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!

Baptismal hedgie

Last weekend, I went to the first christening I've been to in approximately 30 years. This being an English christening, I was, of course, a bit concerned about the proper etiquette of gifts. So off I toddled to the John Lewis page of christening gifts.

Blergh. What a load of unnecessary and unispired rubbish. Plus, £95 for a sterling silver box for a lock of hair? No. Just...no.

By this time it was Wednesday, and time was getting short to come up with a gift before Saturday. It will come as a surprise to no one that I ended up grabbing the knitting needles and a bunch of scrap yarn, and came up with this adorable little creature, hiding in the barn Himself built:

Who's that?

Why, I do believe it's one of Mrs. Tiggywinkle's relations...

Be brave little guy, come on out...

Pattern: Knit Hedgehogs from the Purl Bee blog.
Yarn: leftover Cascade 220 from my Christmas slippers and some Knitpicks WotA Sport in natural, both held doubled
Needles: US 10.5/6.5 mm and US 8/5 mm
Start/finish: 5 June 2013-7 June 2013 (it took that long because I had to spin/dye some bulky weight for the eyes and nose).
Comments/mods: I changed the yarn weight and the needle size to fit what I had in the stash, but knit it as written. Lovely, quick little gift option, even if Himself pointed out that it looks more like an armadillo...

I suspect there will be more of these in my future, since Boo found it awfully hard to let this one go!

21st century problem

Our router died last week. Just up and died without warning - no green lights, no yellow lights, no red lights, no nothing (certainly no Internet!). And since it's Himself's name on the account and we do not share a surname, he has to be the one to get the broadband company to replace the router*. And since he's been away at his college reunion and at a course for work over the last week, that has not happened. So I've been World-Wide-Web-deprived whilst at home. Hence the lack of posting.

Now that I've got some spare time and a handy dandy wireless connection (thank you London coffee shops!), I can catch up on the blogging. Today's news is a catch up of all sorts of useful and/or useless tidbits of Porpoise-related information.

Item the First: YitC: tGLYC (previously known as the Sooper Sekrit Project, aka the Great London Yarn Crawl) - we have just released the list of participating shops for this year, and I'm really excited about their involvement! We have visited a truckload of shops in the last 6 months, and this list includes some new venues as well as some very well established shops. There's a broad range of products represented and I hope that the Yarn Crawlers have an absolute blast! You can check out the list of shops here, and join the conversation on the GLYC Ravelry group here.

We also have posted about our charity partner, Refuge. Since Allison and I are organizing this thing as a community-building exercise (and perhaps as a way to justify our weekly trips to yarn shops to our other halves), we are not looking at it as a money-making venture. So any and all net proceeds from the ticket sales for the event will be donated to Refuge this autumn. You can read more about Refuge on the blog here.

Item the Second: Porpoise Fur has again been reviewed in Knitty, and the website has been totally redesigned and updated with a metric crapton of fiber. The fact that this happened at all this week is totally due to Allison, who fed me lunch and let me use her wi-fi. I am really excited with the redesign (which is 99% organizational, so the website looks the same - don't be surprised if you don't notice anything different!), and with being able to list so much product. Go check out the shop and see if there's anything you can't live without.

Item the Third: I have one stuffed toy, two successful sweater surgeries and some handspun to share. Stay tuned!

*Mental note to self: research routers and buy one of our very own so I can tell the broadband company to suck it.

New, new, new!

At long last, the website redesign is (mostly) over! Not much has changed on the surface of it all, but you may notice there's a lot more fibre available all of a sudden...

The big changes happened in the way things are organised. All dyed fibers are now listed by fiber type; i.e. Cheviot, Texel, Dorset Horn, etc. Under each category, you'll find pictures for the colorways currently available, and links to pages with the colorway descriptions. This enables me to list all the available colorways rather then being limited by listing them individually. So, I hope you all enjoy the selection available, and that you find the new organisation easy to navigate!

I've added a bunch of Texel this week, and there are silk hankies to come next week. Or whenever they actually dry - as it's grey and humid in London this week, this might not be until next month! There's also a sale going on to celebrate the Tour de France/Fleece - 10% off all available fibres until the 21st of July.

I hope everyone is enjoying the (hopefully) better weather, and happy spinning!

R xx

Psst...new pattern coming out

But I can't reveal any details yet because it's part of a club! But if you like YA literature, and you like hats with lots of fun stuff going on, with bookish-inspiration, and you are a fan of super-soft merino and gorgeous dye jobs, you should really head over to Storied Yarns and sign up for Jess's A Yarn and a Tale yarn/fiber club for Quarter 3. You'll get to read and chat about a great book, get some of her gorgeous Bo Peep Worsted yarn or super-fine merino top in a book-inspired exclusive colorway, and get a pattern for a lovely slouchy hat from me.

The Storied Yarns Ravelry group is here, the thread for Quarter 3 is here, and the shop listing for the club is here, but only until about the 13th of June. Off you go!

PS - if you can't manage the club right now, the pattern will be available directly from me starting in October.