About All That Fleece ...

Hi, I'm a spinner, and I have a fleece problem.

Now, to be fair, my problem isn't as bad as some other spinners. But like them, I have a problem with acquiring fleeces that I fall in love with, bringing them home, and then letting them sit. With the extra time I have on my hands these days, and with the weather nice enough to take fiber prep outside, I thought it was high time I start tackling the fleeces in my stash.

The first one was the Rambouillet you saw the beginning of last week. It was one of two fleeces I split with another spinner back in 2012, and it was the easiest to start with because it had been cleaned and carded at a mill. I'd even split up the roving into manageable amounts of about 2 oz. I did not have a ton of extra spinning time this week, but I've managed to spin up one of those 2 oz. balls and gotten started on a second (I believe I have a total of 11 balls).

You can tell how much fluffier woolen-spun singles are by how much of that first bobbin is filled up -- for comparison, if I'd been spinning my usual worsted singles or yarn, I'd fill up about that much of the bobbin with about 4 oz. of fiber. I do feel that as I get more used to this fiber, my singles are becoming a bit more consistent overall, though they're still a bit lumpy-bumpy. I plan to spin up all the singles and then ply, mixing up singles spun at the beginning, middle, and end of the fleece so that the unevenness more or less evens out. I'm planning a three ply, as that is likely to be the most consistent, and I'm hopeful that I will have enough for a sweater, perhaps with some dyed handspun added in for stripes or colorwork if needed.

While this one fleece should keep me busy for a while, I also have some other fleeces that are clean but in need of processing before they can be spun. The one I've been most anxious to get to is Ollie the yearling Romney/Romeldale cross that I brought home from Maryland Sheep and Wool in 2018. Unlike the other fleeces, his I actually washed right away (I think within the month of May that year) and sampled. I ultimately determined that the short-ish staple length of the fleece meant that carding was likely to be the easiest way to process it, so yesterday, when the weather was lovely and Rainbow was willing, I took the fleece and my drum carder out to the porch and we carded up three fluffy batts.

It took three passes through the drum carder to get them to this point, but I know that work will be well worth it. If you're interested, I posted a short video of Rainbow doing the first pass on one of the batts on my Instagram account. There is still quite a lot of fleece to be carded at this point, but I think if I continue to make batts as I'm spinning the Rambouillet, it should be good motivation to get both things done. Wouldn't it be something if I ended the year having spun up most (if not all) of my fleece?

Of Fiber and Fleece

I feel like a bit of a Tour de Fleece failure this year, as I haven't spun nearly the quantity I have in past years, but the days are busy and the evenings are short, so I'm trying to be happy with what I can get done. For one thing, I am very pleased with the skein I finished yesterday. Remember the purple singles I finished up last weekend? Yesterday, after I went for a good run and did my household chores, I sat down and chain plied the full bobbin. Then I skeined and washed the yarn last night. This morning it was dry and bouncy and floofy and so pretty.

Because the wool in the blend is Targhee, I expected (and got) a nice poof in the finishing. Fresh off the wheel, the yarn was a light fingering. After washing, the yarn is fingering to sport.

I ended up with about 343 yards, which is respectable, I think. It certainly would have been more without the poofing up. But I think it'll make a lovely shawl or scarf-type thing.

Meanwhile, yesterday I dumped the contents of my fermented suint fleece experiment and rinsed the fleece. I won't know until it's fully dry if it worked, but it certainly looks a little better. And I did pull out some more bits that looked dodgy and dumped them, but I've still got plenty of wool. Right now, the fleece that remains is sitting on some drying racks on our covered porch, with some additional drying racks on top so that no animals decide to grab some fleece for themselves.

I was prepared for a really bad smell, and there definitely is a smell, but it's not nearly as bad as I was expecting. I think I may still need to wash the wool once more, perhaps in some floral mint 7th Generation dish liquid I have, but it's looking pretty good! I'll still be keeping it in quarantine from the rest of the stash until I'm sure it's safe, but I'm pretty confident I've saved a good amount.

