This weekend was mine to do whatever I wanted to do. On Saturday after the niecelets’ birthday party I cleaned the house, ran laundry and stayed up very late watching movies and playing with the cats, and on Sunday when I got tired of watching cooking shows I went up to my room to see what craftsy thing I felt like doing. I turned around in circles and the wheel caught my eye first, so I oiled it up and sat down to spin.

I put in two or three hours over the course of the day, and the bobbin was almost full by bedtime. I haven’t weighed the remaining fibre, but I don’t think I’m even halfway through it yet. I started spinning this stuff back in 2010 for Spin in Public Day and while I admit I’ve not kept to a regular spinning schedule, it seems like I spin and spin and spin, and the pile of unspun fibre never grows any smaller. I know I’m not the only spinner who feels this way, and that eventually it’ll be done… but meanwhile, it’s taking forever!

I’m planning to chain-ply these singles to maintain the striping in the finished yarn. I have another full bobbin of orange and yellow rambouillet singles in about the same weight that’s also destined to be chain-plied. And then, perhaps, instead of putting them away in my basket of handspun yarn, I’ll list them for sale in my Etsy shop.

The fibre is eight ounces of merino pencil roving from Pucker Brush Farm that I bought at Maryland Sheep and Wool in 2010. Most of it drafts very smoothly, but some of the darker sections are matted and felted. I’m not even trying with those, I’m just pulling them out and discarding them. They’ll be good stuffing if I ever make any amigurumi or cat toys.

Unfortunately this morning I woke up quite stiff and sore across my back. I’m going to have to be careful to watch my posture when I’m back at the wheel tomorrow! Following the Yarn Harlot’s example, I’m going to set Tuesday as my day for spinning. While I doubt that an hour or two a week will make for very productive spinning, I’ll certainly get more done than if I just don’t spin at all. I’d like to finish this merino, ply the rambouillet, and move on to some of the other fibres in my stash.

It may be impossible for a cat to enjoy being scritched more than Kipling does. He would be happy if I spent all my time scrubbing his ribs with my fingertips like he was a washboard, with brief intermissions for bellyrubs and ear-scratches.

I think I’m going to be taking a summer break from blogging here. I’ve got a camping-trip vacation coming up, followed by travel for work, and a bunch of other distracting stuff going on.

Pirate-Husband and I are embarking on a big home renovation project. Log homes require much more maintenance than I’d realized. We need to wash, strip, bug-proof, repair, stain and seal the entire house. A contractor gave us a quote that was way too high, so we’re going to be doing it ourselves. To be fair, Pirate-Husband is going to be doing most of it. Just not today; the heat index is up around 127F/53C and it’s a day for staying inside.

Once that is done, we hope to be putting new windows into the house before winter sets in. That one, we’re not doing ourselves. We’ve gotten quotes from a number of window companies and picked the best one. It’s still going to be some major work!

On the knitting front, I’m almost done with the first of the stockinette socks I’ve been carrying around, and I got started on the second front half of the pink sweater. I’ll probably end up making my own buttons for the sweaters, either from shrinky-dink or out of polymer clay. Store-bought buttons are so expensive!

I’ve managed to spin a little bit for the Tour de Fleece, but not nearly enough as I’d hoped. Ah well, the wheel is oiled and ready to go, even if I only have a few free minutes. I have it next to my computer so that I can turn 90 degrees and spin a few yards at any moment.

And that’s the State of the Pirate. I didn’t want to just drop everything and leave with no explanation, but I can safely say: I’ll be back!

Since I finally finished the Hexagon Blanket and gave it to my friend – who, by the way, absolutely loves it – I gave myself a day off from responsibilities on Sunday and let myself spin as much as I wanted to. I’ve really missed the quiet meditation of spinning. This fibre is some merino pencil roving that I bought at last year’s MD Sheep and Wool festival. Most of it drafts so smoothly, but there are some matted bits that I pull out as I find them. The sections that are dyed the darkest colour are harder to draft, for some reason.

So I’ve decided that I’m not making any more baby gifts when friends announce their pregnancies. It’s not that I don’t like to; I actually really like to make gifts for my friends! I had an especially good time with the hexagon blanket, because it was my first crochet project. I love giving gifts (more than I like receiving them, actually) and I love being recognized as a skilled fibre artist. I love that look of “oh, wow,” when the box is opened.

What I don’t love is working to deadlines. I never have. They make me stressed. I can’t enjoy another project when I have a deadline project on the needles; I always feel as if I should be working on it and nothing else. So that’s that – I might make things for babies again, but I won’t be doing it to a deadline. If a particular pattern catches my eye I’ll consider making it in a gender-neutral colour and save it for a future baby. Or I might crochet some toys just to learn how to do it, then give them as gifts.

I want to get back to knitting for myself. I want to work on my own projects and designs without feeling guilty that I’m taking time away from a deadlined gift project. Hopefully it won’t be taken the wrong way. What does it say about me that I feel bad for saying I’m not going to make gifts as a default anymore? Just because I *can*, doesn’t mean I *should*.

I had planned to take part in this year’s Tour de Fleece, a spinning challenge which parallels the Tour de France. Unfortunately, there are a few things which are making me think that perhaps I shouldn’t participate this year:

None of the baby gifts are done yet. I’m having a hard time setting aside time to work on them. I’ve been working an extra hour each day to build up comp time for vacation; exercise takes up a good chunk of my evening; and I want to spend time with Pirate-Husband too. He built me a crafts table and we’ve been working together on Mod Podging fabric to it as something we can do together, but also we can’t put it where it belongs until it’s totally finished, and I think he has a sense of urgency about getting this project done since it was slated to be finished some months ago. We put some time into it last night and it’s looking really good, but we ran out of Podge and had to stop.

Another thing is that I’m going to be out of town for the first four days of the Tour. I know that’s not really such a big deal, and I joined the Lantern Rouge team for people who can’t spin daily during the Tour, but I still feel as if it will be a big handicap to overcome for some reason. That’s sort of as silly excuse, but if I don’t get the baby gifts finished by Thursday evening then I will need to be working on those *and* trying to spin daily…

Yet another excuse is that with the craft table set up, I might want to try to do some sewing for Pennsic. It’s been some years since I’ve gotten new garb, but at the very least I have several “new” dresses that I’ve never worn simply because they need hemming. With the new table, I’ll have a place to put the sewing machine and I can take care of that.

The problem is, I *want* to spin. I want to have few other requirements on my time so that I can feel good about setting aside half an hour of every day to sit down at the wheel.

…and the nieceling wants me to make her a sweater for her favourite stuffed animal, Bunny. How can I resist a request like that?

After I’d taken pictures of many sheep, I met up with friend Holly at The Fold’s booth, where we tried to resist buying every single skein of Socks that Rock. The colourway that I was looking for was nowhere to be found, unfortunately.

For the next several hours we perused as many of the vendors’ offerings as we could. Despite my best efforts to buy nothing, I had gone into the day knowing that I would probably buy something, and indeed I did:

Two braids of Blue-Faced Leicester in the “Stone House” colourway from Three Waters Farm. I’m not sure what I’ll make with this yet, which is why I went for two braids instead of one – I’ll have more options that way. BFL is great for socks, and with eight ounces I’d surely have enough for some nice tall socks. If I made regular-length socks, I’d probably have enough yarn left over for a second pair, or maybe armwarmers. When I unbraid it, I’ll decide whether I’m going to do a three-ply or a chain-plied yarn. I like the barberpoled look of a true three-ply, but then the striping of chain-plied yarn is tempting.

Two ounces each of Ashland Bay’s merino-silk blend in McKenzie, Concord and Sea Lilac will eventually become another colourwork hat. The spun-up samples of the two darker colours were nothing like what it looks like now; they were lovely heathered shades without any hint of striping at all. I’ll have to sample to see how to get that effect. While I do generally like to buy hand-dyed fibre from small companies or individual fibre artists, Ashland Bay’s fibres are always appealing not only because the colours are beautiful, but because the prep is so consistent; every piece of fibre is just as smooth-drafting as the next. The first real usable yarn I spun was from Ashland Bay fibre, so I guess I have a soft spot for it.

From Little Barn, eight ounces of unbleached tussah silk and eight ounces of silk noil for carding into blended batts. The drum carder is set up in its new station and I’m excited to get started on producing some beautiful batts. I have about 14 ounces of Corriedale top in a variety of solid colours, some undyed mohair and nylon that can be added in for sock blends, quite a bit of alpaca in natural shades, and now the silk.

