I likely won’t be posting too much about the Tour for the next little while, because while the spinning is fun, day after day of pictures of bobbins in various states of fullness probably won’t make compelling blog entries. On a hopefully more interesting note, I did take a break from spinning on Sunday to dye up about a half pound of South African Fine wool, which is similar to Merino in softness, but allegedly a little more sturdy. I can definitely attest to the softness!

As you may know, our kitty Miranda has a chronic mouth infection and has to be hand-fed (on good days, just encouraged to eat) twice daily. We do this in my craft room, where I leaf through quilting and knitting books and poke around in my fabric and fiber stash to pass the time. For some reason, a particular dark blue flowered calico fabric has been catching my eye for the past week or so, and I decided to dye up a half pound of wool in the same colors.

The inspiration fabric:

The wool:

And together:

I am really happy with how well I was able to match up the colors and now I’ll be searching for another fabric colorway to duplicate. This is quite a big bump of fiber, so I’m thinking maybe a hat and scarf or hat and cowl and mittens set.

Much of Day One of the Tour was taken up with finishing up the purple/black sock yarn for someone, which was not even a Tour project. The plying took a good long time, but the results were so worth it.

Please forgive all the pictures, but I consider this to be my best spinning ever. I got at least 320 yards (a conservative estimate) of 18wpi fingering weight 3-ply yarn out of 4.5 oz of superwash merino. When I first started spinning, I wanted to make sock yarn that looked like certain types of commercial sock yarn with multiple contrasting plies (like this Trekking XXL, for example):

I think I’ve succeeded.

Head of garlic shown for scale because coins are boring.

I am totally thrilled with it and can’t wait to knit the socks. Sock yarn may well be my spinning “niche”.

On the remaining time during Day One, I managed to spin up about 1.25 oz of the remaining 2oz of red/orange and blue Targhee I was making into 2-ply sock yarn. Today (Day Two!), I finished spinning the rest, threw caution to the wind and re-wound the new bobbin to try and settle down the twist in the singles, and plied it with the old stuff. I don’t have yardage or WPI yet, since it’s still soaking wet, but I did take a couple pictures. I think this may be my last 2-ply sock yarn, since I’m so in love with the 3-ply. The Targhee has a lot of nice bounce, and the yarn should make some fun socks. I’m just trying to ignore the fact that the colors scream “Denver Broncos”.

I’m going to start spinning the grey and blue-green singles tonight. That’s 11oz of fiber, and it’ll take me several days of effort to get the singles spun up.

I’m participating in the Tour de Fleece for the first time this year. It took a while, but I’ve picked out a selection of stuff to spin that should be do-able between now and the 26th, and has enough variety that I won’t die of boredom.

First up, some red/orange and blue Targhee 2-ply sock yarn that has been sitting around half-spun for several months. This will be a nice quick one, just do the second bobbin and ply. And it’s sorta appropriate for 4th of July, being all red and blue and whatnot.

Next up, 5.5 oz of blue/green Falklands wool that I plan to ply with an equal weight of gray Brown Sheep mill ends and make into some kind of shawl. I’ve seen some very successful examples of plying a colorful wool with a more monochrome one on Ravelry recently and these two will go well together, sort of a North Sea colorway.

After that, more sock yarn! A little over 4oz of superwash merino in “sno-cone” colors. I’ve found that leaving undyed areas really adds a lot of interest to the finished yarn and I can’t wait to see how this turns out as a 3-ply.

Then, some regular 60s count Merino that I want to spin because it’s just so darn purty.

And then this Grafton Batt (corriedale wool), which I want to make into singles with long stretches of color, and knit up into some fake Fair Isle mittens or gloves with a contrast color.

And, if I have time, this Shetland wool in autumn tones, because Shetland is so nice to spin.

I’m off to a late start because it took much longer to ply the 3-ply sock yarn I’ve been working on than I expected; I got a ton of yardage and it turned out spectacularly pretty. I totally understand all the 3-ply sock yarn fanatics on Ravelry now. It’s drying on the porch, so pictures tomorrow of that and my Tour de Fleece progress for today.

