Tour de Fleece

Tour de Fleece Update and Weather

/ LDSVenus / 14 Comments

1st picture is my progress on the 50/50 camel/red Eri silk for days 16 – 18. This is spinning faster than I thought, I’m around 1/2 finished on the 1st bobbin. Because the silk is very slippery, even tho the camel being soft and short would normally require a very short draw to spin, the length and slippery nature of the silk allows me to draw it out more than a short draw but not a long draw, so it is going faster than I estimated. I love the softness of the fiber as I spin it. I’m trying to not let it be very thin, tho it would be easy to do that, because this is a gift for my previous sister in law, who I feel pretty close to. She has a medical disorder that makes it harder now with tremors to handle smaller things, so I thought if this yarn is more of a heavy fingering or light sport weight maybe she could still knit something with it, and if not, she can just feel the softness of this fiber, which is amazing. I will definitely have to get more of this fiber when Camaj Fiber Arts gets more in! Post Script, my ophthalmologist loved the skein of yarn and said she had had a very hard last couple of days and that this skein of yarn had just made her day! Giving is a blessing for the receiver and the giver :).

Well today was very nice in the upper middle 80’s and less humidity, however you can see where our weather is headed starting tomorrow though next Tuesday. The blue picture is the normal temps and the red one is with the heat index (the dew point and humidity level will be high.) I will be staying inside most of the time. Sunday I will go to church but it’s an air conditioned building and I have a/c in the car so I should be ok :P. Monday however, I’m not going anywhere. August is normally our hottest month of the year, so I shudder to think what next month will be like. Well actually I can imagine, 2 years ago when my daughter had an outdoor wedding in August, it was 118 with the heat index (that’s abnormally and obnoxiously hot for here), yeah, everyone was melting! Told her if I melted she could pick me up with a stick and a spoon and carry me inside to the reception :P. Everyone stay safe!!

Tour de Fleece 2025 update

/ LDSVenus / 6 Comments

The first 3 pictures are from day 14. The 1st picture is what was left from plying, I’d say I did pretty well not having a lot left over! The next picture is the open skein after washing before twisting it up in to a skein, I measured 252 yards, which should be a DK weight for 97 grams.  This was BFL-Corriedale cross 64%, Alpaca 27% and Sari Silk waste 9%. I have to say that the blue bled in the water when I washed it, so I rinsed it in vinegar (it helps to set the color), but nope it bled in that water too. So I rinsed it a 3rd time using a conditioner for the fiber, and there was still some bleeding in the water. I’ll have to tell her to make sure that she doesn’t hand wash it with anything else until the blue is done bleeding :(. A friend told me blue is hard to set, and so it is! I was very pleased because the skein was very balanced, no twisting to one side when held up in the open skein, just hung there straight up and down :). This skein, except for the blue not staying put in the yarn :P, was a pleasant spin and great looking yarn. You can enlarge the pictures by clicking on them.

The last 2 pictures are the camel/red eri silk, day 15. I weighed it and it was about 120 grams, so I split it into two 51grams balls, I just have one in the picture. The 2nd picture in the start of the spin. It is much thinner than the skein above, which I assumed it would be, both of those fibers spin thin. But this spin is going to take a bit longer because it takes longer to get the same amount of fiber on the bobbin because it’s thinner. I am going to guess that this will end up being a fingering weight. I will use the left over fiber, after dividing it, to card on my drum carder with other fibers for some fun batts. I will have to spin more than 30 min a day on this fiber to get anywhere close to being done by the end of the Tour de Fleece! I’ll see how far I get with 45 min or maybe bump it up to 1 hr.

The weather yesterday was ok in the lower 80’s but today is supposed to be 89, and 92 on Wed and 91 on Thursday, and up to 101 with the heat index and the muggy meter said sweltering. Sigh, and next month is our hottest month of the summer, that’s a bit scary!

Tour de Fleece Update, 2nd Bobbin 2025

/ LDSVenus / 9 Comments

This is days 7, 8, 9 (a rest day) and 10, so only 3 days of spinning. I’m closer to having the 2nd bobbin done and then plying, but not there yet :P. I think maybe 3 more days. As long as it’s done by the end of the week I’m ok because it’s going somewhere next week. Then I will start spinning that beautiful camel and red Eri silk. I generally let the singles on the bobbin rest for 24 hrs before plying when I finish to let them settle. So for that next day after I finish the bobbin I will work on some alpaca I have on my Rick Reeves wheel, I’ll insert a picture when I spin on it. That alpaca, from a cria (baby alpaca), is like butter, it’s so soft and spins much faster than the wool I’m spinning now. Smoother fibers means more glide as you spin so it goes faster.

My new Tour de Fleece tee came in, isn’t that just too cute! She always comes up with some cute stuff! Love that this one was in color, now I can be obnoxious with “I’m a spinner” when I go shopping, lol. If anyone wants one you can get it at Fiber Love Diary‘s web site. I also bought a sticker with that same design to go on a 32 oz glass I bought from her last year, that had last years sticker on it. I think I can get two more stickers on it for the next two Tour de Fleeces, lol. For my fellow spinners, she also has spinning fiber!

Our weather is up and down temp wise and storms coming in tomorrow, typical summer weather. Grateful for air conditioning!

