Dye Day Pron!

On Tuesday of this week, instead of spinning for the Tour de Fleece, my friend Charlie and I spent most of the morning-BEFORE it got to be 106F-dyeing 1lb and 2lb lots of fiber with acid dyes. We let them sit in black plastic on the drive way to set, then decanted and rinsed yesterday and today. You can see the riot of shades, tints and hues that we got. What fun!!! We figure that we dyed about 16 lbs worth of a Suffolk/Corriedale cross. A tough, but easy to spin wool that isn't the softest, but not very scratchy and probably have to work at it to get it to felt. Perfect for socks and mittens.

Remember...

...last year, the crash and burn at turn 5? go here to see the spectacular crash. I was so disappointed with the 'stuff' that I could only bag it in a zip lock with a sprig of lavender and relegate it to the back of the closet for an extended time out. Today I took it out of time out, and carefully unwound the rest and let it rejoin the sibling that behaved. Tomorrow I will ply, I think its learned its lesson. Maybe then I can start the major project of the Tour: 1200-1600 yds of 2 ply.



Today I spun the rest of 'Phoenix' from EnchantedKnoll at etsy. Very nice and shiny and soft. Wonderful! I'll ply it later in the week, when the last bobbin has had a chance to relax and catch up to its sibling. A silky supersoft washable merino with sari silk in red and gold with gold Angelina. Hard to believe that she labels this as MW Sock batts.




I also plyed the last 2 oz of merino/buffalo mix that I dyed a broken black. Very interesting. Very soft!
This is a soft dark grey with red highlights. Interesting.






Sorry for the dark pix: my digital is from the stone age and I was trying to take pix with the flash and a spot with a sunlite bulb. I was hoping that the flash would bounce off the window and provide a little back light. OH! Well! Maybe too much little dog nose on the window???

Let's Roll!!!

the tour has started!!!!

I am slightly non-plussed that the only bobbin that I have empty is the one that needs to be glued back together. Everything else needs to be finished spinning for the single and/or plied to clear the bobbins. How's that for planning?

Ah! well! will try to post pictures today or tomorrow.

goals

for the tour: to try to spin a little bit every day. The big goal is to spin enough of a suffolk/corrie fleece to have 1200-1600 yds of 2 ply for a dyeing demo in August at the guild dye day.

Tour de Fleece 2008

Tour de Fleece 2008


the challenge this year is to spin from stash. we'll see how it goes.

Summer of Lace '08

Friday nite I started the charting/math for the Fine Framed Unst Shawl from Sharon Miller's 'Heirloom Knitting'. It's a combinations of the Unst Stole center and the frame from the Fine Framed Shawl in the book. The cool thing is, that you can rearrange the stuff in her books and patterns any way you want.

I was knitting along, got near the end of the row, and promptly found that I had dropped a stitch or two or three right in the middle of the spider cluster in the border. No hope for it but to ladder down, pin everything out in order and knit back up.

You can see that I was successful!!! You can see the first spider of the next cluster in the next picture. I got to the top/bottom of the trees before I had to quit today. So maybe pix in a few days.

too much to do....

and not enough time to do it all in!!!!

I've been knocked out of Sock Madness. I didn't finish this round before the 21st knitter. In self defense, I can plead illness: not mine tho. A shepherdess friend twisted her ankle and put herself in a cast two weeks ago, so I have been doing the heavy walking for her and reporting back to her in her chair. Another shepherdess friend had her shearing canceled 4 weeks ago because of bad weather. She has no building big enough to shear in, so we had it yesterday. Not enough people showed up to help, so I got to do lots and lots of sheep wrangling and skirting/note taking of fleeces. On top of it all, my hayfever is trying to turn into something else, and it feels like I'm trying to hack up a lung! What fun!!!!

The green sock picture is as far as I got in this round of Sock Madness. I finished the heel and am on the foot of the 2nd sock. the yarn is some kool-aid dyed knitpicks bare in berry blue, lemon-lime and mango. not too bad for a microwave sock yarn.

The picture of the tiny sock is from my 'Wee Tiny Sock Swap' pal: Tilladare on Ravelry. Isn't it pretty?!!!!!!!!!