Tour de Fleece day Seventeen and Eighteen , Argonaut takes a trip to Southwell

Day 17, Monday was my usual knit group meeting so no photos but I did take my Argonaut and carried on spinning the Polwarth as I really want to finish it by the weekend.

Once back home I carried on with the Romney, finished the second bobbin and plied them

                                      

                                                     I then did the same with the blue fluff

Both of these were washed and dried on Tuesday and are now in the bag awaiting labels.

both are darker in real life, the camera isn't reading the light very well as its so bright even with the blinds shut.

On Tuesday I went over to Southwell, mainly to visit the sweet shop so you can imagine my shock when I found that it had closed down. It was our nearest place for buying Dutch salted liquorice so it looks like I may have to buy on line in the future :-(

Breakfast was in the cafe at the Minster although its under temporary management at the moment and I'm not a fan of paper/plastic cups for coffee especially when they make your coffee taste sort of plastic. Hopefully new owners will be in place before my next visit.

as usual, I can't resist taking a few photos

Ooops, nearly forgot, another four bobbins of Texel ready to be plied in the morning.

Tour de Fleece day sixteen, a day of contrasts

I've been spinning in-between visiting a couple of craft fairs today. First up was plying the White face woodland bobbins and getting the skein on the line to dry.

                          nice and squishy, ready to be measured and labelled later in the week.

Then I started on some Romney, 50 gram so far today, definitely a much finer spin so we will see what we get once the remainder is spun and plied.

Between the craft fairs I spent an hour or so on the Argonaut and Pete's Fibre Studio bobbin no 2

Then when I returned home I grabbed some of the World of wool carded fibres and quickly spun 25gm not really worrying about the texture, thickness etc.

All in all, not a bad day :-)

Final Tour de Fleece 2025 figures.

I knew that I wouldn't spin as much as usual this year as we were away for nearly half of it. I've not included any half bobbins that are hanging around, just full skeins.

I had prepped around 1300gm of fibre, some is still in the bag but we have another trip or two planned so at least I have something to take with me.

All waiting to be washed, total 1.097Kg or 2.418 pounds, breeds.. Cheviot, Ryeland, Romney, Jacob, Shetland, North Country Mule.

The Cheviot and Jacob are from the Isle of Skye and will return there. The rest will probably join my knitting stash in the van.

I now need to continue washing and prepping fleece both fine and coarse for both of the e-spinners.

Tour de Fleece day twenty

 Another busy day, headed out to do some shopping and spinning on my nano, I was speaking to a couple of people in the cafe and one of them has asked if I can do a talk/demo on spinning to her over 55 group. We have exchanged details and hope to put something in place later in the year.

We have finalised the campsites for our Scotland trip, a few familiar places and several new ones to explore.

Eventually I had the chance to sit down at my Ashford wheel and spin.

100gm ish of Romney.

I'm nearly at the 1 Kilo mark, I set out with 1.2 kilo prepped in the main bag so not bad progress really given how long we have been away involved in other things.

Tour de Fleece day eight , some spinning but not a lot

 Another warm day but we went out for a drive and ended up at Papplewick Pumping station, a favourite place to while away a couple of hours.

The cloud making machine was working

The brass was gleaming

and there were a lot of steampunks about :-)

 and this is definitely not a Lambretta however at £40 it will be a bargain for someone.

As for the spinning its still Ryeland on the wheel but this is the total so far.

Tour de Fleece day six, here we go again

Order of the day, painkillers, phone dentist, finish spinning the Romney and hopefully at some point go out for a coffee or I will have to buy a proper coffee machine for home.

later,

Ok not the day I planned but I've finished and plyed the Romney and mad a start on the next batch of Ryeland. At this rate I may have to start processing a bit more fleece nut not a problem as I have a bag of washed fleece that I picked up at the last guild meeting. This time its Beulah Speckled face, a welsh breed that I haven't spun before so I will be able to tick it off the list.

I realise that these posts are a bit boring, I still didn't manage to leave the house for coffee but hopefully I will take the Nano out in the next day or so before I go stir crazy !!

Tour de Fleece day five, apparently I've never been so quiet

 I'm still here, taking the painkillers, mooching around. Still, it hasn't killed my spinning mojo yet !

 I'm sorry but I'm keeping this short and sweet today.

50+gm of Romney on the wheel.

and so it starts.... raw fleece inventory

 I had hoped to get much more fleece washed but its been a lousy summer and when the weather has been good we were generally at the other end of the country!.

I will still wash over the winter if we get some sunny windy days but otherwise the fleece list will stay pretty much the same for the time being.

So ( mainly for my records) the outhouse currently contains a black box of oddments and the following.

Saxony merino   1/2 fleece, more about this in the next post.

bfl/texel    part fleece, a little less than 1/2

jacob 'scrumpy' full fleece

jacob 'okey'  part fleece

ryeland (white) 1-2 fleece

Border leicester cross 1-2 fleece

Shetland  assortment small amounts

Bowmont  about 400 gm

grey romney 3/4 fleece

small bag alpaca

I've seen longer lists over the years !

Indoor fleece washed fleece stash currently unlisted but amount to several pillowcases full waiting to be carded or combed.

The general plan is to process and spin these before bringing more into the workroom.

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.

Farewell TDf for 2021 back to the randomness that is normal.

 TDF is well and truly over for this year, the skeins have been washed and now waiting to be weighed, re-skeined and labelled.

My spinning wheel is packed away for a few days and I've pretty much run out of prepped fleece.

I've turned my hand back to my stitching and finally finished this small sampler and it is now waiting to be made into a small pillow to go with my collection.

My blog posts will probably go back to being weekly depending on how much I have to say/do that is interesting.

It s been a hot weekend and with the heat forecast to last a few more days I doubt that I will be doing a great deal although a day out is planned at some point just so we can have fish and chips at the seaside.

have a great week, speak soon x

Day 21 &22 crash and burn

 That's me done, simply going to put the wheel away for a few days and do something else.

Last two skeins of Shetland and Jacob

Total 2.022 Kilo

Assorted weights from fingering to chunky, will measure etc once washed, may lose a bit of weight in washing.

Need to wash whilst the weather is hot

Full list of breeds for anyone interested.

TDF Spinning 2021 

28.6  Jacob 109

 29.6 Texel 102

 29.6 Welsh black mount x lleyn 74

 30.6 Shetlandxromney 66

 1.7.  Jacob 116 ( yes two skeins, same weight ! )

 1.7  Jacob 116

 3.7 Brown Shetland 112

 5.7  Jacob 128 

5.7 Hebridean 112 

7.7 unknown 131 

7.7 cheviot 125

 8.7 bfl/swaledale 107 

12.7 Ryeland 100 

12.7 Cheviot 110 

13.7 IOS cheviot 107

 14.7 Romney 76 

14.7 unknown 57

 15.7 Texel 112 

17.7 Brown Shetland 114

 17.7  Jacob 48

the Jacob skeins are from two different Jacob fleeces.