Tag: TdF

Spinning Longdraw on Day 9 of the TdF

Yesterday I was creating large and fluffy yarn on a wheel with a ratio of 3:1.  Today I decided I needed to make progress on something that’s been hanging around for a long time.  So I switched to my Ashford Traditional with a lace flyer set at 40:1 and got on with spinning my Shetland and soybean fibre blend.  I did a little in the afternoon and this evening after the children were in bed I took the wheel out onto the patio to spin.

day9-patio

The garden’s fairly unkempt, but there are some lovely plants on the patio including this pot containing three fuchsias (it wasn’t as dark as this – the flash has just made it look darker).  There’s a huge jasmine halfway down the garden, and the scent from the flowers was filling the air (I’ve now learnt that when the label of a plant says it’ll grow to 4m by 4m, I need to think very hard about how big that actually is, and not kid myself that I’ll manage to keep it to 2m by 2m by pruning!)

Anyway, I sat down with my tea and my wheel and pulled handfuls of fibre from the blended batt and spun longdraw from the fold.

day9-longdraw

This is a wobbly one handed photo, taken on my phone.  You can see the fibre batt on my lap, and a spun thread (going off to the left) just before it gets wound onto the bobbin.

I managed about 40 minutes spinning outside before it got too dark to see how thick a thread I was making.  It was a lovely way to fit some spinning into my day.

Days 5 (continued), 6 and 7 of the Tour de Fleece

When I left you last on day 5 of the TdF I was off to do some spinning.  I did (sort of).  I prepared some mill-spun yarn for core-spinning by running it through the wheel to put some S-twist in, prior to my using it to core-spin Z-twist.

Yesterday was day 6 and I carded up a batt with a variety of wool and trilobal nylon and then core-spun it.  I also added an auto-wrap thread.  Here it is this morning, finished and tied with some matching ribbon:

blue-core

The yarn is both heavier and shorter than the previous one I core-spun.  The batt I used was thicker but less fluffy, so I think I applied the fibre more heavily to the core.  I shall have to experiment until I’m able to consistently get the results I want.

Today has been a busy day with the children, and being a Friday I’m quite tired.  However, this evening I’ve carded up another batt.  Hopefully I’ll have a chance to core-spin this tomorrow.  Here it is in a deep hat-box, which is just the right size (I’ve had to re-home the fabric scraps I was storing in here):

batt-pinky

So, that’s the first week of the TdF completed.  I’ve thought constantly about spinning, fibre, and things I can add to the spinning.  Earlier this week I went shopping for a curtain pole.  I managed to find one but I also came back with these beads, perfect in their own little storage boxes and ideal to add to my spinning!

beads

The fabric scraps from the hat-box?  I found myself wondering if they could be spun into a yarn or added to some yarn.  So, what will week 2 of the TdF bring and how much further am I going to stray from my original goals?

Tour de Fleece: days 3, 4 and 5

Days three and four of the tour have gone well.  Monday was a busy day with all the usual grocery shopping and other general Monday shenanigans.  When time allowed I continued with the spindling and in the evening I made a little more progress on the lovely Juno fibre.

Yesterday (day four) turned into a bit of a bumper spinning day.  In the morning was my son’s sports day.  I took the “fruit salad” spindle spinning and between cheering him on and taking photos I was able to do quite a bit of spindling.  My spinning did get a few enquiring looks from other mums and some questions from one of the older children who was helping with the sports day organisation.  I think I may need to put together a short one page introduction that can be given out at similar events if people are interested.

tdf4-fruit

Also in the morning a new spinning book arrived.  I spent the day flicking through it and in the evening I had to have a go at core spinning.  I carded up a batt with natural white Shetland, a little commercially dyed Shetland, some food-colour dyed Jacob and some sparkly trilobal.

batt

I enjoyed the spinning and ended up with a very light and airy yarn.  In fact I found the lightness compared to the bulk of the yarn really surprising.  I’ll be interested to see how it wears.

spun

This morning I wound it into a ball.  Normally I use a ball-winder – but large yarns don’t work on a standard sized ball-winder, so I had to use a makeshift nostepinne.

ball

Yes, it’s an almost empty kitchen roll.  I’m going to Fibre-East in a few weeks.  I must remember to look out for a proper nostepinne while I’m there.

I’ve knitted all 31 yards up into a small Mobius cowl using 20mm needles.  I just need to graft it and it’ll be complete.  As yet though, I haven’t managed any actual spinning today. So please excuse me stopping here as I must now go and do at least a few minutes!

Tour de Fleece–Day 2

The sun is currently setting on day two, and an absolutely stunning sunset it is too (sadly my photography skills have never been up to capturing the beauty of a sunset, though if I keep trying maybe one day I’ll succeed)!

day2-sunset

Today has been filled with the palaver of installing an integrated dishwasher into the kitchen.  It entailed three trips to local hardware stores before the right bits of waste pipe were sourced and there was further bodging (technical plumbing term) to fix a leak right the end of the day.  However, It is now installed and running and appears to be a huge improvement over the old one.

