Tour de Fleece

No knitting of any meaningful nature took place for me between April and August this year. I just lost interest for a while and life (and tennis) took over.

I did however manage to keep my interest in spinning going and took part in the Tour de Fleece this year for the first time...

I cleared the decks of spinning already started, plying up a couple of experiments I'd been playing with:

Some fractal-plied BLF (top) and a sampler of grey BFL plied with 100% bamboo.

I then cracked on with the main event: a sample pack of British Breeds from Hill Top Cloud.

These were spun on my modular spindle and plied on my heavy bottom whorl.

From l - r: White Shetland, grey North Ronaldsay, grey Shetland, oatmeal BFL, brown North Ronaldsay, moorit Shetland, brown BFL, grey Jacob, Black Shetland.

 The finished yarns are all approximately 15g and 30m of fingering weight. I hope to knit a SheepHeid with these in the future.

Finding myself with several days to go before the end of the tour, I dug out a beautiful braid of gradient dyed BFL from The Yarn Yard.

  I split this down the middle then spun each half onto my modular spindle. I plyed to try to maintain the gradient and ended up with approximately 300m of sport weight.

Spinning Onwards

The spinning continues (as does the Christmas knitting, but that isn't yet bloggable)...

First off the spindle was a braid of merino / silk blend dyed by Old Maiden Aunt in the colourway 'teal deer'.

I spun this on my heavy (45g) bottom-whorl spindle as a light fingering weight single, then tried something new with the plying. Instead of chain plying directly from one spindle to another, I chained the single into a plying ball. This took ages to do (and much help from the Resident Radiologist), but it did allow me to stop and start with the plying much more easily than if I'd been plying directly.
 

The finished yarn was a light DK weight and I got about 150m in the skein.

Next up was a rainbow felting sample pack from Diva Design studios in Moray. The fibre wasn't listed, but a bit of detective work makes me think it was mostly merino with an occasional bit of silk blended in.

I spun this on a much lighter modular spindle, taking the single off on three bobbins, then chain plying directly from the bobbins onto my heavy spindle, joining the single as I went.

I've ended up with 200m of light fingering weight 3 ply in a lovely rainbow.

On reflection, I think that a plying ball is really useful for making a two ply, or a three ply from individual singles, but the work involved in putting a chained three ply onto the ball is probably not worth any time and convenience saved during plying.

Learning Curve.

I've always enjoyed the challenge of learning a new skill and a class I took about a month ago has had me on a fairly steep learning curve ever since. I drove up to Twist Fibre Craft Studio in Newburgh in the north of Fife to learn how to use the drop spindle I bought at Woolfest last year.
I'd had a little go at using it but nothing had clicked and I decided that tuition was the way forward.


Initially, I used a top-whorl spindle supplied in the class and managed to produce some knobbly, hairy almost-yarn from some carded Icelandic wool. I then managed pretty much the same with my bottom-whorl spindle.

I bought some combed silk - merino tops to take home with me and started that evening and fairly quickly produced a spindle full of singles.


A quick watch of videos on the internet and I tried navajo plying it with pretty good success.
These skeins are on the small side and the yarn is a bit hard (I think that I over spun it).

Next I remembered about the mixed bag of combed merino tops I bought from Wingham Wool Work at Woolfest two years ago. I got it out and realised that I pretty much had a whole spectrum of colour. I started at the red end and spun through the colours until I reached the violet end.


This time I tried winding the single off the spindle with my ball winder, to try to control the tension during plying, which worked for a while, but eventually the lovely and obliging Resident Radiologist had to hold the ball and provide tension while I navajo plied (I like three ply - the yarn produced is much rounder so I'm going to stick with this method for a while).


I'm really pleased with the finished product this time. I've soaked and dried it to set the twist and the yarn is beautifully soft. I've ended up with about 80m of 4ply-weight yarn. Clearly I'm nowhere near the top of the learning curve yet, but I've reached a place where I can produce useful quantities of usable yarn.