Then, Holly gave me a bag full of Cormo locks that she prepped. I’ve never spun Cormo before and I’m really curious to try it! She warned me that while it’s clean, it does still have a bit of lanolin in it. I think I’ll try spinning it as it is, and then wash it in hot water with dish soap after it’s all plied up.

Being around so much fibre has gotten me anticipating this year’s Tour de Fleece, a spinning challenge that parallels the Tour de France. I’ve already joined “Team Kromski” as I’ll be spinning on Grace the Sonata. So far I haven’t set any goals for myself other than “spin daily, and spin more”. Last year I left the wheel out in the living room and was reminded to spin daily. This year with the cats I don’t think that would be the wisest of ideas. They think that Patience the Traditional’s drive band is a great toy and I can only imagine what damage they would do to any fibre I left unsupervised.

The only problem is that the Tour begins on July 2, and I’ll be out of town until July 5. So I won’t be able to start until the fifth day, and that puts me in the “Lantern Rouge” group of spinners who can’t quite do the whole thing but participate as much as possible. Will I be able to catch up and match last year’s spinning if I start late? Will the cats begin to hate me if I spend nearly three weeks locked away from them with my wheel? Will I actually set a real goal or will I just leave it as “spin daily, and spin more”? Time will tell…

I haven’t spun a yard of yarn since September, and I find myself eyeing Grace (the Sonata) longingly from across the room while I’m knitting on gifts for my friends and family. Not that I begrudge the gifts, but I will have to take a day off knitting soon to spin instead.

There’s these lovely rambouillet singles, waiting to be chain-plied. I’m really curious how many yards I got from the four ounces of fiber, whether or not there will be enough for socks (whenever I get the chance to knit them up), how the colour progression will look, what the yarn will feel like after it’s washed. Also, this will be my first real try at chain-plying – not just on scraps of singles, but for an entire skein of yarn – and I have my fingers crossed that I’ll be able to get it right.

(Won’t it be hard to ply with your fingers crossed, Pirate? Yes, yes it will.)

It’s getting frustrating to see the singles waiting there on the lazy kate, and to not know what the finished yarn will be like! I did spin the singles fairly finely, but until I’ve plied and skeined the yarn, I won’t know if there’s enough yardage for socks. If not, it would make lovely armwarmers or a lacy little scarflette.

And there’s more, too. I want to finish up the blue and sparkles yarn, and the merino pencil roving that I began on Spin in Public Day. I want to dive into this merino top that I bought at Maker Faire. I want to try something two-ply and woolen with tweedy bits in it. I want to try new fibres and new techniques.

Oh, spinning, I miss you. Can we spend some time together soon? Please?

It’s getting to be that gift-giving time of year again, isn’t it? Yesterday, Pirate-Husband asked me what I wanted for my birthday and Chanukah gifts. My birthday is in January and his is in December, so we often do combined presents in order to get one bigger thing.

The problem is, I have no idea what I want.

Lots of the things on my wishlist are way out of our budget. They’re things I’m saving up for, like a new laptop, a new monitor, and a fancy-schmancy camera. Some of the things on my wishlist are mere thoughts of what I might want if I didn’t already have a time-consuming fibre addiction, like a bowling ball and new shoes. Some are things I’m just not ready to get yet, like a book reader, and some are things I’d much rather buy for myself, like clothing and makeup.

But then there are the knitting and spinning related things. I’m sure I could ask for a gift certificate to the yarn store, or to pick out a bunch of hand-dyed top on Etsy. But I really don’t need any new yarn or fibre. Unless maybe it was natural fibre, in which case I’d also ask for a set of dyes… but that seems messy, and our basement really isn’t set up for that kind of work (yet). Knitting or spinning books, maybe.

Oh, hey, what about a jumbo flyer kit for the Sonata and an extra bobbin (in walnut)? That would definitely make plying easier, and it’s something I’d like to have that I almost certainly wouldn’t buy for myself.

If only I could get the gift of time. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have four extra hours in every day? Imagine all the knitting I could get done…

After a wonderful dim sum brunch with a group of friends, Janis and I celebrated “World Wide Spin in Public Day” by, what else, spinning in public! We set up our wheels at a local coffeehouse and got to work. I brought eight ounces of merino pencil roving with me. After a few frustrating undertwisted yards that kept drifting apart, I was able to get a good single going. The pencil roving has colour changes every six to nine inches, so I plan on chain-plying the singles to keep the striping going. The yarn should come out to be a good fingering weight once it’s plied. Spinning sock yarn does take a long time, but I like knitting socks best of all, so I end up spinning a lot of worsted, fine singles.

We’d originally thought to sit outside the coffeehouse and spin, for the best “in public” experience, but it was really bright out and I didn’t have sunscreen with me. Even so, a few people stopped to watch us spin indoors, and one even asked to take our picture to send to her fibre-fiend sister. That was really cool – and she was nice enough to send us a copy of the picture. (These two aren’t them; I remembered I had my camera after she’d gone and Pirate-Husband was kind enough to take some shots of us.)

I can’t have a spinning day without teaching a friend to spin. This is Stef, learning the drop spindle (my Cascade Little Si, which weighs about an ounce and a half) with some bright green top. Janis’s larger spindle is on the table. Stef decided that spinning really wasn’t her thing, but she does want to learn to knit. I’m not as confident teaching people to knit as I am to spin, but hopefully I can get the concept across well without too much frustration on either side. Maybe I’ll ask Janis to help with the teaching. Since she knits English and I prefer Continental, it might be good for both of us to be there so we can teach both ways. Then Stef can pick whichever she likes better!

Janis and I, along with Stef and Sam, also stopped by Woolwinders to check out the new inventory. They have a pretty good selection of higher-end yarns, but very little in my favourite “cheap sock yarn” range. I wasn’t going to buy anything at first, but Sam and I have been talking about designing a shawl together, so I got this Madelinetosh Merino Light in the “Vintage Frame” colourway for that. Sam also got a skein of Merino Light, but in a dark purples and black colourway. I won’t have time to design and execute a shawl for a while, but this beautiful pewter-coloured fingering-weight single will be perfect when I get to it. We’re discussing the possibility of incorporating the same stitch patterns into both a triangular shawl and a rectangular stole.

Floyd and Aubrey are out cold. This might be the only time I could knit in front of them without fearing for my yarn. Fortunately, kittens sleep a lot…

While my friends and neighbors at Pennsic said that I’d made amazing progress on Mom’s sock, I’m actually a little disappointed. I made it past the heel and through the gusset decreases, but I’d hoped to get the entire first sock finished while I was there. It was really just too hot to knit much of the time, and there were other things going on, too. That said, it’s coming out beautifully. There’s a little bit of pooling around the gusset, but I expected that. I love this yarn just as much as the first time I used it. I’m using almost exactly the same pattern; the only change I made was to take out four stitches, because Mom’s feet are just a little bit smaller.

My Pennsic-friend Alaric makes wood and stone drop spindles, although he himself doesn’t spin. Last year I bought one from him to give to Gaerwen, another SCA friend, who was receiving an award for her skills in spinning and natural dyeing. This year I came home with a twelve inch long, 25 gram, cherry spindle of my own. He had some which were all wood, and some with stone whorls, and some with double stone whorls that could be swapped in and out to get different weights. Every time I see him, I tell him to get an Etsy shop set up and then to advertise on Ravelry!

I really liked this particular spindle of the ones he had, and it fits well into my collection – now I have a 14g (from the Spanish Peacock) for really fine stuff, this 25g for medium, and a 34g spindle (the Cascade Little Si) for slightly heavier yarn. I generally like spinning at the wheel a lot better than using a drop spindle, but there are times when spindles are convenient. They’re certainly lighter to carry and take up less space, but also I’ve found that it’s easier to teach new spinners on a spindle.

This is the stuff that was mostly done before I went on vacation…

The three skeins of Jacob yarn had been plied during the Tour de Fleece, but I didn’t get to washing it until after vacation. The yarn came out so unexpectedly soft – the darkest one is the softest. I’ve been told that the different colours of wool on a Jacob sheep will actually have different staple lengths, but as I got this fibre already prepped into roving, I didn’t notice. I’m still looking for the perfect colourwork earflap hat pattern for this yarn. The two darker colours are closer in value than I’d like, but I think that can be worked around. I have 104 yards of the darkest colour, and 92 yards each of the medium and white – plenty for a hat!