My main TdF project is progressing, slowly but surely. I think this bobbin shot does a good job of showing all the colors in the fiber.

I am just loving this spin -- and it's a good thing, too, because I still have an awful lot left to be spun!

The TdF and a PSA

It's the most wonderful time of the year for spinners: The Tour de Fleece is here!

For the uninitiated, the Tour de Fleece is a handspinning event that was created to coincide with the Tour de France. It's a three-week-long celebration of handspinning and handspun yarn, and the gist of it is that on all the days that the cyclists are riding, we spinners are spinning our own wheels (as well as our spindles). In past years I've gotten very competitive about it and challenged myself to spin large quantities of fiber, but this year I'm being much more realistic and just taking the event in the spirit in which I think it was originally intended -- to enjoy spinning.

While I had hoped to be able to finish spinning up the singles for the purple gradient I started last week before I started my Tour spinning, I didn't quite manage to do it. So I spent my spinning time yesterday working on finishing those up.

I had been spinning short forward draw but discovered that I could spin from the combed top using a supported long draw, which is a much faster way to get the spinning done. So the whole skein might not be consistent (using long draw, for instance, results in fuzzier singles), but I wasn't really aiming for perfection here, and good enough is good enough. I'm planning to chain-ply these singles, so I'm letting them rest on the bobbin for a day or two.

Today I got started on what I was planning for my TdF project, and that's the pile of little fiber bundles you saw here last week. I've got a total of 550 g/19.4 oz. of Polwarth to spin into what I hope will be a sweater's quantity of yarn. Here are a couple of bobbin shots so you can get a sense of the colors.

I really love these colors and am excited to see how they play out as a three-ply yarn.

Now for the PSA, which will really only apply to you who spin and buy fleece: When you've bought a fleece, please wash it as soon as possible after bringing it home, even if you don't get around to prepping it for a while.

A bit of back story on this one: Some months ago, a friend of mine posted that her mother was looking to sell some fleeces from her sheep, so I bought one. She sent it to me, and I promptly put it in our laundry room so that I could wash it "soon." I think you can all guess what happened -- I never got around to. Fast forward to about a month ago, when I kept seeing moths every now and then. Like any knitter and spinner, that concerned me a bit. Though most of my stash is safely stored in various bags and bins, I do have some yarn and fiber out, particularly if it's yarn or fiber I'm working with at the time. I saw quite a few moths in the laundry room, and I very quickly discovered the source: an infestation in the fleece. Yuck. So this past week (on the 4th of July, actually), I took it outside, pulled out a big portion that seemed to be where the moths and eggs were concentrated, and tossed all that into the composter. The rest of the fleece I decided to clean outside using the easiest method possible: the fermented suint method. I pulled a spare plastic bin out of the stash room and a contractor's trash bag (because the bin wasn't opaque), popped the rest of the fleece in it, and used the garden hose to fill it up. It's now sitting on our deck and, I hope, getting clean over the next week.

The trap on top is just to keep critters from sneaking under the lid.

Next weekend I'll dump out the water and rinse the (fingers crossed!) clean fleece. If it needs further cleaning, I can always wash it in our utility sink as I normally wash fleece, though my hope was that this method would save water and allow me to dump the wastewater out in the back of the yard rather than down the drain. I'm also hoping that this method will kill any moths or eggs that were still in the fleece, but I won't be precious about what's left and will happily toss any compromised wool. Assuming it comes out okay, it'll also be quarantined from the rest of the stash until I'm sure there are no more critters coming out of it. Let my laziness be a lesson to you: wash your fleece!

Spinning for Sanity

Rainbow is home, and with her return comes the return of the hectic weekend schedule. The camp bus came more than an hour past when it was expected Friday afternoon, so it was a rush to get her home, unpacked, and showered before our traditional Friday night dinner at my parents'. Yesterday we did a quick shopping run to get some necessary items and birthday presents for the birthday party for two of her school friends (which was today) and then drove out to attend my sister-in-law's baby shower. Last night we went out for dinner at a Japanese steakhouse with all the grandparents to celebrate Rainbow's homecoming. Today, in addition to the birthday party, there were the usual chores and errands. And we still have to get Rainbow ready to start day camp tomorrow!

