Welp … Tour de Fleece 2015 has come to an end (on Sunday). Although I signed up for one team — October House — I mostly spun along with my friends in the KnitPicks (and more) Stashdown Ravelry group. It was an informal spinning team and we had a blast. At least I did. 😀
The tour was great in so many ways and I learned so much in my short 6 week journey as a new spinner. Even with my dislocated thumb, I enjoyed spinning so much, I think I’ve found my sweet spot in yarn crafts. Don’t get me wrong, knitting and crochet are not going anywhere, but there’s just this feeling I get when I put the spinning techniques together (even as a learner) and see a continuous thread unfold from a cloud of fiber. Just like some people only want to knit lace (oye!) or socks, or blankets, or sweaters, or hats … I just want to spin! Not to make anything, but just to see the thread emerge. I think I’m that spinner who’s F.O.s are the skeins themselves and not the item made from those skeins.
For the tour, I:
- learned to use bootleg hand combs and hackles aka dog combs and rakes to prepare fibers. They work, but the tines on my combs are loose after two uses. I should have known it might have been a bust since two of the tines were already shaking when I opened the packet. Plus while they do a decent job opening the fiber, the ones I have pull, rather than separate so I lost 2 ozs of fiber my first go around on a dyed braid. It could have been my technique or it could have been the brand of dog combs I used. Since I can’t afford to lose so much again, real fiber hand combs are on their way to me right now.
- learned how to use hand cards
- spun 600 yds of fiber
- salvaged a matted braid of fiber and made bird’s nests
- dyed four braids of fiber. I got success with all these … none of them ended up matted or felted. Every skein fluffed back up after drying and is usable. I was very excited about this since I’d only dyed yarn before … never fiber. I’ll show you those in my next Dyepot Stories post.
This pic represents most of my efforts during this year’s TdF, and I’m immensely proud. The Wensleydale I dyed during the tour has been shipped to my friend already, but I’ll find a pic somewhere and post it later. My wheel spinning start took a while to actually take off but now that it has, it’s like Super Grover — “up, up and awwwwwway” 😀
For my TdF2015 efforts, I’ve been “rewarded” by my friend Elisa with 1lb of sheep. Yes, I said sheep. And notice the quotes around the word rewarded. LOLOLOL!!! Her gift is making me start from one step up from scratch. I can’t raise the sheep in my apt, but she’s sent me 1lb of amazing bfl locks that I’ll have to scour, process, spin then knit. That’ll give me a head-start and some practice before I start my sheep to sweater project in 2016. Since that’s it’s own adventure, I’ll update you on that once I get it. 😀
Hope you are all well, with lots of crafty, happy things keeping you occupied this summer. Talk to me in the comments and let me know how you’ve been. ❤
D'NALI 
