Thanks for following along with my blog over the Tour! I hope you'll be along for TdF 2014. We've had a great time in the Heavenly Wools group.

Well, today I'm feeling a little more like blogging - but not much!
Day 19 was a challenge day, and I had originally set myself two goals - one to do some lockspinning with some mohair I'd dyed in rainbow colours. I'd been saving it up - but it was not to be. So I settled for a very little bit of spindle spinning (my other challenge had been to try navajo ply on the fly - which you see on the left in the photo) If you're not familiar with this technique, it creates a three-ply yarn from one spun ply, as you spin the first ply. Got your head around that? No? Well, you can check it out here on YouTube! 

The other spindle is my new Russian style support spindle, which I have yet to master, so the challenge was to produce at least a little length of singles with it. As you can see, it was a very little length - then back to the couch!

Day 20 was a personal rest day - just didn't feel up to it, but I did do some knitting on my Birdsfoot Shawl which I've been knitting up from the baby camel down/silk yarn spun earlier in the Tour.

Adding a bit to my Ink merino cop on my support spindle is going to be part of my life for the next little while, I think. So far I have 45gr of finished laceweight yarn - this merino plied with variegated rainbow silk from hankies, spun on my other Tina's Angoras spindle.

And yesterday I spun about 35gr of my halfbred grad - this is about half of what I spun! Ottoline is proving to be a delightful wheel to spin on - very fast, relaxing and quiet as well. This single was spun in just over an hour.

So, yesterday was Day 16 - and time to start a new lot of fibre. I dyed this Nightfall over Dark Grey specially for this week of TdF - and I'm loving spinning it on my new wheel, Ottoline. Why the fancy name? Well, Charlie Tyler, the maker, gave each of his wheels a woman's name - and as he made over 600, the names got pretty exoticover time. Ottoline is made of Japanese Oak and is exquisitely handcrafted in the  Norwegian tradition.

Here's the first spin of this fibre on Ottoline; as you can see, she's a double drive - and this is my first double drive wheel - it's a strange kind of feeling. Built for production, the wheel treadles like a dream and is very quiet for an older wheel.

The other fibre is silk in hanky form. I still have half the merino/silk combo for the boucle yarn I made last week, and this is to finish that project.

Here's the first lot of the second spin - this is the third ply. I had to stop after a while as I kept changing spin direction - this ply is an 'S' and I kept losing concentration. Probably best not to tackle this one while watching T.V.

This wheel is my sweet little Easycraft A-line. Sometimes you'll see this wheel with a different flyer - my dear Ken made it for me so I could use my many Ashford bobbins on this wheel as well as on my Ashford 'workhorse'.

It may be a few days before you see me here again - today is a rest day in TdF, and tomorrow I'm off to have a small problem I've been suffering from fixed up - which may mean a few days of total rest. I'm hoping not, but it just might - so I'll catch up with you when I'm up and about again.

I haven't blogged over the last few days because a) I've been quite busy dyeing wool, b) reading about someone's slow progress spinning 100gr of wool is about as fascinating as watching paint dry. So I thought I'd give it all to you in one easily digested slab!
I've just been continuing on with the Falklands, and now it's finished!

It wasn't really a long spin, just drawn out over several days.
I really think I might have spent more time on the computer than I have spinning this week.

Once I had the two bobbins of singles spun, it was an easy matter to just n-ply them off in a couple of hours last night. So my progress continues! There are more photos available on my Flickr Photostream.

Below you can see the finished yarn, which is lovely and cushy, and some spindle spun hanky silk and Ink 21 micron merino plied together on my spindle - made for me by Ken. The spindle spun is part of a project that has been creeping along for months. Hopefully it will end with a divine garment all painstakingly spun on my increasingly large stable of spindles!

I didn't post yesterday because I was out most of the day, so this is two days' work. Or rather two days of not much work! Very frustrating, but then again, I have had a lot of other things to do this week!

On Tuesday, I worked away on the rest of the first 50gr of the Falkland tops. I intend to chain (navajo) ply it, so I could ply now, but I'm going to spin it all, then ply it.

