand cards.

I hope.

Anyone else have truly ludicrous goals for the Tour de Fleece this year? Or am I the only insane one out here?

* I say "black" because after carding a bunch of it, it's really more of a dark, dark brown/grey mix.
** My other problem is that now I want to get the white fleece washed up so I can get it carded as well before I have to give the carder back - aargh!

Fiber Friday: Welsh Clouds

A few months back, I picked up some of Katie's handcarded, dizzed gradient roving at Unravel, and I'd been looking for the perfect project for it ever since.

When Brenda's new shawl pattern popped up in the most recent issue of Knitty, I was pretty sure I'd found that project. So I sat down and treated myself to spinning up this fabulous fiber.

Fiber: Hilltop Cloud Gradient Roving in "Peacock", 30% Shetland/50% merino/20% Tussah silk (she's got more available - go now!).
Spun/plied: 15:1 on ST Lendrum
Stats: 233 yds/100 gr, or approximately 1065 ypp. Also known as DK-to-light-worsted weight.

This fiber was an absolute dream to spin. The Shetland and the silk more then make up for the merino (not the most interesting fiber to spin IMHO). There were four braids with the same color progression, so I spun the singles with two braids held together, occasionally concentrating on one or the other to get the colors finished at the same time. I then plied the two singles together and ended up with only a few yards difference at the end. Result!

Not the most even, consistent spin I've ever done, but boy was it enjoyable. The final yarn is soft, bouncy and elastic, with just a bit of shine. I think it's going to make an incredibly drapey fabric, which is perfect.

But (and you knew there was a but coming, didn't you? My plans never work out that well...), the shawl pattern in question calls for 600 yds of fingering weight yarn, not 200 yds of DK weight, so this lovely skein will have to become something else. What exactly remains to be seen, although Amy had been tweeting lots of pictures of some crocheted shawl gorgeousness that might work for this skein.

I'm still determined to do Now in a Minute in handspun...I think maybe I will have to bust up my 5 bags of Hello Yarn Winter Storage Finn and end up with a pink and green version...how very Preppy Handbook of me!

Fiber Friday: Seasick, three ways

In my excitement to channel Top Chef, I have managed to come up with what my possibly be the most unappealing blog post title ever. I promise it won't be as bad as it sounds, as the Seasick in question is of the fiber variety, not the bodily. Behold:

This is Seasick Corriedale, from Hello Yarn, and it was the February 2010 offering. That was back in the days when I was getting a double dose of club fiber, so I had two bags to play with. I spun up the first bag during the Tour de Fleece last year.

My recent spate of sampling and trying out different ways to spin up colorways for the shop inspired me to split the second bag into two batches. The first half I spun as a standard 2-ply.


I like the barberpole, although I'm not sure how it will play out in the knitting (or crocheting). I ended up with approximately 67 yds of floofy aran/bulky weight yarn.

The other half of the bag ran smack into my sudden and burning need to try core spinning. It was not an entirely successful experiment, to say the least!

I had some mohair core yarn that I got at Ally Pally in 2010 (this experiment has been a long time coming obviously), and I used the miniSpinner to add some extra twist to the core before I started core spinning. I tore the fiber into approximately thumb wide strips and set off.

After a few yards and some fiddling with the miniSpinner, I had two observations: 1) this was going to work better if I predrafted the fiber a bit to really loosen it up, and 2) I would probably do better using the Lendrum, where it was easy to stop and start the wheel, or slow down/speed up without needing my hands. The predrafting part was easy to do, but since I'd started on the miniSpinner, I decided to keep going and use the Lendrum next time.

You can see that I ended up with a number of spots that are waaaaay over spun - I think using the Lendrum will help with that because I can slow down my treadling when I need to - and the thickness is all over the map. Final yardage: 35 yds of more-or-less bulky, fairly non-elastic yarn.

Here are the three versions of Seasick all together:

They are all in the heavy aran-bulky weight range, so I guess I could get really creative and use them all together in something...any ideas?

Falkland Fiber Friday: BRCA

I was going to blog about some more Hello Yarn Fiber Club that I've spun up, but I'm so in love with this sample of fiber that I listed in the shop today, I had to share it.

This is my test run for the new BRCA colorway, which is available on BFL and humbug BFL. This little sample was done on the last bit of Falkland I had leftover, and it is super soft and bouncy.

The starting fiber looked a bit like this:

I spun this fractally: split the entire top into three pieces, then split each third into 3, 4 and 6 strips respectively. Then plied them up, and I'm in love.

I've got about 50 yds of approximately worsted weight yarn to do something with. What, I have no idea, but something. And even though I'm not really a pink kind of girls, but I love the combinations of dark red, purple, pale pink and bright fuschia in the final yarn. I am really pleased with how the colors blended, and I'm looking forward to seeing what people do with it!

WonderWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!

So, this past weekend was the fantabulous Wonderwool Wales festival in Builth Wells. I went, along with my entire family (who, to be fair, spent the day I was immersed in wool fumes hiking and exploring and playing in tide pools). The weather was glorious, the wool was plentiful and there were venison burgers. What more could a fiber fanatic ask for?

I went with a few ideas of things I'd like to get, but no absolute requirements. I'm pleased to say I came away with 4 items, one of which I'd been lusting after for quite a while, and some supplies for a repeat engagement with a particular process that I've been wanting to try.

Item 1 (the smallest and most expensive): an IST Turkish Spindle in Satin Rubain and Ash.

Like most of last October's P3 participants, I came away entranced by the whirling dervish Turkish spindles that Brenda and Amy were playing with. I'd looked at IST spindles before, but managed to refrain from getting one until I saw them in person. After trying one, I couldn't resist.

My failed dyeing test run from last week

Doesn't it look like it's itching to get started on this fiber? I can't wait to get going on it.

Item 2 (not pictured): some Unicorn Power Scour, bought precisely to deal with

Items 3 and 4: one dark grey/black and one white-ish Shetland fleece.

Now, my previous experience with spinning yarn from hand-prepped raw fiber was a mixed experience. So you may be wondering what could possibly induce me to start all over again with approximately three times the amount of starting material. You may be sitting in front of your screen, slowly shaking your head side to side and thinking "This may be the final fiber that breaks the porpoise's back." And I'm not so sure you're wrong. But here's the thing...

...I love Shetland fiber. I absolutely adore spinning prepped Shetland top, and ever since taking a day-long course on the inestimable virtues of the Shetland breed with JMM, I have been wanting to play with some fleece.

All this is to say that when I walked through a doorway and beheld the glory that was the Shetland Sheep Society's booth on Saturday morning, it was all over but the shouting...not 15 min after the doors  opened, I was the proud owner of two Shetland fleeces.

The first one is a gorgeous dark grey fleece that I kept coming back to, and couldn't leave behind.

It is lovely and soft. Unrolling it revealed some light tips that are either sunbleaching or guard hairs. Either way, it's going to be just gorgeous spun up. I think that I can sort the locks into two different colors and end up with a black pile and a grey pile. This is going to be the first project.


The second fleece is white, with some light apricot sections - it remains to be seen what it looks like once it's washed.

The locks have some absolutely gorgeous crimp. I'm really looking forward to getting this baby washed up too.


So there you have it - my personal spinning time for the next year, booked.

I've got one more, critically important piece of this fleece-processing puzzle that is guaranteed to make it a success:

I'm going to borrow a drum carder.