TDF 2012- so far

It's a little half way through the Tour de Fleece 2012 on Ravelry. I've already spun up 12.4oz of fiber. 4.3 of that is punta from The Sheep Shed Studio that I handdyed. The rest is part of a 1lb raw fleece spinning challenge for one of the teams I am on. It is black alpaca blended with wool and a bit of silk. Each skein is a blend of 2oz of alpaca, .75oz of Romeldale/ColumbiaX wool and .125oz of kettledyed silk. The silk gets laid on the drum carder during the final card. I split the alpaca/wool blended batt into four quarters. The silk goes on between the first and second, and the third and fourth. I've got three skeins finished and a fourth ready to be spun. That puts me halfway through the 1lb alpaca goal.

TDF2011 Total

I should have posted this in July. I mostly concentrated on a Romney/RomeldaleX fleece; about ten and a half ounces worth of 3ply finished and two filled bobbins. There was a period of time I didn't spin anything, because I was morning the loss of a dear friend. But on the final day, I spun some Sheep Shed Studio mill end. Just a couple oz. in a 2ply.

TDF10

More catch up.



In July, I was a spinning fool in the Tour de Fleece 2010 on Ravelry! In all, I had spun 11 yarns, 3315yds of yarn of which there was 7754yds worth of fiber singles, all weighing in at 44.7oz total. Most was fiber from The Sheep Shed Studio that I had handyed, and the rest was blends of Shetland and llama from my own animals.



Only this month did I finish the third color to go with the black and white Shetland and llama blend. The Tour really got me to push out the yarn!

Fiber Swap & Weaving

The What Color is Your Sheep? swap ended last month. My color was green and my partner's was pink. This is what I sent- Two spinning batts, top, stitch markers, knitted sheep and extra "sweaters", and a tote. All handmade!


And this is what I received- Lots of BFL and blends batts, roving, an embroidered project bag and for the handmade, a knit toad bag! He opens up wide!


I was given an old Structo 600 table loom by my sister's MIL with the promise of me making something for her. So I wound off some black cotton along with some colors of what I suspect to be an acrylic/nylon blend, and a bit of Aunt Lydia's bamboo crochet thread, and put it all in a varied stripe with a single point twill, reversing midway.


I wound off enough warp to make two wide scarfs, so the first one will be plain and the second I will play with the pattern a bit. But, I might end up making something else with a more complicated pattern out of some silk I picked up.

No Sew ATC and a Clean Drum Carder

Just finished a couple ATCs for the No Sew swap in my group on Swap-bot. The idea was to use fabric and fibers to make cards, but the only rule is to not use any kind of stitching to make them. My other swaps have had a No Glue rule, so this was a challenge for me since my fabric cards never have any glue.



My old Patrick Greene drum carder has been working overtime carding up a large batch of a fiber blend. It definitely needed a thorough cleaning! The pile on the left is wool/fiber cleaned out from the teeth of both drums. And the nasty little pile on the right is what came out from around the washers on the sides of the drums! I couldn't believe how much fiber got caught and wound up on the drum axles. 8O Some of it is black with oil, but there are some pathces of color I recognise from years ago!