All the fun stuff aside, we also had some minor drama this weekend. First, when we got home from the shower yesterday, we found the Mister limping around the house with what he thought was a sprained toe from a fall he took during his run. As we were getting ready to go out to dinner, we got a call from my parents from the urgent care center, where my father was getting stitches on his elbow from a fall he took in the shower (he's fine, though sore, after a few stitches and a tetanus booster). And after we left dinner, the Mister decided that he should really go to the urgent care himself because he was in such pain, and it's a good thing he did, as it turns out his toe is broken. It never rains but it pours, am I right?

With all the craziness, it's been nice to regain my calm a little by sitting down at my wheel. I wasn't planning on starting any new projects before the start of Tour de Fleece, but that pretty purple gradient braid has just been sitting next to my wheel and taunting me, so I broke down and started spinning it. I figure that if I can give it a few good evenings, I might just finish it before, and if I don't, it'll wait for me to get back to it. I haven't done that much spinning since I first got it started on Friday, but I've already made a dent.

I'm spinning this fiber end to end and undoing the braid as I go, with the plan to chain-ply all the singles when I'm done. I'm spinning fairly fine, so I imagine the finished yarn will be in the neighborhood of fingering to sport, but the wool in this is Targhee, so there may be some poofage to contend with.

I also spent some time this afternoon prepping my fiber for the start of TdF next Saturday. I'm going to attempt to spin up a sweater's quantity of yarn from some Southern Cross Fibre Polwarth that I bought extras of last summer. I had five 110 g bags total, and I split the fiber in each bag into 16 little fiber bundles, much like I did with my combo spin earlier in the year.

The colorway, called Plot Twist, has a really gorgeous combination of greens, blues, and purples. I didn't really want obvious stripes (though I know that all handspun tends to stripe somewhat when knit up), so I figured my best best for mixing up the colors as much as possible was to split up the fiber as much as possible and then spin the bundles at random. I'm going for a traditional three ply, so I think I will just fill my bobbins with singles and then do the same with plying, splicing together the leftovers on bobbins as needed. With any luck, I'll get some good color blending.

Ready for the Plying Party

I did a lot of spinning yesterday. It was a beautiful day here, so I got up and went for a run first thing (my first run of the season!). Then we walked to get some breakfast, and after that I took care of all chores around the house I needed to do -- cleaning, laundry, etc. The Mister took Rainbow to the park to meet a friend, so I didn't feel at all bad about spending the afternoon at my wheel.

First, I finished up the second bobbin of Pebble combed top singles (from my HipStrings Synergy Club shipment), which really didn't take very long.

The first bobbin had been resting for nearly a week, so I didn't want to ply right away, but I wasn't ready to get up from the wheel just yet. I figured I might as well get the carded version of Pebble out and start spinning that. I had forgotten just how quickly woolen spinning goes, and before I knew it, I had both bobbins of those singles done, too (I think it helps that it was only about 2.7 oz. of fiber total in the batts, too).

Spinning these two preps back to back really gives a good illustration of just how different your yarn can turn out given the method of fiber prep. These two batches of fiber had exactly the same fiber content, but look at how different they look spun up:

You can really see so much more of the colors of the sari silk (and the regular silk, for that matter) in the woolen-spun singles, though they're also much more inconsistent. I'll be doing my best to get these both plied up today, so soon I'll be able to compare the finished yarns.

I also had a little fun yesterday afternoon with my drum carder and the leftover fiber from my Boxy spin. I had 2 oz. each of the darkest and lightest colors (Mussels and Sky), so I thought I'd blend them up. I also threw in some silk, though that didn't blend so well and I ended up pulling most of it out. