Tour de Fleece 2019

This post is a little overdue - I'm neglecting my blog again!!  Yes, I did take part in the Tour de Fleece again this year.  I think I'd find it hard not to.  I even managed to spin on my spindle when we were away in Switzerland for 5 days.

This was what I'd managed to prepare before the Tour started.  At the top is a bucketful of my home-grown cotton, the purple on the left is a blend of merino/Falkland and kid mohair dyed with logwood chips, the tub in the middle is leftover kid mohair (logwood dyed), the yellow on the right is merino dyed with apple leaves and twigs, and the other two are mohair dyed with madder.  The one on the left is dyed with the water from pre-rinsing the roots (I just couldn't bring myself to throw it away as there was lots of colour in there), and the one on the right is the first dip in the madder solution.

So, I started with the purple rolags, this was a nice blend and spun really well.  It was about 80g I think.

For the second ply I blended some of the kid mohair (madder and logwood) on my carders to make some two-coloured rolags.  I just love that pretty pink at the bottom!

The two bobbins ready to ply :

and the finished skein.  The toilet roll holder shows how much of the purple was left after plying . . . not much!

Next up, I started spinning the yellow rolags (merino dyed with apple leaves and twigs)

There actually wasn't a lot of this, maybe 50 to 60g, so I rooted around in my cupboard and found these rolags for a 2nd ply.  This is some merino I dyed a few years ago and haven't gotten around to spinning until now.

These were a bit "neppy" to spin, and I started off picking them out every time I came across one, then I thought, oh what the heck, it'll add a bit of texture!

Unusually for me, I prepped some more fibre to make a 3rd ply.  I normally just stick to 2-ply (unless I'm chain plying).  So, this is some Falkland dyed with dyer's chamomile :

At this point, I started to wonder if this yarn was going to work.  The one on the left (the merino dyed with lichen and dock seeds) was so very different.

I plied them together anyway, and was actually very surprised how well they did go together.

By now we were entering the 2nd week of the TdF and I started to spin my cotton.  I haven't spun any for quite a long time, and it took me a while to get going again.

I spent a few days on this, and then realized our Swiss trip was rolling up faster than I'd thought, and I didn't have anything prepared to take with me.  I'd already dyed some merino in the madder bath, so I combed that for spinning on my spindle.  Incidentally, I strained the madder roots out from the previous dye bath and put them in the blender with a bit of water to break them up a bit more.  That way I thought I'd get more colour from them.

We were visiting family in Switzerland because our nephew was having his 40th birthday, plus he got married in June so he decided to have one big party to celebrate both events. After the party we stayed with brother-in-law and his wife in their chalet half way up a mountain.

This is the view from their terrace - it's a bit hazy over the mountains so they weren't very visible.

I managed to spin all of the fibre by the morning we were due to leave, so I took our travelling day as one of my "rest days".

When we got home I combed up some Falkland.  This had been dyed in the madder bath after the merino came out.  So, including the "rinsing water dye", this was the fourth lot of fibre to be dyed with the madder roots.  This was to be a 2nd ply to go with the merino.

Ready to ply :

Oooops!  While I was plying, I couldn't understand where the strange scraping noise was coming from, or why the tension was all over the place, until I realized the end had fallen off the bobbin!  Luckily, the yarn didn't get too tangled and I was able to transfer it to another bobbin to finish plying.  Some of my Ashford bobbins are 30 years old this year, so it's not really surprising they're feeling their age!

Then, for the final sprint to the finish line, it was back to the cotton.

I plied what I'd managed to spin on the last day of the Tour.  I only had one bobbin of cotton, so I made it into a centre-pull ball and plied from each end.  Not so difficult a task if you keep your thumb through the centre of the ball so it doesn't knot up inside.

The cotton was finally dyed with woad from the garden (our Ravelry team is DIY and Dye, which means everything has to be prepared from raw fleece, with no commercially-prepared fibres being allowed, and then it has to be dyed.  Well, it can be dyed beforehand if you like, but at the end everything must have been dyed).

