Still touring

I’ve been keeping up with the Tour de Fleece, and I’m so proud of myself for sticking to it! I’ve taken two rest days so far, but have spun on all the other days.

I need to modify my original goal a little bit. I didn’t realize just how much of this black alpaca roving I had — or how far it will stretch when I’m trying to spin somewhat finely. My updated goal is to finish spinning and plying this entire ball of roving, and I’m getting close to the finish line! I’ve plied up two skeins so far (and misplaced the paper where I wrote down how many loops they went around my niddy-noddy… oops) and I believe there’s one more to go. I’ve spun about 3/4 of the second-to-last bobbin, so I’m getting there!

This roving has more VM in it than I expected; I have to stop every few minutes to pluck out bits of grass or hay. There was one partcularly stiff piece that slipped past my fingers and gave me a small cut on the pad of my thumb! After that happened I became more vigilant.

All my knitting and fleece-washing projects have kind of taken a backseat to the Tour de Fleece, which ends on Sunday. This weekend I plan to wash some more of Lindon!

Lindon

I’ve been slowly working my way through the gigantic pile of Lindon’s fleece that Lisa so kindly gave me. The picture above is of the fleece (minus the two giant handfuls that I’ve washed) spread out on my floor with an Ashford bobbin for scale — there’s a lot here!

Lisa gave me some very detailed and helpful washing instructions, which I’ve been following carefully. The second bunch that I washed went much more smoothly since I had a good idea of what to expect.

The hot water heater in our apartment is pretty weak… I think they keep it turned down low. I’ve had to boil pots of water on the stove to get the water hot enough to clean off all the lanolin. Since I am limited by the size of the pots, I can only wash one lingerie bag’s worth of fleece at a time, which means I’ll be washing fleece for a looooong time. :) I’m going to try to do one bag per weekend.

Here’s the second batch of clean fleece drying over my bathtub. It looks kind of matted and weird, but it’s not felted; the fleece just needs to be teased a bit and then combed. The color is so pretty!

I’ve been playing around with the hand carders I bought and have been making funny-looking rolags from the first bit of clean Lindon. Once I get the alpaca off my bobbins, I’m going to dive into Lindon and start spinning. There’s something really cool about processing this fleece myself. I’m making a mess and my bathroom smells sheepy, but who cares! :) (This picture is from my cell phone, so the colors aren’t as vibrant as they are in real life.)

Spinning away

Today is the second day of the Tour de Fleece, and I’m pleased to say that I’m still on track. Last night I only spun for about 10 minutes because I felt kind of sick, but today I spent about an hour and a half spinning while watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban, doing laundry, and washing another chunk of Lindon’s fleece. I feel very accomplished. :)

I’ve been spinning up some alpaca roving that I bought a few years ago at an alpaca show. For some reason I didn’t write down how big the original ball was when I got it — ugh. However, the roving feels like it’s been predrafted a bit, so I’m spinning with ease. There are some small-to-medium sized bits of VM in the roving that come up and surprise me every now and then, but thankfully that doesn’t happen too often.

Today I finished loading up the first bobbin and started on the second. Tomorrow I will continue the second bobbin and try to get it at least half full.

Tour de Fleece

Inspired by the lovely Jaye, I’ve signed up for not one, but two Tour de Fleece spinning challenges!

The basic idea is for participants to spin on each day that the Tour de France rides: July 5 - July 27th, with two days of rest (Tuesday, July 15th, and Monday, July 21st).

My goal is to spin for at least 10 minutes each evening, but I will shoot for 30 minutes at a time. I am going to be working my way through most, if not all, of the alpaca roving I’ve been sitting on for a while. My biggest challenge is going to be making myself sit down and spin; too often when I’m feeling frazzled I just let it go, even though spinning quiets my mind down.

Tomorrow, the tour starts! Will I have the endurance to finish? I sure hope so :) I’m excited!

Mystery yarns are fun

I can’t sleep. Let’s talk about yarn!

Last week I was browsing a thrift store. I always check out the areas where random stuff ends up; you never know what you might find. On that particular day I turned up this cone of yarn, which looked like something from Yarnia. It was only $1.99 so I happily bought it and took it home.

There are 4 strands – one is a very small multicolored boucle, one is a thick natural colored yarn with slightly rougher texture, one is thick bright orange, and one is very thin pink. Based on a few burn tests and attempts to felt the different strands of yarn, I think I have a mixture of cotton and acrylic yarns. I haven’t got a clue what the yardage is.

I swatched the yarn with US size 8 and 9 needles. I like the way it looks knit on 9s the best. The colors are more vivid in person than in these pictures. This isn’t a combination I would have come up with on my own, but it’s strangely appealing.

What on earth can I make with this? At first I was thinking about some kind of scarf, but there is way too much yarn for a project like that and I’m not sure how practical a cotton scarf would be. Then I thought about making a lacy shrug; it would brighten up a plain outfit, and the open lace pattern might tone the yarn down a bit. I might even be able to make a little cardigan, but I think the colors are a little too intense for something like that.

Any ideas?