tdf day 3

..and I'm losing my mind.
I posted this last night but apparently I forgot to hit save.

Black Welsh plied

I love naturally colored wool and this is a deep deep black. Even the tips were black.

I bought 4oz of raw wool from the Spinning Loft, washed it up, and hand carded it into rolags. The VM fell out of it very easily.

The little white fibers you see among the Black Welsh are from my stupid idea to wash black and white wool together. I have at least 20- 4ounce samples of wool so to save time, and my brain, I washed a bag of black in the same sink as a bag of white so I could easily tell them apart. As you can see, that is not a good idea. I was picking long white fibers out of this stuff all the way through.

This stuff sheds like mad. It's been very hot and humid here and I had little bits of Black Welsh all over my hands, arm, lap, clothes, floor.... It got everywhere. It was like getting a hair cut and not washing the little cut bits off your neck. Only I had them stuck all over me. If you're going to try to spin this fiber do it in the winter or at least in air conditioning.

I spun 2 singles on spindles and then plied them. I ended up with roughly 150 yards of sport weight yarn.

I picked this fiber as my first raw to yarn sample for the Spinner's Study because of it's color. I love naturally colored fibers and was instantly drawn to this one because it was such a uniformly jet black. After spinning it I'm not so fond of it. I still love the color, but the wool isn't all that fun to work with (see shedding), and the finished product is course and scratchy. This yarn could be used for rug or needle point but I certainly wouldn't want a pair of mittens made from it.

Watched: a show on Tom Petty, a Walton's marathon, Silence of the Lambs, Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog (we love that movie in this house), and Shutter Island.

eta: Black Welsh yarn picks up any and all stray cat hairs, passing dust, and random dust bunnies like the plague.

tdf day 1 and 2

Day 1

Into the Whirled's June club. Romney 4oz "cerulean Dreams."

I spun a total of 20 hours that day. Cara stayed right along beside me combing and carding the freshly washed wool that I plan to spin for A Spinner's Study.

Two singles rolled into a plying ball and the beginning of plying. I took this picture at 11:50. Just in time to post it to the tdf day one thread. Cara and I worked for 3 more hours after this picture to get it plied.

It tried to ply itself.

It fuzzed up and created balls of fuzz that chain linked the two ply's together.
After many failed attempts, swearing, hysterical exhausted laughter, and paper cuts, we decided to call it a night at 3am.

Netflix and DVD's watched: Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog (3rd watching), Dr Horrible's extras, A Hard Days' Night (? watching), a bunch of episodes of Fraggle Rock (2nd watching), Styx in concert, Simon & Garfunkel documentary, M*A*S*H documentary, tried to watch Legend but couldn't stomach it, and listened to Dr Horrible's cd several times.


Day 2

I slept in, then started plying again. It took me somewhere around 3 or 4 more hours to get this mess plied. My fingers are covered in rug burns and cuts but it got finished.

160 yards of 2 ply Romney.
(entered in Phat Fiber, Spindle, and Spinner's Study teams)

Started on some Black Welsh for the Spinner's Study team.

Watched: Fraggle Rock, Styx.. and something else?

TDF day 1

I spun from 8:30am until nearly midnight with only two breaks for meals.
This is Into the Whirled's June fiber club. Romney 4 oz spun into 2 singles and just started to be plied. I had to take a picture of it at this stage so I could enter it in today's thread.

expletives go here beacuse I'm really hating the human race today

So for TDF you have to either downsize your photos or put them in a collage. I tried signing up on flicker but they wont acknowledge my account once I made one. It turns out you have to use IE not firefox. Ok, not wild about that disaster browser but I'll try. Nope it still won't work. I log in and every time it sends me back to the log in page. The same thing happens when I try to use my yahoo account. It's not a cookies problem either.

So then I try one of the free collage programs. Anything that is compatible to my old system (windows 2000) requires you to become a sheeple and join Facebook or use Flicker to upload your photos. HELLO Flicker doesn't work! And I have refused to get on Facebook for years now. It looks like I'm screwed though and will have to join the millions of like minded sheeples.