Me, Jag, Robin and Greg went to the Festival for the Eno yesterday. It was unusually cool for an Eno weekend; we’ve come to expect the onset of heat prostration within an hour of getting there, but it was really pleasant, with reasonable humidity and a nice breeze. Clearly this is a sign of the End Times. As usual, I ran into people I know and haven’t seen in a while; everyone seems to pop out of the woodwork for Eno.

Robin and Greg on the Eno bus:

Jag on the Eno bus:

I didn’t take many pictures at the festival, since I generally had my hands full of food or lemonade or hauling my loot. There was a cool scrap-metal beast we weren’t able to identify.

We were all strangely fascinated by the cloggers.

Me and Jag bought a lot of pottery. We’ve been wanting to slowly replace most of our coffee mugs with mismatched pottery ones, and we found a bunch of nice ones, including some goblets. The blue “boob and butt” mug matches a bigger brown one I bought last year which will now be repurposed as a beer mug, since it was kinda big for a tea/coffee mug.

I got some really pretty shell earrings, and 2 pottery pendants that I plan to make into necklaces the next time I drag out my beading supplies.

We bought this great planter from Roger of Reinbarnation, a friend of Jag’s. Aside from being very pretty, it’s made of reclaimed barn wood.

Yay for reclaimed barn wood.

I was unable to resist this giant metal flower. No transplant shock here! I’m hoping to add to the collection over the years.

We also bought this year’s Eno t-shirts, and I got a couple bars of soap.

Robin and Greg stopped by afterwards to see the house, and then me and Jag went to visit Steph so Jag could get briefed on taking care of her kitty next week. We grilled some steaks for dinner, and for dessert, we had some of the most awesomely decorated cupcakes ever (from Harris Teeter, they have some really creative people in their bakery). It was a really good day.

Jag bought an iPhone last November. At the time, it seemed like such a harmless purchase. His old phone was getting decrepit, and an iPhone is just an iPod with phone in it, right? I mean, it wasn’t like he was planning to hang around the Apple Store or start reading Macrumors.com or anything. And besides, the Urbanspoon app is pretty cool. He was a Linux guy all the way, running Fedora on his laptop and a CentOS server at home, and nothing would change that.

This week, his new work laptop arrived. By Steve Jobs’s cybernetic liver, I never expected to walk into the living room and see…this!

I can only assume we’re going to have to start hanging out in coffee shops and at The Pinhook with all the other hipster Mac weenies.

In other news, we stopped at Tyler’s for dinner tonight, and I got the best Pint Night mug EVER. And yes, the beer was actually drinkable (although I would happily have dumped it into a planter if it wasn’t, just because I wanted this goblet so badly)!

Jag was off camping this weekend, so I had some time to myself for crafty activities. Aside from watching the diabetic-coma-inducing “Miss Potter” (which confirmed my Renee Zellweger dislike), I got a few useful things done.

• A patchwork skirt! I took a New Look pattern for a 3-tiered skirt and altered it so that each tier consists of 8 or more fabrics. I picked out a bunch of teal and purple stash fabric and went to town. Some of this fabric has been with me since the mid 90s and has been used in one or more quilts, so it’s a little weird to look down and see it there as part of a garment.

  In making this, I learned that gathers are much easier when you 1.) use a strong thread and 2.) use a different colored thread for the bobbin, since the bobbin threads are the ones you have to pull to make the gathers and it’s best if you can FIND them. I also learned that getting the “broomstick” look takes a whole lot of drying time. The skirt didn’t get as evenly wrinkly as I wanted, so I’ll try again when I wash it. I want to make a couple more of these with different fabrics.

  Off with her head!
  
  
  
  
  
  The side!
  
  
  
  
  
  The back!
  
  
  

• I also spun up another bobbin of the purple/black/magenta superwash for the 3-ply sock yarn for someone. I’m trying to get the last bobbin finished up before the Tour de Fleece starts on the 4th. I’m still working on picking out what to spin for that.