Tour de Fleece Update

/ LDSVenus / 2 Comments

The first picture is day 5. I finished the first bobbin (sitting on the top of my wheel) and started the 2nd bobbin, the one behind it. The 2nd picture is day 6, progress on bobbin 2 :). My hope is that I will have both bobbins finished by the middle of next week and plied. I’m spinning this yarn for my eye doctor because she’s awesome ;). I have 48 grams of singles on the 1st bobbin, and I weighed out 48 grams of roving to spin for the 2nd bobbin. I weighed the bobbins a few years ago and wrote the weight of the bobbin on the side in magic marker, that way I can just weigh the bobbin filled with singles and then subtract the weight of the bobbin from the final weight and I will have the weight of the singles. Who knew math would actually come in handy and the high school math teacher was actually right! Kudos to all my math teachers :). Hopefully that will make it so I don’t have a lot of left over singles on one of the bobbins when the two bobbins are plied together. That will also depend on if I get the singles similar in diameter (thin-ness or thickness). We will see. I think this will be maybe a heavy sport weight, but less than DK (double knit weight).

Tour de Fleece Days 1 -4

/ LDSVenus / 4 Comments

The first picture is day 1 and 2, tho some of that was already on the bobbin :P. The 2nd picture is day 3 and 4. I have been spinning about 30 minutes a day, I should be finished with this bobbin and ready to start the 2nd bobbin tomorrow :).

New Tour de Fleece Tee Added

/ LDSVenus / 4 Comments

I got this one from Etsy because I wanted a new one to wear this year, it is my 4th one and I liked having the year on it. Fiber Love Diary said she will have a tee this year, so I will buy one of hers, when I get paid next month, so I get two this year. I wanted to make sure I had one to start the Tour de Fleece with. The Tour de France is from July 5th through July 27th, so I will get to wear 2 different tee’s this year!!

Spinning Purchase and Knitting Update

/ LDSVenus / 8 Comments

Ok, I hemmed and hawed and decided to buy a set of wool combs from Bam Fiber Works . I got the double row, fine wool combs with a magnetic comb cover. LOL so glad I got those covers, these things look like weapons!!! It came with a bottom that you can clamp to a table and had a nice set up to hold the comb still while you use the other comb to comb through the fiber and align it and and clean it from short cuts and left over vm. I will be washing some of the 2nd cuts from the cria (baby alpaca) fiber I got so I can try it out. Gotta be careful using those, they can do some damage!! These combs are very nice, I will enjoy learning to use them (carefully!!)

On my Look for Happiness Blanket I have the bottom border and 20 patterns done (4 rows to a pattern). This is the medium size and I need to do about 49 total patterns before doing the top border. So almost halfway done. If it doesn’t look like yarn chicken, I might add an extra pattern or so before the doing the top border. I am almost done with the 2nd skein and I have 4 more, so I might be able to make it a little longer, I’ll see where it is when I finish the 3rd skein. I’m hoping to be further along before Tour de Fleece starts on July 5th when the Tour de France begins. We spin on our spinning wheels on the days that the bicyclists ride and have two rest days when they do. We don’t normally spin all day, just however much time we have decided to spin, I’ll probably spin 20 to 30 min a day, it ends on July 27th. Will need to buy a new Tour de Fleece tee shirt this year :).

Hope everyone is well and enjoying the summer!

Tour de Fleece Update & More Mail

/ LDSVenus / 5 Comments

Almost finished with the 2nd bobbin, then the plying can begin! More mail too, the Tour de Fleece tee shirt arrived so now I can spin with a 2024 Tour de Fleece shirt (I need to wash it, it’s bit wrinkled) :). I try to get one for the current year each year. And I may have ordered some Angora rabbit fur to blend with some wool :). It was 2.5 oz, that is a lot of rabbit fur and oh so soft!

We will be having a heat wave Saturday through Monday. Low 90’s and with the humidity and dew point it is suppose to be upper 90’s to 102, sweltering I believe they said. Stay cool everyone, I’ll be inside being grateful for the guy that invented the air conditioner :).

Tour de Fleece Update and Mail

/ LDSVenus / 11 Comments

I’m about 1/2 way finished with the 2nd bobbin, have missed a few days, hate when life gets in the way of stuff you’d rather be doing. But I’ll be working on catching up and spinning on the riders days off to rest.

2nd picture: I may have accidently purchased something I saw on Etsy, from Friends in Fiber, it was shipped quickly and is gorgeous. I promised myself I wouldn’t buy anymore fiber until I got some of the older things I have spun up. Fail :P. Hopefully I won’t have any more failures, but this was so pretty. Guess I need to quit looking until I have some older stuff spun ;). I am S.A.B.L.E. in fiber (stands for Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy), in the meantime I will leave it out to look at until I have at least one older fiber off the wheel :). Oh, the little piece of fiber at the top of this roving was a sample that was sent with this and the little gold thing is a beautiful charm of a tree of life, so pretty! I will be making this into a stitch marker or a progress keeper. Will show it off when I get it made :).

In the mean time enjoy your knitting or spinning or whatever hobby keeps you busy and happy :).

Tour de Fleece Starts Tomorrow 6-29-24!

/ LDSVenus / 4 Comments

Almost forgot to upload the things I chose to spin this year. Starting the 2nd bobbin on the the Pop Rox that I started last year, I shouldn’t have let it sit there for so long :(. Then the next one is a 5oz roving, a beautiful BFL, Corriedale Cross (64%),Alpaca (27%) and Sari Silk Waste (9%). It’s called After Midnight and is black, streaks of blue and a few streaks of green. I’m interested to see what it looks like spun up. If I run out before the end of the Tour de France (that’s what we spin with) then I will choose another one and share it 🙂

We cooled down a lot today with lots of rain, we needed it. Glad our heat wave is over for a little bit.