TdF is coming

Yet again, it’s a long time between updates.  I just haven’t had much to say.  My husband is still not working, for our safety.  I’ve not been knitting much.  I have been prepping fiber and spinning fiber but it’s all the same as I’ve shown before.

TdF is just a few days away and I’m impatient for it to start.  I’m really in a spinning mood right now.

This is all of my prepped fiber.

Meadow, Icelandic, tog and thel combined, 820 grams which was all I could salvage from 2 rather matted fleeces. There are 5 bins total. Most of it is carded, except for the combed nests shown.

Duchess, Icelandic, tog and thel combined, 266 grams, carded. I’ve already spun the rest of this fleece.

Merino, 100 grams, some combed, the rest just flicked and I’ll spin from the lock. Hoping it’s less work for the same look as combed.

Mercedes, Cormo, 118 grams, combed.

Dodge, Icelandic, tog, 808 grams, combed

Salty, Icelandic, tog – 474 grams, thel – 180 grams, combed

Sugar, Icelandic, tog, 580 grams, thel – 176 grams, combed.

3522 grams total or 7.76 pounds. Expecting around 30 skeins. I don’t expect to spin it all during TdF. I just like having options.

 

Overdue Update

I’ve been hard at work in September.  I finished the scouring.  The garden is done and I’m drowning in squash (butternut and acorn).  I’ve done some knitting (more on that later) and quite a bit of fiber processing.

On the left is Duchess.  Her fleece is a mess with lots of vm and matting.  I’ve simply trimmed off the mats and discarded the worst of the vm bits and carded the remaining fiber – tog and thel together.  I’ve pulled the fiber off the carders as mini-batts and am layering them in bins with tissue paper in between.  Meadow was just as bad and got the same treatment.  Imagine 2 more bins of the same.  I just don’t want to open them as they’ll explode.  I really packed the fiber into them.

On the right is Salty’s tog and thel, combed and made into nests.

Today I assessed the remaining Icelandic fleece.  It looks like everything else can be combed (aside from those slated for the drum carder).  Of 20 fleeces, I’ve prepped or prepped/spun 7 (once I finish Duchess).  7 more are waiting for a drum carder.  6 are scoured, awaiting prep.  It’s been just over a year since I finished scouring them.  That’s darn good progress.

In knitting, I’ve done some repeats on the edging for the French Quilt shawl.  I’m almost to halfway.  I just pulled out the colorwork sweater this week and did about 5 rows.  I’ve been faithful to the Dracula’s Bride Shawl on Wednesdays and expect to finally finish that in early December.  It’s a bit tough right now as there is patterning on every row and for some reason my brain has trouble with patterning on purl rows.  I find it harder to keep track of than knit rows, despite the knit rows being more complicated.

Sometime this winter I’m going to have to take some time to spin.  I’ve got quite a bit leftover from TdF and more processed since then.

Charcoal Grey Merino Fleece

I got some of that charcoal grey Merino scoured.  Turns out to be more brown than grey once combed.  There’s quite a range of color.  Dark grey, light grey, a bit of white and brown and that’s not counting the sunburned tips.  I’m just mixing it all together.

I’m flicking both ends as there is a break 1/4 inch from the butt end and the tips are sunburned.  It’s a bit hard on my fingers if I’m not careful.  The locks are around 2 inches long once I straighten them out.  They kind of shrink up a bit after scouring.  But it combs up well and I love the variations of color in the nests.  This will be some gorgeous yarn.

Another day or two and I’ll have everything I scoured, combed.

I scoured about 24 oz in raw weight. Loss from scouring was 11 oz, leaving 13 oz.  There’s quite a bit of loss in flicking/combing.  I’m not sure what the final weight of usable fiber will be but I’m pretty sure it’ll be enough for 2 skeins of yarn.  Not too bad for Merino.

Can’t wait for TdF to start so I can spin this.

A new month, a new schedule

So it’s March and I’ve filled in my calendar.  This time I’ve skipped the French Quilt Shawl’s border.  I really want to finish the Corriedale sweater while I can still wear it (although with how this winter has been, I may still be able to wear it in June) so aside from Dracula’s Bride on Wednesdays, it’s all sweater knitting.

I’ve also been thinking about TdF in July.  While you might think it’s awfully early to start planning for July, actually, when I looked at what I can accomplish on my 2 fiber days a week, I do need to start planning now.  If I don’t spin between now and July, I should be able to prep enough fiber to spin all day, every day during TdF, plus some extra so I have options when something (namely laceweight Icelandic) gets boring.

