Tour de Fleece Eve

Its Friday morning and the heat in the bedroom woke me up rather early, I even caught the remnants of sunrise.

It looks like another hot day today (UK based, we don't have air con ) but thunderstorms are forecast for most of tomorrow so no outdoor spinning to start Tour de Fleece this year.

So, a quick catch up on the week and a brief look forward to TDF.

The weather has been excellent, a little too hot but good for drying both fleece and clothes, I mean, everyones line looks like this. Doesn't it ?

This is some mystery fleece from the Isle of Skye. I bought it back last year because I quite like the colours. I'm not really sure what it is, its not soft but not Herdwick coarse and rather reminds me of a Jacob? Since my friends on the croft had no idea either, I'm just going to see how it spins.

When I'm not washing , I've been carding , combing and generally prodding the fleece into submission ready for Saturday.

The other Manx has now been washed, doesn't look too bad so I'll see how the ends comb with the dog comb and maybe pop it through the drum carder.

As you may recall, I retired in May. Called it a day after working for nearly forty two years for the same company. Tuesday evening there is a virtual knock at the door and a work colleague is on the doorstep with my leaving presents. I know its been a month but these items were specially ordered, as you can see.

The spindle is from  IST crafts and weighs in at 17gm, there are small weights in the arms to help it spin faster and longer. The bobbins are from Chris Parsons I already have several of his bobbins and these will make a lovely addition to my dark bobbin collection. I wanted something to remind me of my time there but not the usual watch type thing so these fit the bill perfectly.

I'm still knitting the BFL/Swaledale, so far we have the mitts ( see previous blog) a hat and I've started on another mitts pattern.

Just incase you are wondering about the photo quality these days, I'm tending to use my phone as my camera isn't keen on speaking to the computer at the moment !!

                                             TDF news ...

I haven't yet decided what to spin tomorrow, maybe something easy? I have around 450gm of Balwen/Texel carded ready, its white so not an exciting spin plus it doesn't seem to like dyes very much but it will be good as hats with a simple pattern on them. I also have Cheviot, Romney, Portland, Jacob, Shetland and Zwartbles prepped and plenty of empty bobbins for all of the wheels.

The new spindle will probably get its first outing during TDF as I have a skein of Merino/baby camel that has been suiting around for years, hand dyed by Felt Studio UK its just begging to be spun fine. It will be a long term, ongoing project.

                                    

Take care, speak soon, watch out for the daily (hopefully) TDF blogs starting tomorrow.

xx