Tour de Fleece day 5
Happy Independence Day! Today is the day we here in The United States celebrate our decision to declare independence from Britain. I’m ashamed to admit that I’m in my mid thirties and I’d not read the Declaration of Independence fully for a VERY long time. I’d forgotten how specific our founding fathers were at listing the king’s misdeeds. The fact that I’m celebrating while spinning a British wool dyed here in America, and following a French bicycle race is not lost on me. I’m spinning Blue Faced Leicester wool, a breed of long wool sheep. According...
read moreLe Tour de Fleece day four
Ok, that skein on the right? That’s the plied, but unwashed cabled skein. I cant quite decide what it wants. I’m going to wash it and see what it looks like, and if it’s still not what I want I’m going to take it apart and add more twist to the two ply skeins before re-plying. The straight four ply? It’s lovely. The yarn is smooth and round, just what a multiple ply yarn is supposed to be. Both skeins are SUPER soft and squishy. Together they’ll make an awesome hat for my kiddo. I’m glad that I have a second four ounce braid, because I don’t...
read moreTour de Fleece day 3
Actual work is getting in the way of my spinning. This is that same four ounces of fiber, now wound up onto little four inch weaving bobbins. See the maroon fiber wrapped around each bobbin? That’s the spacer yarn, which indicated where to start/stop each bobbin of fiber. The little bobbins are pretty consistent, just by my eye. The scale plays that out, for the most part: 25g, 20g, 18g, 19g, 17g, 20g, 21g, 21g Considering that I just eyeballed the splits on these, I’m happy with how even these turned out. There will be some spare singles, sure, but nothing too egregious. The...
read moreTour de Fleece day 2
Now that’s a nice bobbin. That’s four ounces of organic merino wool on an Ashford Jumbo bobbin. Theres PLENTY of room for more. I don’t think I could get a full eight ounces on, but I could easily fit six. In fact, since this is worsted spun, I might be able to fit eight ounces on if I spun woolen. What’s the difference? Worsted spun yarn has all of the air squeezed out of it. It’s denser than woolen spun yarn, somewhat harder wearing. Why did I spin it this way? Well first, I’m spinning for consistency. I wanted the most even, consistent yarn I could...
read moreTour De Fleece day 1
This is the result of the first day of the Tour. It’s about an ounce and a half of Organic Merino (I know, I said it was Falkland. I was wrong) from the Spunky Eclectic fiber club. It’s “Little Periwinkles” from March 2011. I’ve separated out the plies by spinning a single of dark maroon fiber between each single of pastel yarn. I will remove the singles to weaving bobbins, splitting off where the maroon fiber appears. The benefit of doing it this way is that the wheel gets set up and stays set up, everything gets spun as consistently as possible, and...
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