2013 Tour de Fleece

I spun almost every day this year. I managed to get through a lot of the Ewa Beach cotton and a little of the green cotton from Cotton Clouds. That was slippery stuff! My long draw made some progress.

I tried both the fast whorl and the regular whorl on my Rose and found that I'm no fast spinner. The regular one goes fast enough, thank you very much. After plying, I ended up with 3.6 oz of cotton. Now to read up on how to set the twist and dye it. But that's for another day.

 I finished a bit of the churro, 2.7 oz, on my Navajo spindle. I plied on my Rose.

The brown alpaca was a joy to spin! It actually had quite a bit of dirt in it. I didn't notice it until I went to set the twist and ended up washing it about 3 times in hot water. It' nice and soft.

For the challenge days, I worked on some "art yarn". My thick and thin got a little better, so I tired out some coils, and spiral plying. I also used some orphaned Noro Silk Garden to try some corespun supercoils. I used my Shetland to do the puffs, separating out the mustard color for the single. The little surprises of the color were so much fun. The yarn was hand dyed by Widdershin Woolworks on Etsy. It was a joy to spin. I dyed the Romney locks from the failed lichen experiment with some Wilton's cake dye and attempted a bit of corespinning and tail spinning. This was a big challenge. I'm calling it yarn anyway. I keep thinking I can somehow knit a hatband with the rainbow colors.


I had a couple of detours. I became one of the 9000+ who knit Color Affection, by Veera Välimäki, This is such a clever pattern! I got one of Madeleinetosh One of a Kind bags from Little knits. The garter was nice and mindless.
                                                                My Tosh Affection

Mods: I used size 7 needle since I knit on the tight size. I used color 1, the dark green to do the border instead of color 2, the gray. I wasn't sure if I had enough so I did a picot bind-off in gray. This is a huge crescent shawl. I really enjoyed the yarn and the construction of this shawl and I love the way it looks. There just isn't someplace in Hawaii where I can use it, sigh.

 I tried a pattern from Craftsy, and made two Kiss Kross bracelets. I used sterling silver for the base and GF wire for the wrap. The first one is amazonite and came out large for me. The second one is labradorite. The clasps were the challenge.