Tour de Fleece 2011

Back in November of 2010, I picked up some dyed fiber at the So Cal Handweaver's show. This is a merino / silk blend dyed by Capistrano fiber arts. My plan for the fiber was to try and break out of my "rut" of using the same colors all the time. I wanted to ply two different colorways together and see what effect I got. I picked out one and Lori suggested the other.

Here is a picutre of the two colorways laid out in all their glory:

Then this July (2011) I decided to join the "Tour de Fleece" with the goal of spinning & plying these 4 oz into one fiinshed skein. It was a pretty respectable goal, as I done almost no spinning during the previous year, I wanted the project to be spun on a hand spindle and (not least) I began about a week into the tour, putting myself at the back of the pack. I started with the green / gold / purple first. I divided each colorway into 4 roughly equal sections to shorten the distance between color changes.

I managed to spin all of the darker colorway with no trouble and almost on schedule. Then I moved on to the sand / orange / purple. I did not enjoy this colorway as much, and it was quite difficult to stick with "the plan". The end of the tour came and went with this portion only about 1/4 complete. Into the project bag it went. I worked on it a little more later in November (a year from yarn purchase) when visiting with friends at this year's handweaver's show. Last weekend a friend hosted a spin-in and I brought it as my only project to try and get it finished at last. I almost made it, and finally finished the spinning Thursday afternoon.

I slid the two cops off onto knitting needles for storage and plied the yarns back onto the same spindle. After about 5 hours worth of work, here is approximately 4 oz of plied yarn. I wanted to make one skein with no breaks, and was successful. The spindle was quite heavy by the end, however.

The finished yarn, all skeined up. It needs a bath to set the twist and make it bloom, but the colors came out beautifully overall. Now I just need to figure out what project to make with it. Something knit, surely, and somewhat large. I may make a triangle shawl so that I can stop when I run out of yarn. A rectangle scarf would also be nice, or even a circular shawl. If I can't decide, I may get crazy and enter it into the county fair this summer.

I enjoyed spinning for the Tour and will do it again this year - hopefully with more planning and forethought. It feels good to finally finish a project and have a little more yarn in the "to knit" stash.