This is the corriedale from EthnicityGoddess on Etsy. I’d spun and plied this just before the Tour de Fleece began, but again, was lazy about the washing. Now it’s 218 yards of a bouncy three-ply yarn with subtle colours. Pirate-Husband suggested that it would be great for making thick flip-top mittens, and I think I agree with him. But that will be a far-off future project, since I already have so much planned for the near future.

I was incredibly surprised when I found out that I’d won a prize in the Tour de Fleece. Sure, it was a random number generator that chose me, but that doesn’t make it any less cool to have won something! I had my choice of prizes and went for a four ounce blend of fibre I’ve never spun before – BFL/tussah – in a colourway that is about the farthest thing from ‘my colours’ as I could get. It’s called ‘Sherbert and Ernie’ and it’s from Susan’s Spinning Bunny. Thank you so much for donating a prize and making the Tour de Fleece that much more exciting!

Every year, Pirate-Husband and I go to Pennsic War, the biggest annual event in the SCA‘s calendar. We will join over 10,000 people for two weeks of food, fun, fighting, classes on every imaginable subject (link to pdf), shopping – and my favourite, sitting in the shade knitting socks and drinking beer.

This year, we’re actually making two separate trips up to the campsite. We’re leaving for War tonight, will set up our tent tomorrow, and unfortunately have to come home on Sunday so that we can work for three more days before our vacation actually begins. But then, we’re off for a long relaxing trip into the Middle Ages!

I haven’t even decided what knitting I’m bringing yet. On one hand, I could crank out baby knits for my friends who are expecting. On the other, I could finish my Time Traveler socks, which is sort of fitting for a time-traveling vacation. Maybe I’ll bring both and alternate? Maybe I’ll begin a new project?

Not only are we excited about going on vacation, but we’re excited about a new addition to our family. No, we’re not going to have a baby – at least, not a human baby. We’re adopting two little kittens! Here is a video I got of them playing at their foster-mom’s house the other day. She is going to keep them for us until we get back.

We are going to adopt the first two kittens in the video, the small black one and the first gray-and-white one. They will be about three months old when we bring them home. We have potential names picked out for them already, but I want to make sure the kittens and their names go together. Once we’re sure of their names, I’ll let you all know!

Please forgive me if there’s less knitting and spinning in the next few months than usual. I’m going to have to confine my yarn to quarters to keep it from investigative paws and claws.

But, in spinning news, I won a prize in the Tour de Fleece in the Natural Yarns category for the Jacob roving! Granted, it was a prize picked by random number generator, but still – I won a prize! I never win anything and so this came as a massive surprise. I had a choice of prizes, so I picked a BFL/silk blend from Susan’s Spinning Bunny, in the “Sherbert and Ernie” colourway. Of all the available options, this seemed most unlike what I’d buy for myself, so I chose it under the theory that if I never expand my colour preferences then I’ll never know what I might like.

Three weeks of spinning nearly every day for the Tour de Fleece has been great, for so many reasons. First, because doing something every day (or nearly every day) is bound to make you better at it, and I feel like my spinning skills have subtly increased. No great big leaps of skill or whooshing breakthroughs, but I’m definitely better than when I started.

Second, because I do love a good challenge. And I love having a challenge that, if I don’t quite meet it, it’s all right. I’d set a goal to spin every day that my ankles were up to it, and I met that. Well, with the exception of the rest days, and the weekend I spent in New York. I’m okay with that. I’d also set a goal to spin and ply a pound of yarn… which I didn’t meet. But you know what? That’s still a heck of a lot of spinning, and quite a bit more yarn than I had when I began this adventure. It’s been freeing to take on a challenge with the foreknowledge that a) I might not make it but b) that’s totally okay. I’m not down on myself for not getting there, I’m feeling great because I got as far as I did! If I do this crazy thing again next year, I’ll set a one-pound goal again, and with (kenahora*) healthy ankles, I should be able to make it.

Thirdly, because I really do like spinning.

Fourthly, because Pirate-Husband has been nothing but supportive of me and my yarnish hobby, especially during the Tour. Some evenings I felt guilty saying “No, I don’t want to watch a movie with you, I want to go upstairs and spin.” But he’s been awesome about it, cheering me on and admiring the yarn that is slowly but surely taking over all the available shelf-space in my room.

