Tour de Fleece

So there's this chaotic event on Ravelry that coincides with the Tour de France. All of the spinners get together, join teams, set personal goals and start spinning every day the race is going (July 4-26). I had big plans to spin every day. Then I changed my goal to work on one fleece study breed each day (at least until I ran out). Then I had plans to spin something every day. Now my plan is basically down to handling something fibery a little each day and hoping for the best. Honestly, it's sometimes tough to think of spinning when it's July and I don't have air conditioning. Since I have nothing but wool and alpaca, it's prickly, sweaty torture to lay a batt across my lap. Why can't they race in January when I have nothing going on and spinning keeps me warm?

Here's my daily progress so far:

July 4 - Finished spinning the last of the 7.5oz of Dragonhair "Obsidian" roving I got as part of a Ravelry destash. It's very pretty and sparkly, but I think it has a lot of mohair in it and it was really scratchy to spin. I had to keep taking breaks to spin other soft and colorful things.

July 5 - No spinning, but I washed some of Catalina's alpaca fleece and packaged my July Phat Fiber samples. In the evening, I went to a friend's house because she was having two of her female alpacas bred. Two handsome males showed up in a van, the magic happened and they went home. Alpaca romance is nothing short of hilarious and extremely noisy.

July 6 - Spun a 2oz "Perfect Storm" batt from Extreme Spinning and plied the Dragonhair into two appx 4oz skeins of 2-ply. It's MUCH nicer when plied and I think I like it now. I also mailed my July Phat Fiber samples.

July 7 - I washed some of Catalina's alpaca fleece, no spinning

July 8 - I washed the last of Catalina's alpaca fleece, went to a farm, petted a camel, a goat and two lambs, bought a Shetland x Merino fleece and then washed a couple bags of that before bed. No spinning

July 9 (today) - I washed a bunch of the Shetland x Merino fleece. It's quite delicious since it has a lot of merino characteristics like very fine fiber and crimp, but has a 4" staple and less lanolin! It's very sheepy, so it moved to the beginning of the washing queue. No spinning yet, but this could change if the evening cools off.

Photos:

The Dragonhair in the midst of plying, just to prove I've been making yarn:



Catalina's Rose Grey fleece. It has a bit of vm, but it's a cria fleece and is washing up so soft. It's such a delightful color that I think I'll keep it for my own use.




July's samples (yes they're fiber!):




At this point, I may modify my goal yet again to try to have all of my existing fleeces washed before the end of the race. New blanket bags arrived in the mail today, so I have storage to spare. I forgot to mention, but I also have a new (to me) drum carder and it's demanding some attention too. That's a topic for another blog post