Tour de Fleece - Day 3

I celebrated Independence Day by sleeping in, working on fiber stuff and watching movies. It was wonderful! I made a lot of progress today, even while being lazy.

* Finished carding the huge pile of blue roving that's been on the carder for ages. I dyed several pounds of various blues to test a recipe for a custom yarn order. I've been slowly carding it together into batts. I'll eventually add other stuff to the batts and perhaps use them for a larger project. Maybe I'll put them up for sale. Either way, the roving is finally out of the way and I can work on other things.

* Finished washing the sheep fleece! It was a 6.5 pound fleece, so it took a few batches. It's drying now and I'll eventually dye some of it. The rest will be combed and spun in the natural colors.

* Washed a small bit of alpaca fiber for my super secret project.

* Carded several bits of alpaca fiber for my super secret project, plus another batt from a fleece I'm processing.

* Spun two mini-skeins of alpaca for my super secret project. This is the first actual spinning I've done during the tour. Most of my goal is processing the fleeces in my stash, so we'll see how much finished yarn I end up with.

Washed fleece!



Carded alpaca fiber!



I actually spun yarn for the Tour de Fleece!

Tour de Fleece 2011

Tour de Fleece has begun! My goal this year is to finish processing the fleeces I have in the stash. Not spin. Process.

Day one is dedicated to washing the one fleece I bought this spring. It's a lovely Border Leicester x Wensleydale ewe fleece. I have a dark fleece from her lamb last year already in the stash. Her fleece is soaking in the tub right now and it's coming out a variety of grays from pale silver to pewter.





Prior to the Tour, I also did some weaving.





I knitted a baby blanket and a monkey.





I spun some yarn.



And played with a new alpaca cria at my friend's farm.



All in all, I've been a bit busy since my last post!

Tour de Fleece Update

July 10 - I spun some Wensleydale roving from Natural Obsessions on July 9, finished the rest of the 8 oz on the 10th and also plied it. It's gorgeous. I haven't set the twist yet, but I love it. It's so shiny! I think I might knit Bloom with this yarn instead of selling it. (Click the photo to see it up close in all its glory)



July 11 - I started spinning some lovely superwash roving hand-dyed by Zero. It's really pretty and I love her fiber. Her dyeing technique is sort of irregular and really saturated. I wanted to spin low-twist singles, but the fiber is happy being thin and I think I'll end up plying it back on itself to make a sport-weight or so 2-ply. I can already tell this might be one I want to keep for myself.

July 12 - I washed some Rambouillet fleece from Lowder Colours. She raises coated sheep and her fleeces come highly recommended on Ravelry. I bought part of Alfred, a badger (grey and white spotted) and Lilo, a white. Alfred's whole fleece was nine whopping pounds, so I limited myself to three pounds. There were only 2.5 pounds of Lilo left so I took her fleece too. Rambouillets are related to Merinos, so the fleece is fine, crimpy and high in lanolin. It's been washing out into very soft fluffy fiber with little to no felting, but it takes three soap washes and two rinses to come clean. It's slow going.

July 13 - Washed some more of Alfred.

July 14 - Washed some more of Alfred.

July 15 - Finished washing Alfred and started on Lilo. I've finally learned to put these fleeces in a single layer in the lingerie bag as they came off the sheep. I'm not separating locks, so it's staying in a sheet formation. I also found if I soak it with the tips down, the sand and debris falls out. These are really sandy fleeces, but I don't mind because sand washes out easily. I think two of my alpaca fleeces were raised on clay because I got deep brown silt when I washed those. It's part of the fun of washing fleeces. I love seeing all the dirt and grease coming out and feeling the fluffy clean fiber when it's all finished.

It will probably be a while before I get to it, but I'm thinking of combing Alfred's fleece into a naturally variegated top and then spinning it into a two or three-ply yarn. I'd like to kettle dye the yarn after it's spun so I can get subtle variegation due to the whites and greys taking the dye differently. I have a sample of fiber dyed on a grey wool base from my June box and it's really pretty and muted.

My sister is visiting from out of town so my spinning time has been very limited. It's okay. She's worth it.

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