Spinning Friday: July 3, 2015 - The Pre-Tour Edition

Countdown:  One more day before the Tour de Fleece 2015 starts!  Can you tell I'm excited about it?

You've seen my selection of fibers that I've picked to focus on to try to spin during the Tour.  One thing I've struggled with is that I tend to like to knit with thinner yarns (fingering mostly), but these take a lot longer to spin than worsted-weight ones, so I've decided I'm okay with getting less spun up poundage-wise, but spinning yarns that I know I'll use.

I'm going to start with the 4-oz braid of Mermaids from the Wooly Wonka Mythical Creatures Fiber Club, which is a blend of dyed merino wool and soy.

My plan is to spin this into a 2-ply yarn and use it for a shawl, as I think the soy will make a very pretty, soft and drapey yarn.  While I don't have a specific pattern picked out, I'd like to shoot for a minimum of 450 yards and see how I go - even a bit more yardage would be stellar to give me some pattern choice options.  I've got Kirsten Kapur's Thalia pattern on the possible to-do list that I think would suit this yarn really well if I can get enough yardage from the braid.

Spinning Friday: May 29, 2015

I took my Hansen spinner with me down to ABQ, and since we didn't start vending until 10 a.m. each day (and I was up at the "late" time of 5:45 each morning), I actually got a lot of spinning done in the mornings!

This week, I started a summery-colored braid of 60% merino, 40% bamboo from FatCatKnits in the Splash colorway.

I divided this braid in half and then stripped each half into random-width narrow strips (6 per each half), and then spun those into singles.  I then plied those for a lovely, light fingering-weight yarn.

Technical Specs:
Roving:  4 oz of 60/40 merino/tencel roving in the "Splash" colorway from FatCatKnits.
Ply:  2-ply.
Weight:  Light fingering.
Yardage: 450 yards/4 oz.

I'm going to use this as one of two colors in my Andrea's Shawl by Kirsten Kapur.  The other colorway I've chosen is from my Mythical Creatures club this year - Serpent - which I dyed myself a braid of on the same fiber base.

I've already started spinning the singles for that braid - more on that next week!

Weekending

Courtesy of some not-great weather this weekend, we had quite a bit of quiet time, which was nice!  I was a bit under the weather this weekend, so I didn't mind having some extra hot tea and I made my go-to comfort food recipe of butternut squash soup.

For the first time in a LONG time, I also sat and did some focused spinning.  I plied up the BFL I showed you on Friday and got a nice squishy skein of worsted weight.

I also started singles on a braid of soft and lovely merino/bamboo from FatCatKnits in the "Splash" colorway.

I want to spin this up into a fingering weight yarn and use it for 1 of the 2 colors in a shawl.  I'm going to dye up a complementary braid of the same base - probably using my "Serpent" colorway from the last Mythical Creatures spinner's club - and work up Andrea's Shawl.

Speaking of which, have you seen the fantastic new book collection out from Kirsten Kapur of Through The Loops.  I've been a friend and fan of Kirsten's for a lot of years.  She's done many shawl patterns for my clubs over that time, and I can honestly say that there really is nothing she's designed I haven't loved and wanted to knit, but my time to knit for fun has been fairly curtailed this past year and I really wanted to get back into knitting things without a deadline that just sparked my interest.

I ran into another blogger's post (which I sadly cannot find now and didn't think to bookmark it) in which she is planning on knitting Kirsten's Mystery Shawl-Along 2015 (as am I) and then work her way through all of the Shawl Book One collection.  I thought that was a brilliant idea and once I get a wild hare like that, you know where I'm going with this, right? I thought it'd be GREAT fun to do up a handspun version of each of the shawls.  It'll challenge me a bit with the spinning (for instance, Laight Street is a bulky weight, which I rarely if ever spin) and that'll be good for me AND help me work down my stash, which is another goal of mine for this year.   I'm not putting any deadlines on this project.  I want it to be fun and not work.

I'm really looking forward to this as a long-term process kind of project but I'm also looking forward to a stack of hand-knit/hand-spun shawls at the end of the road too!

And PS - Just for Andi, a Lizzie picture.  She's almost 4 months now and is a bundle of muscle.   I've started thinking of her as "Tank".  Shown here with one of the bazillion sticks she likes to haul around when we go outside to play.