Fiber Friday: A different sort of Panda-Cam

Since the US Government shut down has axed the National Zoo's Panda-Cam coverage of their newest addition, I've decided to try and make up for the deprivation sweeping the Intarwebs by presenting my own interpretation: the fibery Panda-Cam.

Fiber: Spunky Eclectic's Panda (SW merino/bamboo/nylon), in "Winged Insects", 6 oz
Spun/plied: since it was a 6 oz braid, I did it all on the miniSpinner because I wanted a single skein. Chain plied the singles.
Stats: 370 yds/6 oz, about DK weight, 10-12 wpi, 990 ypp.

This was a challenging spin for me. Maybe it's because I've been spinning so many toothy wools of late, but the Panda was INCREDIBLY SLIPPERY!!!!! It was real work to keep focused enough to maintain any semblance of consistent wpi, and it shows in the yarn (damn you chain plying!). However, these colors could not be more me if they tried, and I'm desperately in love with this yarn. So much so that I'm greedily keeping it for myself and not sharing it with anyone.

Now I just need to figure out what pattern will fit for 370 yds of DK weight yarn...anyone have any suggestions?

Holiday

If it's summer, it must be time for Porpoise et al to head across the Channel for some good wine/bread/cheese and some athletic insanity. This year, however, it was just Himself participating in the physical endeavours, while the girls and I played in the sun, went swimming and ate ice cream. Once he recovered a bit from his exertions, there was hiking, tadpole/grasshopper catching, snowball throwing and lots and lots of eating things that were not terribly good for us (fondue with bacon and onions, I'm looking at you) (you too, Cote du Rhone). And there was spinning.

Of course, my husband vehemently insisted that "There is no spinning on Alpe d'Huez!". Clearly his traumatized legs were affecting his visual acuity, because look:

There certainly was spinning on Alpe d'Huez, although in the interests of clarity, I should make it clear that this picture was actually taken on the Col de Sarenne, next to Alpe d'Huez. Perhaps he was thinking of a different type of spinning...

I did discover two things about combing spindling with hiking.

1) It's best not to try to spin silk singles on an alpine mountaintop with a sheer drop off when you haven't spun silk before and are finding it a bit slippery and difficult to manage.

2) Plying while hiking is a much more successful project then singles. So definitely go for plying if you have the option.

There were a few other yarny-adventures while we were away. There was this cute little guy, spied by my children one evening after dinner,

(I believe that's a knitting marmot)

And then there was the realisation that I may have yarn on the brain when I mistook some scarves in a kiosk in Annecy as some lovely skeins on display.



But let's be honest - you all would have made the same mistake, right?

Tour de Fleece 2013: The Final Reckoning

The stats:
1615 yds/30.6 oz total finished yarn spun.
783 yds of 3-ply, for 2349 yds of singles.
832 yds of 2-ply, for 1664 yds of singles.

Total singles length: 4013 yds, 3.7 km, 2.3 miles spun over 23 days.

The yarns: top left corner is 607 yds/14.4 oz of 3-ply bulky black Shetland, spun from drum carded batts, from a fleece that I bought at Wonderwool Wales this past April. This was my second fleece-to-hadnspun-sweaterlot I've done for Tour de Fleece - my first was last year, and it was a total failure. I credit this year's success to the fact that I was able to borrow a drum carder, which made the fiber prep so much easier! The finished yarn is soft and squishy, and is going to make a really cozy sweater. I'm hoping there's enough yardage for a full jumper, but we'll see! Top down sweater knitting is going to be my friend on this one.

Circling around to the right side is my project specific spin: Hello Yarn Finn in "Winter Storage"

I split the multi-colored top into 6 groups and spun a 2-ply sport/fingering weight to knit Brenda's Now in a Minute shawl. I think I might have to cast on this week. It's lovely soft stuff, 590 yds/7.8 oz - I'm about 10 yds short of the amount called for in the pattern, but I think it will be ok. We will see...

Next up: I had to take a break in the middle of the never-ending Shetland spin to do something with color, so I spun up a bag of ends of my own Euglena Suffolk.

One skein of 2-ply, 229 yds/3.3 oz, and one mini-skein of chain ply from the left over singles. It's about 14 wpi, so fingering weight, and is going to make some seriously awesome green socks.

The final yarn, singles started on Thursday, yarn plied and finished on Saturday:

Spunky Eclectic Bluefaced Leicester in "Autumn". I bought this top in a whirlwind stash enhancing trip to Amy's shop in August 2009, and it's been marinating in my stash ever since. I've got one more braid left from that trip, so I think I'll need to be stocking up again next month when we visit my parents.