I failed to keep up with the spindle spinning today.  However, at one point I needed to escape and quietly exited the kitchen, found fibre, went upstairs and dusted and oiled the Dryad wheel.  I then managed a few minutes peaceful spinning.

I’m spinning some Falkland dyed by Juno Fibre Arts.  It’s a real treat to spin something dyed by someone else.  The colours are different from the ones I would have chosen and the distribution and proportions of colours are also different.  I’m looking forward to seeing how this will come out.

fibre

I think I’ll Navaho ply it to maintain the changing colours.

day2-juno

Right, the sun is almost gone, so I think it’s time I grabbed another cup of tea and did some more spinning!

Tour de Fleece Day 1

Today saw the start of the Tour de France (apparently – I haven’t watched any or even caught up on events via the internet or radio).  It also saw the start of the Tour de Fleece (TdF)!

Yesterday evening I got myself all prepared and set up my “stash” on Ravelry for the yarn I’m planning on spinning during the TdF.  There are projects that are in progress and some are new projects to spin.  Once I had everything listed I was quite shocked to see how much I’m planning on doing!  I also updated my Ravelry profile with my aims for the TdF.

Today has been a busy day with the children, so I haven’t had time to do much spinning.  Last night I decided that the best way to tackle spinning today was to concentrate on spindling.  So I made sure that the two active spindle projects were easy to grab in quiet moments (there were a few – not many – but some) and I was able to make noticeable progress!

Both spindles already had some singles on, but here was progress by the end of the day:

tdf-day1

This evening I’ve sat down at my Ashford Traditional with the lace flyer and made some progress on the Shetland/Soybean blend that I started nearly two years ago!

I’m looking forward to getting lots more spinning done over the next few weeks and seeing just how much I can do when I prioritise spinning over other non-essential activities.

Ingredients

I’ve been playing with colours of fibre (wool, bamboo, trilobal and angelina) and have some possible ingredients for “Bow Ties are Cool”:

ingredients

I’m not planning on using these proportions though.  I’m thinking of a base of dark colours with brighter colours acting as highlights.  I may also need to add or take something away.  Looking at the photo the fibres I’ve chosen are very smooth – I think I need some texture in there too (perhaps the rest of the Leicester Longwool locks)?

Anyway, this looks like it will be fun!

Challenges

My life has definitely been full of challenges over the last couple of years (they’ve not been fun, but I think I’m stronger for them).  However, I have two challenges coming up that I’m really looking forward to.

Firstly, I’ve been invited to be a guest blogger on the Creating Space blog.  When I write here I’m talking about my creative journey (and sometimes I manage to discuss techniques and my wheels).  To write on someone else’s space I need to think about the readers there and write something that reflects the group (rather than just me).  This will mean that I have a slightly different focus from when I write here, but I’m looking forward to meeting the challenge.  When I’ve worked out what I’m going to write, written it, and the post has gone live, I’ll post a link here 🙂

Secondly, I’ve signed up for the Ravelry Tour de Fleece (TdF).  This is an annual event that runs while the Tour de France is on-going.  I’ve joined two teams: Ashford UK Spinners and Team TARDIS.  The objective is to spin everyday that the Tour is running – with two rest days and a challenge on the day of the hardest stage.  I’ve been trying to keep my aims low-key to fit with my current situation.  So here they are:

  1. Spin everyday!
  2. Do some spinning on all of my wheels!  Not everyday obviously, but I should do some spinning on each of my wheels by the end of the TdF.
  3. Spin a fun Doctor Who inspired art yarn.  I intend to learn a new technique while doing this.  I may spin something inspired by “Bow Ties are Cool” or “Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey”, but I may do something entirely different :-)  Yes, it is a bit silly, but it’ll be fun, I’ll learn and perfect a new technique and I’ll end up with a scarf that I can wear to an SF Convention should I ever make it to one!
  4. Finish off any languishing projects.  I have a number on both wheels and spindles.  On my wheels this is an achievable goal but on my spindles I hope to make progress.

Once I’ve finished the “in progress” projects I have quite a lot of fibre all lined up for projects.  I have 10oz of carded Soay-cross fibre that I need to spin into a yarn for a shawl, plus a number of hand-dyed tops and a multi-coloured merino top.

The TdF is often a chance to de-stash a little.  However, I’ve been so overcome with enthusiasm for art yarns since my success with the Wild and Independent yarn and scarf, that I’ve ended up ordering more stash!  There’s lots of sparkle, un-combed fleece and also some bamboo and wool tops from different breeds for me to try.  As you can see I didn’t even manage to contain my enthusiasm to a single order:

TdfStash

The TdF starts next Saturday (29th June) and runs for three weeks. I’ll update progress on Ravelry and Instagram daily and post regular, but not daily, updates here.  Wish me luck!