Saturday, July 10, 2010

Tour de Fleece 2010 - end of week one



It's the end of the first week of the Tour de France, which means it is also the end of the first week of the Tour de Fleece. Time to reassess my goals for the tour.

  1. Spin every day the Tour de France rides - so far so good.
  2. Spin and ply at least 100yds of silk tatting thread - done, blocked and ready to send. All I need is the address.
  3. Comb and spin an entire Shetland fleece. - I'm approaching the half way point on this challenge. Considering I have two more weeks left to go, I'm feeling pretty good about this. So I have a choice, do I slow down my spinning or add another challenge? I'll take the latter, like I don't have enough to do already.
  4. Spin White - A friend of mine is preparing an Indigo dye bath and will invite some of us over for a dip party. We all bring something to dye and dip it in the indigo vat. Pretty cool eh? I hope to spin up some fine silk, two ply, one ply bombyx and one ply tussah. They each take the colour differently so it should create a beautiful finished fabric. Also, for a weft, I would like some cotton singles spun on my Charkha. This isn't a mandatory, must get done part of the Tour de Fleece challenge. It's more an extra credit kind of thing.



Today, I wound off my second bobbin of Shetland singles, hand combed and worsted spun.

Instead of using my Nid, I transformed my warping mill into a yarn blocker. It's a bit hard on the back, but far easier than the Niddy Noddy. The yardage, nay mileage, of this yarn is extraordinary. It took about 25 minutes to wind off the yarn going at full speed. I'm very happy with how it it turning out.

2 comments:

Lace-lovin' Librarian ~ Diane said...

Wow! Those are some pretty amazing goals! I look forward to seeing the results of the indigo dye bath. Some day I, too, will be a spinner! I don't quite have the hang of it yet, but I'll get there!

Josiane said...

I'm really impressed that you're already at a point where you need to add a new project in order to keep it challenging! Wow!