  

• Muffins! I went to the State Farmers Market with my parents and Robin on Saturday and brought home a pint of blueberries (along with goat cheese, salami/provolone bread, tomatoes, peaches and corn). I made these for breakfast using a Fannie Farmer cookbook recipe, and since Jag doesn’t particularly like blueberries, it was a nice treat for me.

  

The End

Thumper kept me company on the couch while I knitted on Friday.

I finally finished the first sock of the pair I’ve been working on forever. The yarn is “fine”, the pattern is “fine”, but neither is that thrilling and this project really just feels like a chore. I want to get the second one done ASAP so I can move on to something I’m excited about.

I’m much more enthused about the dyeing I did on Friday. Two approximately 5oz bumps of Falklands wool, which I’ve never worked with before. It’s quite soft and lofty (it puffed right back up after drying), and I can’t wait to try spinning it.

This blue/green one I’m calling Seaglass:

And this one, which I completely adore, I’m calling Woodland Flowers. I love the pink/turquoise/purple/brown combo and the watercolor-y blending.

It’s been a very food-packed social weekend: Geek Beer and sushi with a guest appearance by Hunter, a yummy cookout at Jeff and Michelle’s, and I’m headed to my parents for a Father’s Day cookout in a few hours.

Happy First Day of Summer!

I haven’t blogged in a while because work and other stresses have been kicking my butt and I haven’t felt like doing anything blog-able for the last week or so (going to bed at 9:30 after poking around on Ravelry for a few hours does not make for very exciting material). But now I have a few spinning updates.

First up, on the drop spindle, I’m getting close to done with the BFL/Bamboo/Firestar batt I’ve been spinning. This has been a challenge. Spinning from batts has always been extra-fiddly for me, and the 40% bamboo really makes this stuff slippery and tough to work with, But it’s soft and the colors are lovely, and the sparkly bits are great.

I asked Jag to pick something off my Wall ‘O Fiber for me to spin on the wheel, and he chose this purple/magenta/black/white superwash merino (which I seem to recall having named “Goth Princess” when I had it up on my Etsy store). I split it into 3 sections and plan on a sock-weight 3-ply. I just finished the first bobbin, and I’m very pleased with the colors. I think this may end up being Christmas socks for someone in my family who likes purple and handknit socks. cough

I’ve also become obsessed with looking at this 30-lb ottoman-sized pile of rambouillet combed top someone has for sale on Etsy. I don’t have $330 plus $40 shipping to spend on fiber, but wow. 30 lbs of wool top to hug and squeeze and call George. That’s 15 sweaters’ worth of fiber right there.

And lastly, for Robin, an unusual menu selection we recently saw at The Federal (no, I got the pork carnitas and Jag got a burger):

For the first time in a week and a half, we’ll get a decent (cool, non-90%-humidity, non-bugs-that-sneaked-past-the-screens-flying-around-the-bedroom) night’s sleep.

I’ve been trucking along on making and spinning batts for my Justify wrap. Here’s a family portrait of all the ones I’ve spun so far (no idea yet on yardage, but it’s all in the worsted to chunky range).

The 2 batts I made using the Harrisville tweed felting batts made a very rustic yarn, as you can see. The green had more non-tweed fiber carded in, and was much easier to deal with as a result. It was an interesting experiment but I think I’ll leave this stuff for the felters, or maybe add just a little to batts in the future. Extensive searches on google and Ravelry don’t seem to turn up many examples of it being used for spinning. It’s too bad it doesn’t work well for spining, because the colors are amazing and I have a weakness for tweedy yarns.

Plying the singles from the below two batts together was totally Jag’s idea and I love the result.

As of yesterday I’ve cast on for the Lutea Lace-Shoulder Shell from an older Spring Interweave. I’m using O-Wool Balance, which is a 50/50 cotton/merino blend. It feels wonderful and should be great for summer. I just hope I don’t run out of yarn.

My progress so far: