Tour de Fleece Day 12

Is it day 12? I've lost count.

But I have made my first goal, to finish this 100g. I'd already started it before the Tour started but with daily spinning it seemed like a good opportunity to finish it.

This first picture was taken with a macro lens, so it looks much bulkier than it really is, so here's a shot with the spindle for scale:

I spun with team Drop Spindle Addicts and spun & plied the yarn using that spindle. I make this 290 yds and (by eye) it's somewhere between lace and sock.

The fibre is silk / mohair / wool from picperfic's fibre club, colour 'Monet's Pond'. A perfect mix for socks, I'm thinking and I have a pattern in mind.

fleece to finished - Check Slouch Hat

I've blogged about this yarn and this hat as I made it but for completeness here are pictures and my thoughts.

I used my new wool combs to process a couple of bags of fleece I had stored - some zwartbles fleece and  some from Smiler, a sheep belonging to a family friend whose breed I can't recall. The grey is a mix of the two (note much more white than black) and all of the yarn is rather neat and incredibly squashy.

I love the Check Slouch pattern. It's my first 'slip stitch' colourwork pattern. Each round only involves a single colour, this may mean that the knitting takes a bit longer but I preferred this to carrying two strands around the work. The check effect is great and works really well with natural colours. 

I've not blocked a hat before, here I used a balloon which worked well, although I probably put a little too much air into it and stretched the brim a little larger than needed.

Blocking a handspun hand-knitted hat

I finished my Check Slouch hat yesterday (see the yarn and pattern here) It looked great on but arguably should be blocked in order to look its best.

1. a soak with a delicate wash such as Eucalan

2. The pattern says "block over a dinner plate or balloon". I've never done this before but it works remarkably well. It costs just a few pence for a balloon, plus I've sealed it with a food sealer here so I can re-use it!

The top of the hat is a little more puckered than it looks on the pattern, this could be because when I switched to dpns for the final decreases, I went down a size thinking this would be ok.

I'll post "start-finish" pictures when this has dried and I can model it.

Tour de Fleece 2015 - start as you mean to go on

I've started my Tour as I mean to go on.

I joined Team Drop Spindle Addicts because that seemed appropriate. I have this gorgeous silk/mohair/polwarth from picperfic's luxury fibre club already started.

I plan to finish that and then finish off some pure 'straight from the bunny' angora I'm halfway through on a little Turkish spindle.

Samoyed dog fur - finished spinning

Longdraw is like magic when it works well. This was difficult to spin because there's absolutely no length to the fibres (some was fluffy and very short, some was a little longer and coarser, I assume this is soft undercoat and coarser outer coat)

But by the end, with lots of practice, the singles were flowing well. I found that tight punis worked best

This is just a part of the total, I now have seven skeins altogether, maybe 5-600 yards. I understand that this came from just one brushing!

[edited to add a picture of the total yarn, balled]

Appleton Alpaca Back to Back in print

How good to see my recent trip to Yorkshire for the Appleton Alpaca Back to Back Challenge featured over 3 pages in the latest Yarnmaker magazine

Challenges seems to be a theme in this issue, there are two 'back to back' stories, plus an article about Katie's 'longest thread' challenge.

casting on!

I've now made three colours from some almost-forgotten fleeces and my new wool combs. The fleeces are an unidentified family pet sheep (white) and a zwartbles (black). I've used the combs to blend the two for the grey which I'm delighted with.

 All three are incredibly bouncy, the skeins are light and really squish down to nothing in your hand. They're so even too. After combing, the wool almost spins itself into very neat and even yarn.

Just a short while in Ravelry's pattern search turned this up. (Check Slouch from Interweave) It only gives one size and calls for slightly thicker yarn than I've made but it should be an easy pattern to adjust. It'll also bring in new skills for me, it'll be the first 'double knitting' that I've done. One colour per round, lots of slipping. Gagging to get started on this one.