So, a wrapup: What did I accomplish in the past three weeks? I spun and plied six ounces of natural Jacob roving that will become a hat, spun four ounces of Rambouillet combed top that’s meant to be chain-plied and then to become socks, and spun three of four remaining ounces of wool/mohair/angelina roving, which is coming out to be a worsted/chunky-weight soft sparkly deliciousness, and which Pirate-Husband thinks I should knit into a scarf for Grandma. The fourth ounce of that roving is hanging from the wheel; I may get to it tonight and then I can ply it later in the week. I spun the first four ounces of it last fall, and it came out to be 138 yards. If the second skein is the same, then I should have enough for a medium-sized scarf.

And now what? Now I go back to knitting. Vacation begins in just over a week and I have to decide which projects to bring with me! The baby knits? The gift-socks? My own socks? A whole new project? So many options!

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* Kenahora isn’t quite Yiddish and it isn’t quite Hebrew, and it isn’t quite one word, either! It’s actually three words slurred together: kein, the Yiddish word for no or negating, ayin, which is Hebrew for eye, and hara, Hebrew for Evil. It’s what you say when you want to ward off the evil eye – in other words, when you don’t want to jinx yourself. So, kenahora, I will have healthy ankles next July and I will be able to spin and ply a full pound of fibre.

Although I didn’t begin the Tour de Fleece with a specific goal, one gradually coalesced in my mind as I sat down at the wheel each night: to spin and ply one pound of fibre. If I could do that, I promised myself, then I could buy a new four-ounce braid. For every sixteen ounces out, four in. At that rate I will spin down my stash nicely. (And if I don’t make the goal by the end of the Tour, then I still won’t let myself buy anything new until I’ve spun and plied at least a pound!)

Wednesday was a Tour “Rest Day” but Thursday was the “Challenge Day”. I challenged myself to finish the Rambouillet that I’ve been working on for two weeks already. It took more than two hours of spinning to get through what was left, but now it’s all finished and resting on the bobbin, waiting for my first real attempt at chain-plying. I’ve been watching tutorial videos and I hope I can coordinate my hands well enough to come up with a nicely plied sock-weight (possibly heavy sock-weight, in places) striping yarn. The oranges and golds of this yarn will go wonderfully with dark jeans. Once this is plied, I’ll be more than halfway to my one-pound goal, but with only three spinning days left in the Tour, I’d better hurry it up. Six more ounces to spin and ply – can I do it? Will my ankles hold up to the workout? The physiotherapy is definitely helping; I have my fourth appointment this afternoon. Hopefully they’ll say I’m all cured before too long!

On my way home yesterday, I saw these three butterflies crowding each other for space on a thistle-blossom. They were so captivating that I stopped the car in the middle of the road to watch them, and then got out to take a picture. Unfortunately I only had my phone instead of a real camera, but I think it’s worth sharing anyway. The dark butterfly is a Black Swallowtail, and the two orange butterflies are Eastern Tiger Swallowtails. I am lucky to live in such a gorgeous place; every day I make a point of admiring the view as I drive up the mountain. I never want to become jaded to the beauty of the semi-wilderness.

Next up, I’m going to spin something thick, quick and woolen. It will be a nice break after the thin, slow worsted spinning I’ve been doing for what seems like forever… and it will give me half a chance of being able to reach the one pound goal by Sunday night.

After a weekend of spinning whenever I got the chance to sit down, I’m about two-thirds of the way through the Rambouillet. It’s not my most even spinning ever, but it’s certainly even enough to make sock yarn – that is, if I can get the hang of chain-plying. I’ve been watching tutorial videos and I think I know what to do, but doing is always different than watching. I’m looking forward to having the long colour progression that’ll be kept by chain-plying, rather than doing a standard three-ply yarn. Not only that, but I’m looking forward to having yellow and orange socks. It’s a colour that I really can’t wear close to my face, because it makes me look ghastly and sick, but that won’t be a problem with socks.

Because the Tour de Fleece is a parallel of the Tour de France, I thought it might be nice to watch a little bit of the bicycling. I’ve never actually seen any of it before… and now I know why; it’s actually kind of boring. But it made good background noise for my spinning. While I listened, I thought that perhaps “spin one pound of fibre into yarn” would be a reasonable goal for my first Tour de Fleece, and made a deal with myself: if I spin up one pound of fibre, I will treat myself to a new four ounce braid. I have a double dozen shops in my list of favourites on Etsy, but I’d love suggestions – who are your favourite dyers? What’s your favourite fibre? What would you recommend?