As the Tour de France hit the hills, I also found myself a little fatigued - my lower back and bottom are a bit sore; my hands and elbows are protesting just a little bit. Thank goodness today is an official rest day!

As you see, there's not much more on my wheel than there was yesterday - this is the same bobbin. I'm inching towards 50gr; at that point I'll be starting another bobbin, just to keep track. I think this single is for navajo plying to keep a few solid areas of that rich colour. I'm planning to make the Stephen West Akimbo with this one.

Not really resting today though, despite the lack of spinning planned; I have a lot of wool to dye, so now the sun is shining I'm heading off out to get on with it! 

As today is a rest day, I'll see you back here on Wednesday with my next update.

I continued with the silk hankies and spun what I thought was enough to finish the ply - and do you know, I was right! I only had about 50 cm of silk singles left at the end. As the last plying endeavour left me with about 40 cm of the camel on the bobbin, I'm pretty happy with my estimation skills.

The 50 gr of camel yielded 82 gr plied with the silk - so it doesn't take a genius to work out that I used around 30 gr of silk in all. I still have a few layers of silk left over ( but only about 10 gr), so I will have to think about what I'm going to do with it. 

The final tally is 280m at 18 wpi (yes, I know I've mixed measurements but wpi seems to be more logical than wpc). 
So now I have to find a pattern to do it justice. I'm very impressed by the beautiful Stellaria by Susanna IC on Ravelry*, but I haven't got anywhere near enough yarn to make a big item, so I may combine it with something else - 1st contender Jared Flood's Rock Island, which could be made in two colours: the camel/silk for the lace and another toning colour for the solid areas. I particularly like the way the garter stitch pattern reflects the light on the solid areas.
*you will need to be a logged-in Ravelry member to follow this link.

And back to the Falkland...
Just continuing with this lovely easy-to-spin fibre. It's a finewool similar to NZ Halfbred or Polwarth, grown on the Falkland Islands where the sheep graze among penguins!

Beautiful fiery shades of red, burnt pink and orange make it a perfect candidate for Stephen West's Akimbo*, paired with charcoal NZ Halfbred. The pattern calls for 398m of 4-ply so I think I'll be right on track for that. 
*you will need to be a logged-in Ravelry member to follow this link.


Tomorrow is a rest day, but I still have half of today at my disposal (slept in), so possibly I'll be able to spin the rest of the Falkland in between doing the washing, visiting the dump and preparing and cooking a roast chicken dinner.

I sat down yesterday and spun this beautiful lustrous silk from a hanky which I had previously dyed in this gorgeous vibrant fuchsia to match the baby camel down I'd spun earlier. Just to get this much on the bobbin took several hours...






Psst: keep reading!

Then I plied it with this: the baby camel down from days one and two of the Tour...








Psst: keep reading!

And I ended up with this:

52grams of pur luxury! A beautiful, drapey, lustrous yarn that flows like water.

So rewarding, after all the struggle with the camel down! I'm expecting it to bloom as it knits...


Psst: keep reading!

Have you been keeping up? It's the end of the Tour de Fleece week; if you've been following me so far, you deserve a little something in return! Send me a message with the words: TOUR SUPPORTER for a 10% discount voucher to be used towards your next purchase.

Slowly but surely - yesterday evening I finished what boucle I could - turns out that 1 bobbin of mohair only covers 1/2 bobbin of the silk/merino, so I'll be having to prepare some more batts and spin some more mohair singles later, but for now I'm concentrating on finishing enough silk singles to bind the 2-ply I've done so far.

The silk hankies are surprisingly quick to spin from the corner - I'm going to get Ken to video me doing that in the weekend, and I'll post it then. I have already been doing this with my spindles, but I'd never spun from hankies from the corner with my wheel before - I'd always started pulling them out  from the centre and attenuated into roving. Spinning from the corner is so much easier and goes so quickly.

So: Z-spun core of merino/silk (so old I haven't any idea what the proportions were) with lots of twist, mohair singles spun from my own batts, also high twist, plied S with medium twist; binding thread of fine silk, medium S-twist, to be plied Z with the 2-ply. We shall see!