I’m not entirely sure I’ll spin all day, every day.  It really depends on how my body is feeling by then.  But I will at least spin a little every day.

On the left is combed Tog from Dodge the Icelandic.  On the right is Thel.  I’ve been spinning the Thel so the amounts are not from the same number of locks.  I’ve started the 2nd layer of Thel since I took this pic.  I’m going to have to move the Tog to a bigger box.

My handspun yarns

I was doing some organizing today and had to add to my handspun yarn bin.  And then I realized that I needed to start another bin.  As I was looking though the yarns (and remembering ones I’d forgotten) I decided to take a few pics to show you what I’ve got.

I’ll start with the white/grey bin.  These are yarns that probably will be dyed before use, mostly because I don’t like knitting with white (I may or may not dye the greys.)  Some worsted weight rustic Shetland in the upper left.  Laceweight Icelandic and fingering weight Cormo and Polworth in the middle top and fingering weight Merino from Hawaii on the right top.  Bottom is all CVM, in various weights, mostly fingering and all from Patrick (1/2 fleece one year and the whole huge fleece the next.)

I love Patrick.  I should see if he’s still alive.  His fleeces were glorious, clean and neat and an absolute joy to prep and spin.

The Merino from Hawaii was an interesting story.  In one of my fleece groups on Ravelry, a spinner was helping a local shepherd.  The market for wool had gone away and the fleeces were literally taking over his house.  They were selling fleece for $50 for a flat rate box, including shipping (about 3 lbs).  It was dirty, long (some locks up to 12 inches) and not in the best shape.  I had to pull off tarry tips before scouring.  But it cleaned up well and made nice yarn.  That spinner has dropped out of sight and I don’t know any more to the story.

Next up is the naturally colored and dyed skeins.  All of the brown is CVM.  The small cakes with the large blue cake are all Patrick the CVM.  The purple is also Patrick, combing waste spun thick and rough.  The others are mystery fibers.

That brown CVM was my 2nd fleece and my first soft one.  It was filthy and vm filled and I really had no idea what I was doing.  Most of it is spun from flicked locks on a spindle.  It’s the fleece that really got me committed to spinning and fleeces.

These are skeins that need finishing.  The two cormo on the left and two Icelandic on the right just need washing and thwacking.  The center two (both Icelandic) need plying and then washing and thwacking.  I’m waiting for spring because I prefer to thwack on the front porch.

Handspun for weaving.  Mostly Hampshire with some Romney/Teeswater spun smooth (sorta) and as art yarn.

The Hampshire was my very first fleece.  It was free.  It’s coarse.  I’ve dyed it all up in many colors and I’m spindle spinning them.  Originally it was spun from flicked locks but these days I comb it.

The Romney/Teeswater was bought at the same time/farm as the brown CVM.  I had no idea what I liked back then so I got a fine wool and a long wool.  Turns out I prefer fine wool so this fleece is slowly getting spun very rustic and plied with thread to make art yarn.

So there you go.  That’s all of the handspun I have on hand.  Much more of it has already been knitted into items (probably another bin’s worth).  Not bad, considering I’ve only been spinning since 2014.

And another month has passed

Sorry about that.  In my defense, I’ve been very busy.

 

That’s one of three skeins of the Corriedale for my sweater, spun, plied, and dyed.  Then one worsted weight skein each from Luke, Salty and Sugar of the Icelandic mountain.  I’ve also finished Cocoa and Dodge but have not taken pics.  Cinnamon and Meadow are also done but need to be measured and photographed.

Pepper is ready to spin and I’m still working on Duchess.

I’ve learned a lot prepping these fleeces.  Number one on that list is that just because they are all Icelandic does not mean they will all be similar.  I’ve encountered a wide variety of crimp (from wavy to crimpy to nearly straight.)  Lengths also vary, in both the tog and thel.  Some times the tog is much longer, sometimes it’s about the same length as the thel and everything in between.

I’ve also experimented with prepping techniques.  Sugar was combed, which resulted in a lot of end trimming and a lot of waste.  Others were carded and the batt lifted off the carders and rolled so the fibers were parallel and pulled out into pseudo nests.  Some were carded and rolled into traditional rollags.  Duchess and Meadow required flicking/brushing and combing.  Meadow had a break in the thel and the tog was soft so the flicking pulled out most of the thel (which was saved for felting) and the remainder combed.  In Duchess the tog and thel are pretty much the same length so I’m keeping it together and combing.

Combing/flicking is labor intensive and time consuming so prepping Duchess and Meadow for my own use (as opposed to the hats for the sheep owners I’m spinning these worsted weight skeins for) will be a long term project.

