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!

A little off-track here, but.....

Well, I have gotten a little off track getting spinning done, but I do have a good reason! My baby boy decided he was in a big hurry to get in to this world and was born at 36.5 weeks, July 16th. He's healthy and not small (6lbs, 14oz) and he's a great sleeper so far. :) My girls were two weeks earlier than the due date as well.

I did finish one full bobbin of the Fiesta Targhee and untangling the soy and Merino to get it plied. There are two skeins (I really wish I had bigger bobbins!) of three ply (2 merino 1 soysilk)which have a total of 250yds and 6.7oz. There was a little leftover merino which I two plied and that little skein is 61yds and 1.1oz. I didn't get any spinning done in the hospital though and only managed to finish knitting three dishcloths.

Day 3 is finis!

Well- day three has come in gone in the tour de fleece. I felt like days one and two were really productive as I managed to get half of the felted merino teased and spun each day.

I wound both bobbins of merino and the bobbin of soysilk in to center pull balls and started to ply them all together. It didn't last long. All three balls got all tangled up because I wound them too tight and they collapsed on the inside almost immediately. Bummer. So today was spent untangling those balls and either re-winding or just adding something to the core to keep it from collapsing. I did get both balls of merino figured out, but the soysilk is just driving me mad! Tomorrow after my doctors appt will probably be spent on untangling more. Yuck. Well- I guess that begins the true challenge for me!!!

On another front- I managed to finally finish my brother's socks, but had to run as soon as I pulled them out of the dryer (they were superwash wool) so that I could give them to him when I saw him on the 4th. Alas- no picture- the bane of most of my FO's!
Hope everyone else is getting things going for their tour de fleece- peaceful and tangle free spinning to all!

And so it begins

Today is the first day of le Tour de France and though I have no desire to watch it, it also signifies the beginning of le Tour de Fleece! I managed to find two blogs that are organizing one this year. I couldn't remember the one I signed up with last year and signed up for one here. Then I found the other that I had been in last year and forgot I had already signed up for the other one, so I signed up for this one too!
I guess that means I have double the challenge!?! Well- I'm going to try my best- seeing as how I am due Aug 3rd and have no intention of waiting that long- I may be in the hospital or have a little tyke to manage during the end of the tour. If that happens I have some silk that I started in November that I haven't done anything with since that I'll spindle in the hospital. At home I can work on my other stuff (will post below)- just maybe not as much .
My plans are this: I have some soysilk that is already spun. When I dyed this I also dyed some merino which, being the first time I tried to kettle dye instead of painting, is lightly felted. This will be interesting as I will have to tease like mad or tear into thin strips to spin. This is the first challenge. Then I want to finish up this pound of dyed Targhee in Fiesta (pic on right) from dyepot.com that I want to make a small throw from for a Christmas white elephant exchange we do at my husbands family's house.

After that, these three would be in-line for next to do. They are all from the Taos Wool Festival last year and are what I want to spin up for the yarn contest this year. I'll start with the purple/blue/green/gray wool, then move to the rosey wool/mohair, then on to the sun and sea wool. These are all provided I have enough time of course! This should be fun!!!!