Total Pageviews

Saturday 7 July 2018

Tour de Fleece is Here Again!

Another year has flown by and brought me to one of my favourite events of the year - Tour de Fleece 2018.  We've got lots of challenges planned again in Team DIY and Dye, and I've chosen to start with a tweed yarn using some merino I dyed in the spring with woad from the garden.



The preparation for tweed yarn can be quite time-consuming.  I tried putting the unprepared fleece through the drum carder, but it came out a bit rough and "neppy" (lots of little balls of fluff mixed in with the nice straight fibres), so I hand-carded the lot into rolags first.  Then I put the rolags through the drum carder which meant an extra step, but it was much smoother that way.

The blue was carded three times, then I added lots of colours (naturally-dyed leftovers from 5 (I think) years ago.



The whole lot was then carded another 3 times to integrate the colours with the blue.


I think this was the second pass through the drum carder, but it's looking pretty good.

After the final pass, the resulting batts didn't look too promising and I began to think I'd mixed it too much,


but once I started spinning the colours just started to pop out.  This is as far as I got today, but I have carded more for tomorrow and will hopefully finish this bobbin then.


Jacey Boggs from PLY Magazine is running a series of challenges this year - one a week - the prize for some lucky spinner is a year's subscription to PLY Magazine.  Very nice and very worth having!  This week's challenge is tweed yarn, so I'll be submitting my final photo for a chance to win (not that that matters, because the whole idea is to challenge yourself to spin something you might not otherwise try).

Roll on tomorrow!!

2 comments: