Sunday 3 July 2016

Tour de Fleece Day One

Hi,
I am going to attempt to blog daily on my process this year, if nobody reads this then at least I'll have a record for myself!!

 Day one got off to an unusual start, I had noticed a post from a fellow Ravelry member who said that she was on a narrow boat and had picked up her spindles but had forgotten her fibre so would be spinning the longest, thinnest thread until it ran out ( which would not have taken long)

After a few messages it became apparent that she was travelling up to the Beeston-Nottingham canal so I said I would drop down with some fibre to keep her going. Looking for the easiest was to get to the canal, I decided to catch the train on Saturday morning.

 Its always a bit strange getting on the london train to just go one stop taking about 5 min!!

 But I did get to sit down and its been so long since I've been on a train that I didn't realise that you can now plug in phone and laptop charges!


I wanderd down to the canal and found the right boat, we had tes and a good chat about spinning and life in general. We will be meeting up again the next time they pass through :-) I then wandered round looking at the boats, wandering if it would be the life for us? maybe not, we like to travel and explore and would get frustrated at the slow pace.






So it was back to the station and home, dropping in on my optician on the way back to get my computer glasses mended.


And the spinning??? I managed to grab an hour in the evening and also popped some more fleece into a cold soak. The jacob that I had left on the line was also nice and dry.




This concludes day one, more tomorrow.  xx

6 comments:

Judith Robinson said...

Sounds like a nice day out, how nice of you to do the fibre rescue.
My husband once had the idea that living on a narrowboat would be a good plan. He eventually realised that we would also need a Butty boat to carry all my stash, so we remain landlubbers. :)

Guzzisue said...

The canal idea tempted us a few years ago but we would be stuck as to where to keep the motorbikes, These days the idea of a campervan is tempting, Im sure i could find room for a spindle and some fibre.

Jane Travers said...

That's so nice of you, and it sounds like a lovely excursion! Questions: why do you cold soak the fleece? Is Jacob a breed of sheep or a reference to the Greek myth? ��

Araignee said...

What an adventure! How lucky she was to have you to come to the rescue.
Happy spinning!

Guzzisue said...

Hi Jane, soaking the fleece helps loosen the dirt and make it easier to wash. Woth fleece, 'washing'is more a case of letting it sit in very hot water with detergent. If you agitate the fleece it will felt (some will felt if you just look at them) so the cold soak helps remove some of the dirt, the hot wash helps remove the lanolin and the yarn is washed again once spun.
Jacob... brown and white sheep :-) this one did have a name as well but i'll have to look it up.

Jane Travers said...

Thanks! 😊