So, here's the finish line photo :

The final details are :-

The yellow is a 3-ply mix of merino/Falkland, one strand dyed with dyer's chamomile, one ply with lichen and red dock seeds, and the 3rd with apple leaves and twigs.
150g, 357 yards/329m, 14 wpi.
This was the only one that was 3-ply, the rest are all 2.

The pink/purple is merino/Falkland/kid mohair dyed with logwood chips and madder.
130g, 256 yards/236m, 14 wpi.

Pink was merino/Falkland dyed with madder.
60g, 159 yards/147m, 12 wpi.

And the blue was my home-grown cotton dyed with woad.
40g, 159 yards/146m, 18 wpi.

So, the end of my 7th (?) Tour.  Not sure about this, I may have joined in with another team the year before.

Sorry this is such a long post - next time I'll try and remember to post maybe at the end of each week.  If you've persevered down to here, go and make yourself a gin and tonic . . . you deserve it!

Cotswold Slub

During Week 2 of the DIY and Dye Group's Tour de Fleece journey, we had more challenges to choose from as normal.  I chose to do an art yarn with my olive leaf dyed Cotswold fleece that I wrote about here.

I spun a bobbin of the fleece that I'd carded before TdF started,

made it into a centre-pull ball and plied from both ends together, at the same time inserting "bits" of pulled fleece between the two plies.  I used some merino that I'd dyed in previous years for TdF :-

Top left was dyed with blood peaches from the tree in my garden (blood peaches are bright red all the way through to the stone), top right was logwood chips, bottom left was with madder, and I forget what the green was!

The plying was pretty slow, but worked together well.

The finished skein weighed just over 100g giving me 199 yards/184 metres.  

Tour de Fleece Finale

My last post for this year's TdF.  This was my final skein of the Falkland for the Tour :-

I spun this straight from the carded fleece (unwashed, undyed) because I've had an awful lot of waste when I've dyed the fleece first.  This turned out to be much quicker and far less bother - must try and remember this in the future - dye after spinning.  I mordanted it and then dyed with logwood chips which gave a really dark purple.  In fact, it looks more navy blue than purple.

My final photo of my achievements during this year's Tour :-

It looks quite a lot, but these are all relatively small amounts - 515g in total.  All the Falkland was made into centre-pull balls; back left are the three dyed with madder, then two dyed with St John's Wort flowers, then two dyed with grape vine trimmings*, and the final 3 are dyed with different lichens.  In front of the lichen is the logwood dyed ball. Then at the front, the top skein is the result of our 10-minute challenge, the middle one was the 10g challenge, and then the cotton at the front dyed with weld.

* I realise I haven't posted about the dye session with grape vine trimmings, basically because it was rather insignificant.  I crammed my large dye pan as full as I could with grape vine leaves and cooked it.  I removed the spent leaves and crammed it full again with fresh leaves and cooked it.  After all that there was just a pale yellow colour in the dye which gave beige (!) on the fleece.  An experiment I probably won't repeat!

Onto a brighter note, I won a prize!!!  This was donated by a fellow team member and came all the way from America (thank you Meagan).  My prize was a hand-turned cedar nostepinne, which smelled amazing by the way, and she also included lots of little extras (tea bags to consume whilst spinning, a sample of spun yarn, a cute little pin, and a button on a hair grip).

If you don't know what a nostepinne is for, this might give you a clue :-

I couldn't wait to try it out!  I already have a ball winder but tend not to take it with me when we go away in the camper van as it's a bit bulky.  I've quite often been stuck without it and have had to leave off spinning because my bobbin was full.  This will fit nicely in my spinning wheel bag and will come in very handy!

TdF Madder Spinning

Thought you might like to see how the madder dyeing session ended up.  Here are the 3 finished bobbins showing each colour.  There's actually quite a difference in shades here.

I thought the plying balls looked quite good too.  There wasn't very much of the palest one, but I think they'll all go together pretty nicely in a project.

This shows the finished skeins after plying alongside a bobbin of home-grown cotton that I've been spinning.

Dyeing with Madder

More TdF prep going on here.  This time with madder root.  I've dyed with this many times before but the intensity of the colours I get always takes me by surprise.

The top right hand side is the first dip, using Falkland again, and on the left are some rolags I've already carded.  The bottom right is the second dip, so still a fair bit of usable colour, and the bottom left is the third dip.  I really like this pale, delicate pink.  After the third dip the dye bath was completely clear, even though the dye stuff was still in there - I think I can call this exhausted and throw the rest away!

I've been using Falkland for all my dyeing this year because eventually I hope to have enough to make a sweater with all the different natural dyes I can manage.  The beauty of natural dyes is that they all seem to go together, I've never had two colours clash.

So, only one day before the Tour de Fleece begins . . . I'd better get back to my carding!

Tour de Fleece 2015 - Week 3

Finally, I'm getting round to posting the results of TdF's week 3 (about time too!)  Just a little warning - this is a picture-heavy post.  It was a fun and busy week though, so maybe that's a good enough excuse.

First I plied the mohair and alpaca for the boucle yarn.  I was a bit worried that I wouldn't be able to push the loops up the alpaca core because it was a bit fluffy.  It worked perfectly however, so here it's ready for the binding thread to hold all the loops in place.

After plying this, I realised I had much more yardage than I thought I would have.  I estimated that my home grown silk that I spun (the violet) was no-where near long enough to use as the binder for this, so decided to spin some commercial silk and dye it.

This is spun "Z" (clockwise) and is going to be plied "Z" which effectively puts more twist into the yarn, so I tried to put as little twist into the spinning as I could.

I made this into a centre-pull ball and soaked it overnight

then dyed it in the microwave whilst still in the ball, which wasn't as successful as I'd hoped - the dye didn't penetrate right through to the centre.  I hand-painted the undyed bits and stuck it in the microwave again.

This is the finished boucle, plied with the blue and mauve silk :-

As it turned out, I used far less of the silk for this than I'd anticipated, so maybe the home-grown silk would have been enough after all.  I'm happier with the colour of this one though, I think the viole(n)t would have been a bit too much!

Next, I carried on with singles for the multi-ply challenge.  This is Merino dyed with cherry flavoured Kool Aid :-

I threaded the beads onto some of the locks of wool

then spun them into the yarn

Oops - didn't foresee this though - the beads were a bit of a tight fit going through the orifice.  I had to push each one through each time before it would go on the bobbin.

All sorted now :-

Then it was the turn of some merino which I dyed last year.  Again, beads were threaded onto the locks of wool

and spun in.  Smaller beads this time so they fit perfectly.

Then it was time to pl(a)y!  First, I "S" (anti-clockwise) plied :-

2 bobbins of madder-dyed merino
2 bobbins of madder/grape Kool Aid dyed merino
and 1 bobbin of cherry Kool Aid merino with beads

This was made into a centre-pull ball (every time I came to a bead on the ball winder I had to unhitch it, pull the bead through and re-hitch it!) and plied "Z" (clockwise again) from either end.

It was then "S" plied (back to anti-clockwise) with the thick and thin beaded woad-dyed merino,

made into a centre-pull ball again and "Z" plied back on itself from either end :-

It was my intention then to wrap the blue and mauve silk around it.  First attempt failed because the silk was too fine and just got lost in the folds of the main yarn, so I 3-plied it.  Second attempt failed because my wheel had come to its limit for drawing in the yarn and kept getting knotted up.  I know I could have solved this by making adjustments to the tension bands on the wheel, but I didn't want to fiddle with it too much because I'm more than halfway through another project on it and didn't want to mess that up.  Instead, I called this finished :-

and named it "Rapunzel".

The final measurements for my yarns are :- 

Boucle (85g) 45 yds/41m, 

Rapunzel (150g) 16 yes/15m, and 

Mystere (60g) 80 yes/73m

 - which makes it look like I've been sitting around doing nothing for the last 3 weeks!  Good fun though!  Roll on next year!

Edit : I worked out that with all the different plies and doubling back on itself, the Rapunzel yarn ended up having 22 strands!  My fattest yarn ever.