I’ll likely go with carding and keeping the fibers parallel and pulling into pseudo nests for the majority of these Icelandics.  At least until I get a drum carder.

I know I want to take one of Dodge’s fleeces and attempt to spin laceweight for shawl knitting.  I’ve got vague ideas about a natural colored colorwork sweater.  I’ll probably end up spinning much of the Icelandic to my normal sport weight.  It’s pretty versatile – good for sweaters or shawls.

All of the tog that’s been pulled out while prepping has been/will be flicked/brushed and combed and set aside to be spun for weaving.

Shetland Raw Fleece

I made the trip to the Shetland farm yesterday.  It went pretty well.  Got a tour of the place.  Goats (not fiber breeds), sheep, pigs, chickens and donkeys.  She has quite a few more sheep than I thought, 40 or more.  Peanuts are the bribe of choice there and the goats are greedy about them.  My husband had cashews in his pocket and one of the goats stuck it’s nose right on the pocket as if to say “What have you got in your pocket?  I wants it.”  After making sure it was ok, he fed a few to a couple of goats who then decided he was their kind of guy.

The sheep were more shy, except for Edith who is the oldest of the flock at 10 years old.  She wanted all the peanuts from everyone and was not shy about jumping up on you to demand more.  Good thing Shetlands are small.  I just treated her the same as a dog jumping on me.  I pushed her off and told her no.  Hooves hurt a bit more than dog paws tho.  The husband got it right in the groin by her, thankfully not too hard.

Then it was time to look at the fiber.  I’d already noticed that the fiber on the sheep didn’t look the greatest.  Lots of VM, plus she shears late and these being Shetlands, most had already started to roo (shed).  The fiber was in clumps, not full fleeces and matting was an issue, plus the vm and those little prickly balls that stick to everything (I call them thistles, but they’re not actually thistles.)  Still I can deal with all of that.  I picked out my fleeces, 4 lbs of black in two different fleeces and 6 lbs of white/cream from the same animal but 2 different years.

When I got home, I rebagged into pillowcases, just taking out samples from each fleece, which I scoured later that evening.

This is Yankee.  Washed on the left.  Flicked on the right. Some shockingly long locks in places.  I’d have sworn they were two years of growth and that there would be a break in the middle but nope, one strong lock all the way through, except for those yellow tips which came off in the flicking. Some places of seriously heavy VM.  Some matting in all the locks but mostly not too bad. But the loss ratio turned out to be pretty high.  4 grams of usable fiber to 8 grams of waste and that doesn’t really include the VM, which got flicked into the garbage can.

Next up are the blacks.  The darker one didn’t have a name on the bag.  The other is Panda.  These are very different in feel and structure than the white.  The left side locks had major matting but pulled apart fairly well.  Same waste ratio as the white.  The right side top chunk turned out to be almost totally unusable.  The matting was terrible.  I was hoping it would be better with the cute curls on the top.  The other chunk was a bit better but still had a lot of matting.  This one had 2 grams usable, 10 grams waste.

I paid $10/lb for this fiber and that was a mistake on my part.  This is $5/lb fiber at best.  The blacks are worth even less (possibly should have been free).  I can only hope that I just picked bad bits for my samples and the rest will be better.  I didn’t investigate enough on site and to be honest, my natural shyness makes it hard for me to put myself forward and say “This is really bad stuff and I’m not paying $10/lb.” as I should have.

On the other hand, if I had bought fleece online, I’d have probably spent $10/lb plus had to pay shipping.  I’d have gotten less fiber, although better quality.  It probably comes out even in the end.

After I get a chance to go through the rest of the fiber, I’ll probably send an email of observations and suggestions for improvement.  I do know she wants to have a self-sustaining farm and having good fiber to sell is part of that.  As it is now, I’m probably the only person who’d buy this stuff (aside from a group on Facebook who specialize in filthy fleeces.)  She did have some processed into yarn at a mill a couple of years ago.  Maybe that’s where all the good stuff went.  Still, from what I saw that was still on the sheep, there’s not a lot of good stuff.

Now I wait for the weather to improve.  It’s not bad now, mostly in the 50’s but I need 60’s to wash (so my washtubs aren’t too cold and cool the water too quickly).  I’m also not setup yet.  Need to get my sorting table out and rig up some sort of shade for me to work under.  Heck, we just unburied the washtubs last night.  It’s only in the last few days that we’ve had true signs that spring is here.  2 weeks ago we had a nasty snowstorm.

I spindle spun the usable fiber.  I need to ply and finish them and do all sorts of measurements before, after and inbetween.  I’ll do that tomorrow.  I like to let singles rest for at least a day before plying.

Tour de Fleece

Sorry for the lack of post last week.  I had the pics ready but just forgot.  I got all caught up in prepping for TdF.

I overdid it on the fiber prep last week and combined with yard work over the weekend, managed to strain my wrist.  I’ve been in a brace most of this week in the hope that I’ll be better enough by tomorrow to spin a little. So I’ve been forced to find alternate things to do as I can’t knit or spin or prep so I’ve gotten sort of lost in a computer game.

So Tour de Fleece or TdF.  It’s three weeks of spinning in conjunction with the bike race Tour de France.  I’m with team RWLU or the Raw Wool Lovers Unite group on Ravelry. We’re a very laid back group.  We set our own goals (big or small) and cheer each other on.  The only requirement is that the fiber is from raw fleece.

My theme this year is variety.  In the past I’ve worked on one fleece for most of the tour and let me tell you, that gets tedious fast.  So this year I’ve prepped bits of every fleece I have.  8 different breeds, mostly combed but two have the waste from combing carded into rollags.

So here is the lineup:

 

The Hampshire is spindles only and everything else is for my wheel.  If I somehow run out, there is more Cormo and Hampshire to prep.

I think I’ll start with the Shetland/Corriedale lamb.  It’ll probably be the easiest to spin.  I have no firm plans for most of this.  It will get spun at whatever thickness feels right. Probably pretty thin as that’s what I tend to spin.

Sometime today I need to change the drive band on my wheel and oil it and than I’m ready to go.  I hope to post a couple of times a week to update my progress (and get in that Polwarth prep post I forgot about last week.)

Cormo Raw Fleece

 

Next up is a gorgeous Cormo fleece.  This one almost 6lbs.

Some scoured locks.  Those dirty ends flick right out leaving me with lovely white fiber.

Combing in progress.  Same method as the last fleece.

The nests I have done so far.  This should be enough for 2 singles to be plied into one skein.

The rest of the fleece needs a re-scour.  There’s just a bit too much lanolin left in it.  I can comb and probably spin it now in the summer heat without too many problems but come winter, it’s going to be a hassle.  It looks like I’ll have a decent day or two next week to scour so I’ll get this bagged up over the weekend and ready to scour.

Note to self:  Cormo has more lanolin than it appears and needs 2 soapy scours before rinsing.

Corriedale/Shetland Lamb Raw Fleece

I have fleeces!!!

I’m going to introduce them one at a time as I get to work on them this month.  I finished scouring the last bit today so the rest of the month is dedicated to fiber prep for these new fleeces plus one or two older ones.  TdF is coming up fast and I’ll need a lot of fiber prepped and ready to spin.

First up is a Corriedale/Shetland cross lamb.  Just shy of 2 lbs before scouring. These pics are of the fleece and locks before scouring.

Here is an assortment of scoured locks.  Staple length is 5-6 inches.  There are a few locks with black/dark grey but most of the fleece is white to cream.

Combing in progress.  This fleece is so easy to prep.  I pull open the butt ends with my fingers.  Just sort of fluffing it a bit and getting any second cuts I may have missed.  Then I flick/brush the tips.  Next is loading the hackle and combing.  Look how fluffy it gets.  This is the longest fleece I’ve ever dealt with.  I really have to exaggerate my movements to get the comb free of the fibers before the next pass.  Last shot is pulling the fiber off of the hackle into roving.  I don’t bother with a diz.  I just draft the fiber until it’s even as I wind it onto my hand.

This fleece is a dream to prep.  Almost no VM.  The tips flick out with 2 or 3 swipes of the brush and it pulls off of the hackle easily.  I can work on this for hours at a time without aches and pains.

These are all the nests I made today.  Aren’t they pretty?  I can’t wait to see how this spins up.

I highly recommend Bleating Heart Haven in New Holstein, WI.  I’m not sure if Cindy sells online but she got a lovely little shop on her farm and it’s well worth the trip if you can do it.

She flat out gave me some roving. She also has goats (mohair) and when I mentioned I’d never spun that she pulled down some mohair/coopsworth roving. Then later after she showed me the fleeces and I’d turned down some very short shetland lamb she pulled out a bump of roving made from a similar fleece and gave that to me.  Plus she gave me an amazing deal on the 2 fleeces I bought from her.

I asked to see the sheep and she let me (insisted, actually) feed her bottle lamb. Adorable but noisy little thing and not all that hungry (it was early for supper time).