Tour de Fleece - Are we there yet?
Reached the "trudging through knee-deep mud" part of spinning on Sunday, I want to get to the plying! No ideas on what to use the pink skein for, I just want it off my wheel. This Tour de Fleece has been exclusively wheel-spinning, I love my Majacraft Rose. I love my Tudor Rose spindle too, and I have an interesting batt on my Kundert spindle. Last year I spun at lunchtime, and in Borders, trying to meet a "spin every day" goal. Didn't quite make it but I had a really good excuse.
Saturday 18th July
Got the first two layers down on the second bobbin, the never-ending mound of pink fuzz is being whittled down to size. I'm curious how it will look when it's plied up, the colour changes are subtle along the length of the fibre. I might get this plied by the end of the Tour! Whatever will I spin next...
Sunday 19th July
Still spinning the pink. Three foot-long sections of roving left to go, each one gets split in three because it's so wide and dense. Wanting to get to the plying, feels like I've been spinning this for too long, even though it's only the fifth day.
Ruth mentioned her mother has access to "wool". No idea on breed, quantity, or quality, all we know is it's not carded. Said I'd take a pound and see what it's like. Most likely uncoated raw fleece, so I'll need to get my tetanus shot up to date.
Monday 20th July
Wanted to finish spinning the pink today or tomorrow, and have a finished skein by the end of the week, but I still have two foot-long chunks to go. Hopefully I can knock this out by the end of Wednesday and ply on Thursday. Would like to have some orange fibre to spin instead of pink, I thought this merino/bamboo would be orange from the photos on the website. Almost all my fibre stash is undyed wool or alpaca. Got a lot of alpaca in the stash, so I need to learn how to spin it well.
What to spin next? It needs to be a small project. I was eyeing up the steel wool pads for sanding the tabletop for my craft room, it would be coarse but the staple length didn't look too bad...
Tuesday 21st July
More pink. I'm seeing alternating bubblegum and maroon sections. Got halfway through the penultimate foot-long chunk, very limited time to spin today. Tomorrow I will either have to get creative, or declare a rest day, I don't think I'll be able to get to the wheel.
Wednesday 22nd July
Got creative, insomnia spinning at 4am. Seems to be way more on bobbin #2, how do you get these things even?