If Facebook tells me that I have to use Flicker or Windows 7 I will have to shoot somebody.








.........oh quit freaking out. It's just an expression. Something we used to be able to use back in the dark ages. You know, before people had to be politically correct sheeples.

I think I need to pet some fiber and calm down.

Count down minus.....

When and what I spin is entirely based on what I feel like doing at that moment. Some days, or weeks, I don't want to spin but I'll go mad washing and preping fiber. At other times I'll be sick to death of washing and combing and abandon that project to start yet another pretty piece of fluff on a spindle. Because I'm easily bored I have a hard time ever finishing any one project without having started three more. For this reason I have a massive amount of fiber ready to spin for the Tour de France. I don't plan on spinning it all in one month, but with enough variety set aside for this, hopefully I will accomplish a few things. Here's what I have slated for TDF so far

For the Spinner's Study team

I'll have 16 breeds ready (hopefully). That's less than 2 ounces in each lunch bag. Some still need combed/carded, and I have 4 more on the drying racks right now. I really doubt I'll get through all of them but just in case, they will be there waiting for me.

For my own I have

1 pound 7 ounces of Coopworth ready to be spun into rug yarn. I have got to make a rug to put under my spinning wheel. I'm tired of chasing it all over the room anytime I try to use it.

And for the Phat Fiber team I have

That mass consists of Phat Fiber boxes from June (scifi)

And Phatie fiber that I've bought in the past year but have been too afraid to spin.

In a perfect world I would be able to Navajo ply and would be fearless in this pile. In reality I remember what I did to this fiber and I don't want to ruin an entire pile of pretties. I'm hoping the TDF will force me to stop thinking like this, get out there and spin, and learn how to make a yarn I'm thoroughly pleased with.

All of this will be spun on one of my spindles so they will also be placed in the spindle spinner's team.

Fiber's in these pictures came from The Spinning Loft, Homestead Wool and Gift Farm, local farms, and Etsy. The Phat Fiber picture with the full 4oz fibers are from Fiber Fancy, Pickin And Spinnin, Friends in Fiber, Into the Whirled, Northstar Alpacas, Spinfusion, The Critter Ranch, and http://www.etsy.com/shop/WCMercantile. I also have two bats on order from Mamjude but they haven't arrived yet.

I've never kept track of how much I can spin in any given time. July will be a study in how much fiber I can get through, and hopefully, clear out some of my stash. The plan is to spin several hours in the morning with Phat Fiber, and alternate in the evenings with breed studies and Coopworth rug yarn. We'll see if these old arthritic hands can keep up.

Because I will be spinning in the living room with the TV, I've loaded up my Netflix list and dusted off some DVDs. This is what I'll be watching, and just like my spinning, it will be all about what I'm in the mood for that day.

Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog
Jim Henson's The Story Teller
Hitchcock Presents
Firefly
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Red Dwarf
Black Butler
D. Gray-man
Macgyver
To Sir with Love
3rd Rock From the Sun
Death of a Salesman
Keeping Up Appearances
Claymore
Dirty Jobs
The Twilight Zone (original)
Dark Shadows
The Kids in the Hall
Big
Amadeus
Star Wars trilogy (originals)
Stargate SG1
Stargate Atlantis
Star Trek (original)
Harold and Maude
Fraggle Rock
Reservoir Dogs
A Hard Day's Night
Black Death
Good
Reclaiming the Blade
Going My Way
The Bell's of Saint Mary's
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Shutter Island
Top Gear
The new Whose Line (what ever it's called now)

Clean up

I'm cleaning off my spindles in prep for tdf.
It still amazes me that you can take a lump of fuzz and turn it into something beautiful.

I only got 1oz spun of the total 4 oz of this one. I won't be spinning it in the tdf because it's so time consuming and I want to really concentrate on getting it spun as thinly as I can. I think I'll knit or crochet this into a scarf for my sister for her birthday.