Tour de Fleece Week One in Review

AKA I made it a week without getting distracted and quitting WOOT!!

To the peeps reading this post on Dreamwidth - So as not to cram your friends list with post after post of my tiny increments of spinning progress, I decided to keep the daily progress posts my craft blog and only post weekly recaps here. In case you are curious (or stricken with horrid insomnia and think a week of watching yarn grow might be the cure) you can find my daily posts under the TDF tag at the craft blog

Random people who have wandered onto my blog (probably on accident, and either got lost or too distracted to wander back out) and stayed to read my blatherings - since I'm crossposting here too, you can think of this post as those annoying sportscasters who just keeps repeating everything you've already seen while stalling for more exciting action to come

(photos and more after the jump)

Tour de Fleece Day...what now? Seven?

Currently recovering from a morning of work, a break for my spinning, followed by an afternoon picking blueberries. In the sun. The hot sun. I might be delirious at this point, but still here I am posting my progress.


Mainly just wanted to put up a quick photo this time, and then tomorrow I'll be posting a ginormous week in review to cross post here and to my dreamwidth journal.

I've done almost 15g of this fiber, and I've already pulled it off the spindle. Tomorrow I'll start with more of the same, in hopes by next weekend I'll have some progress to show off on a plied yarn. Hopefully.
Fingers crossed.
(but just for a while, or else I can't hold my spindle)

For now I'm just going to enjoy a giant glass of lemonade and this fresh blueberry donut
Mmmmmmmmm

TDF Day Six and a WIP update

Spinning first -
Second day spinning the Rosewood BFL, and I went for just over an hour today

I wish I was spinning even thinner than I am, but I'm still thinking I can ply it without getting monster thick yarn. I'm very happy with the speed I'm working at now, so that's a bonus.

Now the WIP update-
I finally reached a major progress milestone on my cardi WIP!!

Tour de Fleece - Day Five

Before work I took the yarn I'd finished yesterday and made a cute little miniskein hank with it. 

I'm really happy with how the yarn turned out, just wish there was more of it. There will be eventually, but I want to work some with the other fiber first. Since I had more free time than expected after work, I was able to spin for over an hour. 

This is the RoseWood BFL I've started working with

And this is my progress for the day

I am trying to spin a little thinner (which I did manage to do with a fair bit of consistency) so that I can try plying later. I also decided to wind it on the spindle differently. Instead of the side by side winding that I did last time, I wound it how I wind balls on yarn on my nostepinne. 

Side note - I'm sure there are fancy names for both ways, but I don't know them. Things like this are what happens when a spinner is self-teaching, but isn't patient enough to find/read/watch all the resources out there. It is kind of like I'm trying to assemble a bookcase with the instructions for a table. I know what the finished product should look like and I'll get it in the end, but expect some mistakes and tantrums along the way. 

Anywho, winding this way doesn't make for as pretty a progress pic, but it is much more stable and I think I'm getting more yarn in the same amount of space so I'm going to stick with it.

Day Four of the Tour

Once again, I forgot to note my spinning time, I know it's well over the ten minutes so I guess it doesn't matter so much. Today I was into the cream colored section. 

The more full my spindle got, the harder it was to control so I decided to break the yarn and "finish" what I've done so far. 

Well, that was part of my reasoning. I also really want to try spinning something thin enough that I can attempt plying without making super bulky yarn and I want to spin the BFL some too. 

Since I only have the one spindle, I had finish what I've done in these first four days. This meant I finally got to use the PVC niddy noddy i badgered my BF into making for me. It did take a few views of the YouTube vids, but I think I used it properly. Before today it's sole use was whacking unexpecting visitors in the head when they tried to reach the craft books off the shelf. Being used to actually make a skein was a new experience.

I ended up with almost 17 yards. Not a huge amount, but more than I've spun before now without breaking. Thinking about it as almost half what I need for a cup cozy makes it sound better.


I just keep telling myself practice practice practice and then my speed is bound to improve...I hope. Four yards a day seems sooooo slow!

The main consolation is that this yarn is so pretty-shiny-soft-beautiful.
Here's a close up of it hanging up to dry. 

(Mini-skein glamour shot to follow in the next couple days)

Tour de Fleece - Day Three

Today was a lesson in spinning with distractions, not that I'm complaining!

I had the daughter of a friend over to meet the Hedgie after work. Luckily mine has no idea it's supposed to be nocturnal, and so she was more than willing to be handled for a while before burrowing back into her little sack.
After that it was snoozing away, and while she was 'doing her art' I decided to do my spinning for the day. There was a lot of setting down and picking back up while I stopped to get crayons, ribbons, the fancy scissors etc etc so I have absolutely no idea how much time I spent actually spinning. I think all of that stop and go might have been why I was running a bit more thick and thin too, but not to the point it won't be knitable so I'm not too worried. Overall I'm happy with my progress

Tour de Fleece - Day Two

Here I am after today:

I'm out of the "cola" into the "cherry" section of the Cherry Cola colors, and tomorrow I should hit the section of creamy fizz color.
(if you think that doesn't make sense, you should hear how I give driving directions)

I was spinning along for about 40 minutes before BF's friend showed up with his daughter.

I was going to spin more after they left, but decided to start cleaning the craft room instead. Trust me, it needed it! Now I have made a dent in the chaos, which will make working on other projects easier. Maybe next week I'll try making a second attempt at a spindle, since the first one was way to uneven.