Today is one of two Tour de Fleece/France “rest days” so I plan to knit, rather than spin, when I get home this evening.

I really enjoyed this video that’s been making the rounds, in which Renate Hiller of the Fiber Craft Studio at the Threefold Educational Center discusses the value of handwork, on what it means to create and to be part of the Divine. It might be getting a little woo, but I believe that we are all a part of the Divine, and that by creating, we are expressing our own internal divinity. That’s all I’ll say about it here; I’m not trying to talk about religion but about the spiritual aspect that’s inherent in the act of creating. Regardless of one’s religion, beliefs, or lack thereof, I feel that there is a something that connects all of us artists and creators together.

In the video, Mrs. Hiller says that “there is a loss of understanding of the value of things, of the meaning of things,” when we don’t engage in the activity of creation, and I couldn’t agree more. When I spin – especially with the drop spindle – I think about the generations of spinners before me. I think about how the sails on ships were all woven from threads spun on a simple drop spindle. How much more does a piece of fabric mean when you’ve put in the long hours to spin the yarn and then to weave or knit or crochet it into something functional? How much less does it mean when you can just go buy it at the store?

Everything she says in the brief video rings true for me, but this particular quote really resonated: [Spinning]… is an activity that brings us closer to the cosmos; at the same time, we create something that is useful & beautiful.

What do you think?

I apologize for the quality of today’s pictures; Pirate-Husband has the camera and I took these shots with my phone. Better than nothing, but not that great.

To really change things up a bit, I retrieved this languishing laceweight spindle project for an afternoon. It’s just half an ounce of merino, a fibre sample from Sheepish Creations, that I decided to spin as finely as possible to get the most yardage out of it. Perhaps that wasn’t my wisest idea ever, but there’s no turning back now. Besides, it’s a good chance to use the 14g spindle, which I could not resist getting from the Spanish Peacock at an SCA event a few years ago.

The other reason for me to spindle today was that I had the opportunity to teach my friend Erika to spin! I started her on my Cascade Little Si, a 1.5 ounce spindle, and some green wool top that came with my first wheel. I think we have a new spinning addict in the fold. She caught on quickly – so quickly, in fact, that she didn’t even ask what to do when she came to the end of her first chunk of fibre. She just got the next piece, thinned it out, laid it over the end of the first piece, and kept right on going. When I had to head off to bed, I left her with the rest of the green top – probably about an ounce – and a cardboard roll to wind off the singles if the cop got to be too heavy. I’m interested to see what she does with it today, and will probably teach her about plying tonight or tomorrow.

I can’t spindle for too long before my shoulder begins aching, so after a while I moved back to the wheel and spun up some more of the Rambouillet. It was lots of fun to spin with company! Tonight we’re going out to dinner with friends, but I ought to be able to get at least twenty minutes at the wheel to meet the challenge of the Tour de Fleece.

The three Jacob colours have been skeined up, though not washed yet. I’m starting to see more of a difference between the dark and medium now that they’re off the bobbin. Whew! The white and medium gray came to 92 yards each, and the dark is 104 yards. That will be more than enough to knit a hat with yarn left over to braid onto the ends of the earflaps for an extra-adorable pigtails look. I’ve been thinking about cutting my hair short when it starts to get cold again, so I won’t be able to make any pigtails of my own.

As long as I had the skeiner out, I wound up this three-ply corriedale that I’d finished just before the Tour de Fleece began. It came to a total of 218 yards from six ounces of fiber, and I’m really pleased with the subtlety of the colours. There are two knots in the skein, which I can spit-splice when I come to them, but it was easier to make one big skein than three little ones. It’s not washed yet either, which is why it’s still so curly at the ends. I expect it to come out of the bath with lots of bounce and squoosh (that’s a technical term). Right now I have no idea what to knit with this yarn, unfortunately. Into the stash basket it will go, to await the next brilliant idea!

