Tour de Fleece Finish!

Here is what I accomplished during the Tour de Fleece, which ended on Sunday.  I finished spinning the singles, plied, and washed my green gradient shetland.  I ended up with about 468 yards total, including both skeins (the larger, darker skein is about 357 yds and the smaller, lighter on is about 110 yds).  I think it's approximately sport weight, but I haven't checked.

The third skein was 2 ounces of Wensleydale wool, which I bought on vacation in Vermont six years ago from the Wool Shed at Frostbite Falls Farm.  I spun it sort-of long draw and plied it into a 2-ply.  I'm not wild about the finished yarn.  I don't love how the colors work together, although I do think it's better in person than in the photo.  It's not that soft, and there's not that much of it.  I have no idea what I'm going to do with it.  The skein is about 64 yards.

On the bobbin is almost half of my Hello Yarn Portuguese merino in the colorway "Furry Paws" from Yarn School in October 2012.  The plan is to spin two equal bobbins of singles and then ply them to end up with lace-weight two-ply finished yarn.  This might be my ongoing spinning project for quite a while!

All in all, I consider my Tour de Fleece to be a success.  I spun just about every day - the Tour has two rest days, so even though I missed two days I made them up by spinning on the official rest days.  I feel like I got a good rhythm going with my spinning, and I really do enjoy spinning.  I'm going to leave my wheel in my living room and keep spinning at least once a week - my plan is that Tuesdays Are For Spinning.

Tour de Fleece: Stages 12-16

I started a new spinning project Thursday night (which was stage 12 of the Tour de Fleece).  This is Hello Yarn Portuguese Merino from Yarn School 2012.  I have 4oz of combed top, and it's in beautiful olive, brown, and light blue-grey colors.  I'm trying to spin it very finely and hoping to end up with a 2-ply lace-weight.  It's easy and smooth to spin, but going pretty slowly.  I doubt I'll even have the singles finished before the Tour de Fleece ends on Sunday.

I missed spinning on Saturday (stage 14) because we were visiting family out of town, so I'm going to spin today (which is a rest day for the Tour de France) to make up for it.

Tour de Fleece: Stages 10 & 11

On Tuesday (Tour de Fleece Stage 10) I finished spinning the singles of my 2 oz of Wensleydale.  I figured out/remembered that I could spin it long draw from the fold and that made a huge difference!  It went much faster and more smoothly.

Yesterday (Stage 11) I plied the singles.  I chain plied, and it mostly went smoothly.  There were several places where the singles were too thin or underspun and the thread broke as I was plying - including one spot where the broken end got lost in the bobbin of singles and I ended up cutting it.  Those spots were much more common towards the end of the plying, which was of course the beginning of the singles, when I hadn't yet figured out how to spin this fiber.  Towards the end I also noticed that the singles were way underspun (you can see this in the picture) so I may not be able to actually use all of the yarn.  I'm okay with that.

I have no idea what weight this is or how many yards I have - I still need to skein it off and wash it.

Today I get to spin something new!

Lofoten sweater progress

Between my mystery shawl and the Tour de Fleece, my Lofoten sweater has been neglected lately.  Before the mystery shawl started I had been making good progress on the colorwork - it's not particularly visible in this picture, but I finished the mountains at the bottom of the black-and-white section.  I feel like my shawl is moving pretty quickly now (it helps when every row gets shorter!) I'm looking forward to getting back to this sweater.  Although I do have a trip to a lovely yarn shop planned for this weekend, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that Lofoten will get pushed back in favor of something else new and exciting!

Swans Island Socks finished

I finished my Swans Island Socks last weekend.  I'm really happy with how they turned out!  I used Swans Island sock yarn, which is an organic superwash wool.  It's a really beautiful color and has great texture and stitch definition.  The socks are soft and stretchy.  I made up the pattern as I went along, using Fleegle's toe-up heel.  The cables at the toes and cuffs are inspired by these socks.  I finished the cuffs with Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off - this was the first time I've used it, and I really like how it turned out.

The yarn looks grey in some lights and light brown in others.  I think they're beautiful!

According to my blog, I started these socks at the beginning of April, so they took just over three months to finish, although I definitely wasn't working on them very steadily for a lot of that time.

Tour de Fleece

Yesterday was a rest day for the Tour de France, but since I missed spinning last Thursday I decided to make it up by spinning anyway.  I spun for about an hour, still working on the wensleydale top.  I started out with 58g of fiber (the package says 2 oz) and I have 31g left.  I feel kind of impatient to finish spinning this so I can move on to something I'll like better.

Tour de Fleece: Stage 9

I spun a bit more Wensleydale yesterday. I'm moving a bit towards long draw, just grabbing with my right hand close to the orifice and pulling back with my left hand. The yarn seems to be breaking less often. It's pretty fuzzy-sort of like what I think of mohair as looking like.