The tour is complete as of last Sunday and I can honestly take the yellow jersey this year. I finished almost all of what I set out to do. I wanted to complete all my unfinished spinning projects. I was close and finished 3 out of 4. I also finished one full skein of 50/50 merino/tencel roving on my spindles. It turned out to be a fingering weight yarn at 23wpi and 375yds (the orange toned one below). I started a second merino/tencel roving on my spindles intending it to be laceweight after plying. While I didn't finish all of the roving (I finished 3.3oz) during the tour, I did finish it this week and it is laceweight at 29wpi and 500yds. yippe! Can't wait for next year- not sure what I'll challenge myself to but I'll be ready anyway!

Spinning, spinning, racing....Birthday!

Today is my baby boys first birthday!!

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Reece,
Happy Birthday to you!!!

Pics with his new presents and his big brother :-)

Yesterday was the tour de fleece day of rest (though it was most decidedly not a day of rest for other things!)
I do have some more progress to report, but unfortunately only for tour 2.
The first pic is all of my spinning on the spindles for the first week. The second is the full 4oz of the Mayhem Twisted yarn all plied. It is a total of 375yds, but I haven't measured the WPI yet. The other pics are the washed skein in full and close-up view :-) If I can get all my cleaning done tonight by a reasonable hour I will do some spinning for tour 1.
Toodles!

Day 6 and Still spinning...

It is day six of the tour de fleece. I am not completing as much for Tour 1 as I would really like, but have just been in love with one of my rovings for tour 2 so I've been spending most of time with that.
I have however still completed some spinning- I finished the Chili and Pepper silk roving and plied it up. For some reason it was h-e-double hockey sticks to ply. It ended up more than once with a huge tangle. Ah well- it is done. :-)


Here now are my Twisted Fiber Arts rovings (first pic) which included the one I am currently spinning up for tour 2 (of which I am a member of the Drop Spindle team and Team Twisted Twisters). It is the first time I have tried spinning the merino tencel blend on my spindles. I am using one of my custom made Cascabel's spindles for it (love the littles ones that Gabe turned for me!) I started it on Wednesday evening (2nd pic) and as of yesterday I had finished 1/8th of the roving (3rd pic). Doesn't seem like much but it's being spun pretty fine for me and it takes a little longer. Working on more of it today and should be able to finish a good chunk of it.

Before I started the Twisted roving, I finished plying up the little bit of Merino that I had spun. It's OK- I'm still not that great at navajo plying :-( but will keep on practicing!

I also finally finished up this baby blanket I am going to give to my younger sister-in-law as she just had her first baby girl on Mother's Day. Hope she likes it. I like how it turned out. I used the Homespun Baby and a slight modification on a pattern for it from the Lion Brand website. I wanted the squares concentric and that isn't how the pattern works so.....
This is a picture while it was blocked and drying.

Still sorting through the vacation pictures so will put some of those up as soon as I'm done. More to come....
Toodles :-)

Le tour........

Well the tour de France and the tour de Fleece have begun.
Well the tour de Frane and the tour De Fleece have begun. I am a few days behind. Saturday I had a travel day and Sunday was the clean up day :-) We did have a great time on vacation though and I'll post about that later.
The Tour de Fleece 1 (the one linked to the black button on the right) is the spin from your stash challenge. I will start with some stash/spinning that's been waiting for waaayyyy too long. The first is a silk roving from Treetops in Chili and Pepper. It is destined to become a necktie. I hope ;-)

The Tour de Fleece 2 (the button with the gloved hand) I am challenging myself to spin everything for that on only spindles. I have one spindle full (it is a Cascade Ranier spindle) of some merino I dyed myself. I will ply that up later today and then will start on spindling another Treetops silk roving in the retro colorway. This one will be started on my apricot Bosworth mini. My son has had all-stars for baseball in the evenings so that is where I have done my spindling so far. So I am working on my challenge and in public at that!

I am enjoying this so far this year and hope to get lots more done than last year.

Mor fibery stuff in another post- I've got at least one FO to show.....
Toodles!

ketchup....

No really I mean catch up! Yeah its lame. but.......
Things have been very hectic round my house. After all the ranting about the car I did end up with a vehicle I just love. It worked out in the end so thats a great thing. I've had some time for fibery stuff though not really much. Ill put those pics up in a second post.
Here's some accident piccies (the one from the back of the car really is a level picture- that's how jacked up my poor car got). It ended up being almost $16000 in damage to a '99 4Runner. That's a lot for that year of a car- it was frame damage so nothing we could really fix if we had salvaged the car- bummer there. The last one is the new Sequoia (well it's a 2002- but it's my new one!) I love it even more than I loved the 4Runner- thought that would never happen- I really loved having the 4Runner. It's so roomy and with it being 2wd the gas mileage isn't too off from the 4Runner (it was 4wd). That's it for the car thing.



On to kid stuff- Just some fun here- my daughter had her three days for taking snacks in for her class and for one of the days I made homemade marshmallows (then they needed some for their bake sale too :-)) I made four kinds- strawberry, mint, vanilla with chocolate swirl, and cinnamon. Wasn't all that excited about the flavor of the strawberry and the cinnamon. They needed more umph! The mint were tasty and the chocolate swirl were pretty yummy too. The kids loved em though. The second time around for the bake sale they turned out way better- fluffier and tastier (I didn't get piccies of these though). I made strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla with flavored sugar sprinkles on top. The flavored sugar was enough to give the vanilla ones a good taste without being too much. There was one set of peppermint sugar and one with watermelon sugar. They sold out so it helped the class.


Marisol also had her first Daddy Daughter Dance- she was so excited.


Koby got to go to a young eagles day at a semi-local airport. They were giving free flights to kids since they are a group that gives kids flying lessons. That was fun for him- he actually got to go up alone with the pilot (some flights had three kids) so he got a little more attention, plus the pilot even asked if he wanted to try flying the plane. Cool!


That's about it for now on the kid front- they're just keeping me busy as can be!

Totally unconnected

So my phone and email service has been interuppted and now I have to wait a week until it is back up. What a mess. I am borrowing my MILs computer when I can to check things out. Just one of the few things going on. I have two broken teeth- one needs a root canal and the other will just have to get pulled. I was on my way to fill a prescription to take before the root canal when a lady pulled out to turn left in front of me (across two lanes!) and ended up totaling my 4Runner. I am just so thankkful that I saw her almost instantly and managed to hit the brakes fast enough that she hit the fron passenger side fender. If I hadn't hit the brakes the imapct could have been right where my 6mo old sits. How scary is that?!? I feel very blessed that both of the kids in the car with me were fine. I am having back pain that I never had before, but it could be so much worse. Her insurance is paying for the damages, no they're paying for the value of the vehicle- but since we still owed on that one I don't know if we'll be able to get another vehicle. I was working when we got the loan for that one and now we're in a really bad spot financially so it's been a mess. Just doesn't seem fair that she'll still be driving a nice new vehicle and I may end up driving something that I don't even feel good about having my family in just because it's all we can get. The accident was her fault after all. Oh well, I have a good family and keep trying to have faith that I will end up with what I need to take care of my family. I am sure it will come in time. When I get my internet back up and runnning I will post pics of the car.
Meanwhile- I'm still running a sale in my etsy shop (twisted sheep)- 15% off regular priced items, 5% off sale priced items. Thanks all!