TdF Challenges

During the Tour de France, there are usually two days which are particularly challenging for the riders - usually when they have arduous climbs through the mountains.  On those days, we spinners like to challenge ourselves as well.  Karen, our intrepid Team DIY and Dye leader, usually comes up with a task for us (sometimes suggested by one of our team members) to challenge our skills and endurance!

Here's the first for this year : spin as much as you can for 10 minutes, then measure your yardage.  I was pretty certain I was going to totally suck be bottom of the class in this one because I think I'm a pretty slow spinner.  Sure enough, my suspicions started to be confirmed when the first team member posted her results - 71 yards.  I was pretty sure I couldn't get anywhere near that.  Anyway, here's my attempt :-

No idea what this fleece is - it came from a World of Wool botany lap waste bag.  I pre-drafted it ready for spinning (not sure if this was cheating or not!), and here's what I managed to spin in the allotted 10 minutes :-

34 yards.  By this time I was feeling pretty useless as you can imagine.  Then other team members started posting their results and I didn't feel so bad after all.  It seems I'm average - most of them were about the 30-40 yard range.  I don't mind average, average is better than useless!

The second challenge we were given was to spin 10g fibre as finely as possible and then measure your yardage (no time limit with this one).  I picked out some raspberry acid dyed Falkland from my stash for this and flicked the individual locks into a soft cloud of fluffiness.  I thought Falkland would be good because it's quite a long staple and it's easy to draft it out finely.

This took quite a while and I was surprised how much fibre there was in 10g.  Here's the finished article :-

I think this is the finest I've ever spun - and the grand total?  159 yards!  I was quite pleased with that.

Both of these yarns have been left as singles for now because there's more of each fibre to spin.  After the TdF finishes (that's today folks!) I'll put them back on the bobbin and spin the rest.  Then they can be plied and finished.

The demise of the St John's Wort Dyeing

Remember this :-

This was the colour I got from my recent dye session using St John's Wort flowers.  After it had dried I put this Falkland fleece into a bag in my craft room to await carding and eventual spinning in the Tour de Fleece.

When I retrieved it for carding, I noticed the colour had dulled and didn't look quite so pink any more.  This was in a darkened room as I normally keep the shutters closed when I'm not in there.

Nevertheless, I carded it up and spun it.  At all stages the colour was changing, whether it was in the sun or not.

This was my spun single made into a centre-pull plying ball.

Here it is after plying, waiting for it's wash.  The lower skein is made up of the 2nd and 3rd dips into this dye bath.

And here it is after washing and drying on the washing line in the sun :-

Not a trace of pink left!  Very disappointing.  In future I think I'll leave these flowers by the roadside where they look more beautiful!

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!

Dyeing with St. John's Wort (Hypericum Perforatum)

This stuff grows wild all around where we live - there's lots along the side of the roads. I've often thought of trying this one out, especially after reading in Jenny Dean's Wild Colour that you can obtain four different colours from the same dye bath : green, maroon, browny maroon and yellow, using the flowers only.

I went for a walk one day armed with a couple of plastic carrier bags and managed to fill both of them, mainly because I cut the stems to use for a different dye.  I then spent all afternoon painstakingly picking off the individual flowers (which are tiny!)

Unfortunately, this little chap (yes, it is a male!) was made homeless by my foraging.  He was totally invisible amongst the flowers until he managed to crawl out onto the table.  He is a goldenrod crab spider which are, apparently, sometimes white depending on the colour of the flower they're currently residing on.  It takes a month for a white spider to turn yellow, but only a week to revert back to white if it then returns to white flowers. Pretty cool huh?

Anyway, back to the experiment which is more preparation for the Tour de Fleece this year.  According to Jenny Dean, after the flowers have been simmered in water until it turns a deep red and then strained out, a batch of alum-mordanted fleece or yarn can be dyed to make green.  Erm,  no, I don't see any green here :-

Nice colour though!

Next, after taking out the first lot of fleece, an unmordanted batch goes in to produce maroon.  Hhmm!

Nice colour beige!

Then an alum-mordanted batch is put in again to give a browny maroon.  Nope, don't think so!

This was a paler beige than the last one, and still quite a nice shade.

The final dye bath uses unmordanted wool again to give yellow.  At this point, I'd almost run out of dye:-

and I'd definitely run out of hope!

Next year, if I have plenty of time to pick flower heads, I would definitely do this dye bath again, but only the first alum-mordanted batch.  I can get beige very easily from lots of other plants!

Oh, nearly forgot - the leaves and stems were chopped up and simmered for quite a while, only to produce a pale wishy-washy beige-looking liquid.  I didn't bother putting any fleece in there, mordanted or otherwise, as it was pretty certain what I'd get out . . . beige!

TdF Prize

I don't think there's any fibre preparation I enjoy more than making up colourful batts for spinning.  I'm not very good with colours and the colour wheel is a total mystery to me.  I normally just pull out colours I like, add in some that I think will "bounce" off the others, and hope for the best!  I never have a clue what the batts will turn out like with the colours I've chosen, and it's maybe this element of surprise that I like so much.  So far I've never been disappointed with the end result and I've never made batts I don't like.  It must be instinctive!

Anyway, when our TdF team were asking for prize donations, drum-carded batts seemed the obvious choice for me. I sorted through my fibre stash and came up with the combination above : 80g merino in various shades, 40g black alpaca, 25g charcoal bamboo, 20g mauve alpaca, 20g banana fibre, 10g silk, 5g Gotland curls.  200g total.

As usual, I was pretty pleased with these.

Also as usual, I wanted to spin them as soon as they were finished . . .

. . . and I can't, because they're not for me!  I think I'm going to have great difficulty in keeping my hands off these until the end of the 2nd week of the Tour when my prize is awarded.

Grasping the Nettle

Recently we had a little holiday in our camper van in Spain.  We travelled all around the San Sebastian area for 10 days.  Obviously, I took my new spinning wheel (Louet Victoria) as this was bought specially for camping.  I also took the last of the batts that I bought at Le Lot et la Laine festival which consisted of merino, alpaca, silk, soy, silk noil (I think), nettle and a bit of sparkle - 100g in all.  When I bought this it was the nettle content that attracted me, never having spun nettle before.  Well, the colours were really nice too!

I also took some black alpaca to mix with it, mainly to extend the amount of wool I'd have when finished, but also because I planned to ply it with a strand of black alpaca and I thought it would blend better.  The pale colours plied with a strand of black alpaca would have given a definite barber-pole effect that I wanted to avoid.

Ready for plying :-

The finished skein -

240g, 415yds/383m

This is how it looks knitted, but I'm considering using this for my first adventure with my weaving loom - probably a scarf for hubby!

A little post script : what do you think of this gorgeous little church we found in the mountains :-

There was a wall of glass pieces on each side

which didn't look particularly spectacular until you got close up to it

but was really spectacular from the inside :-

As the church was locked up I had to take a photo through the bars on a little window in the door.

It must be lovely to sit in that little church with the sun streaming through all those little pieces of glass.