Tour de Fleece 2017

Well, here we are in July again and the Tour de Fleece has started once more.  It seems to come around faster each year . . . must be an age thing.

This year for our (Team DIY and Dye) week one challenge I chose to spin a rainbow again.  This time though I've used acid dyes and spun each colour  individually.  This is merino from Maco Merinos which is really soft after spinning.

"Red"

I started with red (although I couldn't seem to get it deep enough to actually call it red - it's more of a pink!) and progressed through to violet.  I only have a six colour rainbow as I ran out of time to do the seventh.  The deep blue is missing; I may do it after TdF finishes, just for completeness, but I think it looks OK as is.

Orange

Yellow

Weird green

Blue

Final rainbow, including violet

My plan for this is to spin some black alpaca given to me by my friend Sarah and knit it up into a kind of "stained glass" effect, possibly a scarf.  I only have about 20g of each colour as I lost about a third in wastage. All but two of these skeins was dyed as fleece and I always seem to have trouble with tangling afterwards.  I much prefer to spin from raw, unwashed fleece and then dye the yarn.  The blue and violet were done that way and I have maybe 25g of each of those - much less preparation waste.

The second week's challenge I have chosen is art yarn.  I'll be using some of the Cotswold I've already dyed and carded for this, so week 2 should be a doddle!  (I had to do all the preparation of the above merino as we went along - not organised as usual).