I managed to make a collage for every day I spun during the Tour, and I've uploaded them all to a flickr set here if you're interested.

My only TdF letdown this year? I didn't manage to get as much spindling done as I wanted to.

I only managed to get through 10 gr (of 78 gr) of cashmere carding waste. But I've made a good start on it, so I'm going to keep trucking!

So how did your Tour de Fleece come out? Did you meet your goals? And are you going to keep spinning? My wrist is due for a bit of a rest, although spindling is ok, so I think I'm going to get back to that knitting thing and start using up some of this new stash. 

Back to the spinning

This week I've been working on the black (brown, really) Shetland fleece I got at Wonderwool in April. I scoured it and began carding on my borrowed drum carder before the first stage, and today I finished the second pass of carding.

The fleece was really two colors: one a deep, dark black, the other more of a chocolate brown and grey mixed together. I originally thought I was going to keep the colors separate, but as I went through the first carding pass, I decided that this fiber needed to be a sweater, and in order to have enough yardage, I needed to combine the colors.

The yarn is coming out a beautiful final color, and I'm hoping for some really fabulous 3-ply at the end of it.

Bobbin 1 is done, and bobbin 2 is underway.

I've also managed to finish off my Hello Yarn Fiber Club spin for Brenda's Now in a Minute Shawl.

I'm thrilled with how this came out - I'm short by about 10 yds, and it's a bit heavier then called for by the pattern, but I think it will work fine.

So that's what the Tour de Fleece has generated in these parts - hopefully by the end of the race, I should have a sweater's worth of 3-ply Shetland to play with. And maybe a few other bits and bobs - the Shetland is going quickly, but I may feel the need for some color sometime soon! What's on your wheel for the Tour?

PS - If you are in London, or might be in London on or around the 21st of September, and you're interested in joining us in the inaugural Yarn in the City: The Great London Yarn Crawl, head over to the website and get your tickets now!

How to prove to the world that you are an idiot who can't read a calendar

So, apparently I'm a bit over excited about this whole Tour de Fleece thing. Because not only is tomorrow NOT the 21st of June (which is the date I had stuck in my head for the start of the race), it is also NOT the start of the race. This was very gently pointed out to me by a dear friend and I am now totally humiliated at my complete lack of functioning brain cells. And my ability to double check my drivel before I exposed myself to public ridicule. Oh well...the up side of this is that I now can stop carding myself into carpel tunnel syndrome, and I can do a bit more organizing of my plan of attack.

There has been a bit of training going on (but only a very little bit): some Oregon Green Wensleydale on the Turkish spindle.



This was my maiden voyage with the Turkish, and it's absolutely lovely to spin with. IST has some with weights added to the cross bars to increase the spinning time - this one doesn't have them, but it spins beautifully anyway.

Then I dove into the Hello Yarn stash for a bit of squish factor:

Hello Yarn Polworth in Troll, the December 2012 club offering
Spun/plied: singles spun at 15:1 on the Lendrum, backwards point-of-contact drafting, plied on the miniSpinner
Stats: 271 yds/~4 oz, 10-18 wpi, 1084 ypp, true 3-ply
Comments: Like all of Adrian's fibers, this was an absolute pleasure to spin. I did this as a real 3-ply instead of chain plying. I split the 4 oz bundle into 3 pieces of equal length, then split those lengths for fractal spinning. The first piece I split into 3 (mostly) equal sections lengthwise, the second into 4 pieces, and the third into 6 pieces. I spun them end to end, but for the first and third plies I reversed every second piece to maintain the color progression. So if the first piece started with yellow and ended with purple, I spun the second piece from the purple to yellow.

I tried to spin the singles very finely  with a backward draw, letting twist into the drafting triangle. I wanted a lofty and fluffy final yarn, and I knew from previous Tour de Fleece experience that Polworth has a tendency to fluff up a fair bit during finishing. Before a soak in warm water, the skein from my niddy noddy was 90 inches around, and the wpi ranged from 13-23. Post-soak, I lost 8 (!) inches in length from the skein, and the yarn plumped up into the worsted/DK range.

I can't stop petting this skein - it's soft and drapey and a lovely blend of colors. The yellow/oranges ended up dominating the final yarn, which I'm not such a fan of, but I'll wait to see how it comes out in the knitting (there are some lovely blue/purple/grey sections too!). I'm thinking Multnomah maybe? Not quite enough yardage...Or Traveling Woman? Hmmm...have to think about that while I'm spinning every single day for three weeks. Starting a week from tomorrow...