TDF day 2, not quite what I planned.

 Over the last few months I've got in the habit of spending Sunday afternoons up at Nottingham Castle in the gate house café either spinning, knitting or making lace as its usually quiet and people feel comfortable asking what I am doing.

Today, the cafe was closed !! there is a café in the castle/big house/museum building but it gets busy and I don't feel comfortable taking up a table for four with all my bits.

So, it was off to a coffee shop. Confession, I do like Neros coffee and we have at least six of them in town.

One bobbin spun over coffee, another once I got home. Total so far on TDF is 200 gm (bobbins have just over 50gm on each) The plan is to spin another 2 then ply 1 with 4, 2 with 5, 3 with 6 to hopefully even out any difference in the spins.

To make sure that I don't overdo the spinning, I've cast on a shawl to use up the oddments of Shetland that are lying around.

That's about it for now, next update tomorrow x

Tour de fleece 2024, I survived day one !

 So here we are, day one of TDF 2024. I started the day with breakfast and coffee in town.

I did manage to spin before catching my bus to guild, I also had three requests for details about the guild and one request from a fashion student for my social media ( If you are reading this, I didn't catch your name, sorry x )

Most of the remainder of the day was spent at guild, a lot of chatting, not so much spinning.

Then half an hour or so at home to finish the second bobbin.

Day one, two bobbins of ryeland, approx 100gm, not a bad start :-) I'm now going to settle down and knit x

remember the project to spin the shetland fleece on my Nano ?

 I thought that you may like to see the results so far.

and back to prepping fleece for the Tour de Fleece that starts on Saturday xx

tour de fleece, am I ready?

 My plans so far.

wash more fleece

prep more fleece

resist the urge to start a spinning project before Saturday !

Two more fleeces have arrive, both Ryeland shearlings as Ryeland has always been one of my favourite spins.

Pretty much zero veg matter in these, the sellers was really good and clear about the fleece. Its been washing up really clean and easy to prep. 

Spinning stash so far

My latest Nano spin is now on the needles, lovely soft Shetland.

That's about it for now, daily or almost daily blogs will resume on Saturday/Sunday depending on where I am.

tour de fleece Sampling the Bowmont

 Disclaimer.... I love combed fibre in spite of the amount of wastage and having seen these photos, I've realise that the last time I dropped my camera might have done more damage that I realised.

Bowmont Fleece.

I have had a bag of Bowmont in the past, the locks were really short and to be honest I didn't get very far with it but when I spotted an advert for some on Facebook, I thought that I would give it another shot. I ordered my usual 1 kilo ( I generally buy at least a kilo of any fleece so I have plenty to play with) thinking that it would be a good spin to have on my Nano during TDF this year.

Beautiful clean fibre, I washed a good handful as soon as the rain stopped and started to play with it.

I'm aiming for a light 4-ply once plyed. Before washing.....

After washing .....

After washing, 16 wpi which is about where I want to be  with this. I'm hoping to knit a shawl or two with this. Its lovely and soft and I think it will block out nicely but I haven't tried that yet.

Small sample with 3mm needles.

Todays forecast doesn't look so bad so I'll probably pop some more on the line.

Tour de fleece 2024

 Am I taking part?   Yes

My Goals  ? spin down the stash

What's in the stash?  well, that's the problem, not a lot really. I have around 2 / kilo of Shetland to wash, one Jacob fleece to inspect, one Hebridean fleece that I may or may not spin and some oddments .

I have around 300 gm of lleyn cross processed and  a bag of washed oddments and that's about it.

My usual hoard of fleece was whittled down last year and I've not really replaced it. One Romney is on the way along with some a small amount of Bowmont but that's about i at the moment.

Three fleeces are destined for my friends allotment and even though I have a bag of alpaca, it will probably be some time before I can face washing the dust out of it

later....

Bowmont and Romney have arrived

Squishy... I'm thinking lace shawl with this.

Maybe even overdye this one?

I'm also going to look for a white ryeland.

Since I composed this post, I've been offered free fleece, border leicester cross so I'll see whether it stays with me or goes down to the allotments.

thinking ahead about crafty projects,

 I've been thinking about what I want to achieve (craft wise) over the summer months when we are not travelling so much and have come up with a list.

Embroidery

Three main projects on the go

big black thing

blackwork sampler ( started 1st May as a holiday project)

general band sampler for embroidery

Spinning

Tour de fleece is in July so I need to take stock of what fleece I have, maybe buy a little more white fleece for dyeing and simply wash and prep ready for the big spin session

I'm also taking part in a couple of local demos so I need to make sure that I have all my kit ready

Knitting

Continue knitting the mitts etc

Lace

Continue with torchon strip

Start working on new doll project

That's it at the moment, we have house stuff to sort out, a couple of festivals to go to and another tour to plan :-)