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.

Training for the Spinner's Study team

The washing of the wool

A.K.A. You need to have something to spin for Tour de Fleece.

I spent, and am still spending, my days this week washing wool.

Skirting a merino/targhee fleece.

Lots and lots of sausages.

I came up with this great idea to put them in a milk crate instead of bags or let them float amok in the water. This way I can wash more at one time, they get cleaner, and I don't burn my hands pulling them all out of the water. I could have put twice as many sausages in the milk crate, but there are only so many bundles you can make before you start wondering why you bought a fleece in the first place.

As soon as I let the hose down from the wash tub, Kenshin runs over and watches the water go down the drain.
Ugh, my basement doesn't really look like this. Where it looks muddy (or bloody), it's really just water. The kids have had a lot of fun in this corner doing picture shoots in their get-ups from Silent Hill and I've been sworn not to scrub this corner until they are done.

With this two tub system, I can wash one and a half pounds of wool while the other tub is having it's final rinse. This is so much easier than heating water on the stove and only getting one ounce of wool washed in the kitchen sink a day. This is 'Ava' on the left in her first scoure, and merino/targhee sausages on their final rinse.

Drying. This is where Kenshin sits while I skirt and make sausages.

Wool washing days are so hard on cats. Running from the skirting table to the wash tub and drain and back again, trying to keep up with me. Kenshin can only take so much before he finds a laundry baskets and takes a cat nap.

In a mad dash to have my spindles free for tdf, I'm trying to finish up the 4oz of Blue Morpho (merino-tencel) from Bitsy Knits. What's on the spindle and in my hand is only one ounce.

Wool skirted and washed this week (post wash weight):
15.6 ounces merino/targhee
2 pounds 11 ounces of Ava.
I am so glad I moved my wool washing to the basement. I might actually be able to wash all the fleece I own now.