And just like that, Tour de Fleece is done. My whole de fleece is the bobbin and my almost finished plying of the turquoise and green gold fibre from Christine.
My goal was to make a dent and I did. This is 180 yards or 165 m of Shetland single ply. It is as even as I have ever spun and looks really quite perfect. I spin well, and ply much less well.
This is the fibre from Chtristine, an over dye/misdye from Fleece Artist that she brought back from a Halifax trip for me. I thought I was missing the first part of this spin. I have been looking for it, literally for years. It wasn't till I was plying that I realized what I did. There was a very strong turquoise part and a green gold part. I did most of the green gold part, put it on a storage bobbin and then set it away. When I started spinning it again, I started with the green and gold, which was then covered by the turquoise. And promptly forgot that there was green gold as part of the fibre. As I was prepping for plying, I recongnised the green gold as part of another storage bobbin I had, and away I went. I plied a solid turquoise silk wool blend spin with the start of the blue, and when that was done, plyed the green gold storage bobbin and ended plying the green gold from the main bobbin the last of the green gold on the storage bobbin. In the end, I had just the smallest bit of single left, about 2 metres. When I knit with this fibre there will be a distinct gradient, which I feel pretty pleased with.
It isn't perfect. What looked like plyed much too tight is still not quite enough so I will run it through the wheel agian to give it another bit of twist.
Also created during Tour de Fleece was this tiny floop of shetland bulky. This was created on the s51 as I readied it for spinning on it's own and for plying, which is really the purpose for owning the wheel. Maybe 50 metres, all of needing work.
Of anything I learned while doing the tour, it was learning about the S51 and then learning just how great the Clampy Kates from Akerworks are. I have been afraid of plying for a long time. I just felt like I was never going to get better with the way bobbins bounced around and would flip about or how the kate would come skidding to meet me if there were any imperfections in the wind on. I just never felt I could get any idea of how they would behave and what I needed to do to make progress. Each time I tried plying, there was disaster after disaster. The Kates just clamped on and did their job, abley assisted by the tensi-tamers to keep the bobbin relatively steady on the post. It was brilliant. I could even resolve another small problem I had.
I have a bunch of toilet roll centers that are three times as heavy as usual. The really are perfect for storing stuff if you are like me and have a plying pile as big as your blocking pile, your patching pile or your laundry pile. I also have a weavers bobbin winder that makes loading and unloading these alternate bobbins a dream. BUT, the bobbin winder was on a shelf that I could not get to till I put the sewing room back to order after the little boys were sleeping there. Akerworks bobbins, with their flat pac technology can also do this.
Pretty epic in my books.
For the first time in a very long time, there is also a Tour de femme, which runs to the 31 of July. If I spin and my team, the International Virtual Knit Night Wooligans, are in it, my yardage will be there.
Now you would think kids and kids going home and F1 races and Tour de Fleece would have been enough for a part of a week and weekend. But no. No it was not. My sister was on a tour to Ikea and she stopped for wine and girl talk (that is if I had any real girl talk). She left me with some things from mom and dad that I will write about in another post. Treasure though the real treasure is that I still have my mom and dad.
But my sister also left me with this little present.
It is all of us kids, my brother and my sisters, sitting on a dock, wearing these very pretty sweaters, looking remarkably like oursleves, except that I, in the pretty yellow sweater, really ought to take up twice the butt space on the dock. It could be a tree ornament or it could be a magnet on my fridge. I have yet to decide which. But I love that there is a knitting part of it. That just means a lot.
Anyway, I must be off to get the day going. I did the early part but have appointments this afternoon, so busy busy. But the best part of the day is yet to come. When I get home I will knit, I will just knit and that is the best thing of all.
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