Thursday, July 12, 2012

I've been spinning some wool

Remember I had that crazy idea to spin the wool I'm going to use next month for knitting along with the Olympics?  Well, I finished my test run.


One nice thing about not pursuing Tour de Fleece in a formal way this year is that I was able to take my rest days on different days than the actual Tour cyclists are taking them - I have time available on those days, and I didn't last weekend, so I'm just going to make up the time later. 

Another thing I'll do to fit all this in is spin more on some days in case there's another I just can't - even though the point, for me, is to spin every day so that I improve my skills, I'm also going to be happy if I can just get through some stashed fiber.  Ideally I'll end up with one of these 35-45g balls of spun fiber for every day of the tour... but I'm probably not going to count.  Yep, being relaxed about production: this is what passes for vacation around here.

I have soooo much fiber from Stoddart Family Farm, and so much sock yarn such that I am knitting a Romney/Mohair sock at all times - that's a lot of work with just one type of fiber combo.  (and that's a sentence that tells you what a long way we've come from being lucky to get to work with 100% wool at all.)

Fortunately now that I'm done with the ocean blues, I have these gorgeous golden browns to look at:


This is the yarn I hope to use during the Olympics and not a second test run, so I hope I don't mess up.  What I found in the solitary test run is that I'm spinning fine enough singles to get to sock weight if I ply two singles together; because the pattern I want to use suggests sport weight, I've broken the golden brown roving into six for a three-ply approach.  I should have held out for plying and blocking the blues before making this decision but... but but but but:  impatient. 

Also nervous about time. 

Also pretty confident there isn't going to be much opportunity to get the swift out to wind plied yarn for blocking more than once, at the end of the Tour.

Just kinda thinking that, worst case, the yarn won't work and I'll use some sport weight from my stash. 

Super hugely being relaxed about this even though it goes against the grain.

Because I decided I'm on vacation, as far as I can manage it, which is only about as far as this.

Hope you find some vacation moments in your day too!

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