I’ve moved on to spinning up some Rambouillet that I purchased in a destash. It’s incredibly soft and much finer than I imagined it would be. The plan is to spin it all this fine and then chain-ply it to keep the colour progression. It looks a little bit like a tequila sunrise at the moment, don’t you think? Rambouillet on its own seems like it would be too soft and fine for socks, so I might have to come up with another type of project for it. Armwarmers? A hat? A pillow, maybe? Or I could just knit up the socks and then treat them very, very gently. That is, assuming my first effort at chain-plying isn’t a horrific failure…

I did indeed spin the white bobbin as part of my Day 1 efforts, and got a picture of all three together first thing this morning. I’m quite pleased with it, though I do wish there was a little bit more difference between the dark and medium grays to show off the colourwork better. I doubt that it will look more obvious once it’s knit up, but I’ll try anyway and see what I get. How bad could it really be, right? It’ll still be a warm hat that I knit myself of yarn that I spun myself, and that’s pretty awesome no matter how subtle the colours are.

The plan was to make a plying ball and not lose a yard of the singles. I used my trusty ball-winder to make a cake of the singles, then attempted to use it again to wind both ends together. That was a terrible mistake on my part, since the yarn unwinds from the outside of the ball faster than the inside, and then twists back on itself and makes tangles. A third hand might have come in useful at this point; I ended up awkwardly using the side of my leg to hold the ball-winder’s handle steady while I did some of the untangling.

The double-stranded yarn cake does look neat and tidy, but it was such a pain to produce because of all the stopping and untangling. So I decided to wind the second plying ball around a cardboard roll. It really wasn’t as bad as this looks, honest. This picture is from the very end of the process when my cake of singles collapsed in on itself. I was able to untangle it fairly easily, and then plying from the roll was an absolute breeze. It might be the most even plying I’ve ever managed.

Tomorrow I’ll ply the third bobbin, skein the yarn, and give it all a wash and a whack – and then my first Tour de Fleece yarn will be finished! It’s already soft and squishy, so I can’t wait to see what it’s like when it’s been abused a little bit, and what it will be like to knit with – but that won’t be for a while, yet. Not until the Tour is over, anyway.

Pirate-Husband and I had some of the usual chores to do this morning, but as soon as we got back from the grocery store I excitedly brought my wheel downstairs to the living room, set up in front of the big windows, and got started on the Tour de Fleece!

I’ve tagged a few fibres in my stash on Ravelry with “tdf10″, but the only real plan I made was to begin with this Jacob roving sampler from Firefly Farm. With this hat (pdf link) in mind, I began spinning a low-twist woolen yarn that’s considerably heavier than my usual sock-weight singles. It was difficult to spin thicker yarn at first, but by the end of the second bobbin I’d gotten the hang of it and was even beginning to understand the very basics of the long draw. I will probably spin the white roving up later tonight, but I wanted to take these pictures while there was still natural light. The dark and medium colours are fairly close to one another, so the hat might have subtle patterning rather than vivid, but that will be just fine. Depending on what the yarn feels like when it’s knit up, I might line the hat with polar fleece.

Because I had no good way of dividing each colour in half before I started, I plan to wind up the singles into a center-pull ball, then I’ll make a plying ball with both ends held together, and then I will run those together through the wheel. Making a plying ball rather than just plying from the center-pull ball might seem tedious, but it will head off the tangles which are almost inevitable otherwise.

This has been a great start to the Tour de Fleece for me, and I’m so exited about the rest of the challenge!

The Tour de Fleece doesn’t start for four more days, but I’m getting excited about it – perhaps overexcited. I’ve been looking through my fibre stash and deciding on what to spin first, in what weight, with what technique, and wondering just how much of this fluff I’ll be able to get through in twenty-three days. I’m making plans, but of course those might totally fly out the window once I get started.

At the very least, I’m planning on starting with this six ounce sampler of Jacob roving from Firefly Farm. When I was in Canada in February, I admired the earflap hats with colourwork that so many people were wearing, and swore that I’d knit one for myself before next Winterlude. This pattern (link to .pdf) looks cute and interesting and would make use of the three colours of wool that I have to work with. It should be easy and quick enough to knit with only two colours per round. I also like the Norwegian Star pattern (Ravelry link), but that only calls for two colours. If the hat comes out too itchy, I could knit a lining out of a softer wool, or perhaps sew in a fleece lining. Lining the hat would make it extra-warm, which is always a bonus for me.

After that, I’m not sure what will come next. Perhaps some of the older fibre in the stash. I’d like to try chain-plying one of my yarns to keep the colour progression. There’s one that I will spin up thick and quick, and one that’s meant to be socks. I have more to choose from in the stash than I could possibly spin in a month, so I’m not running out to buy more fibre just yet…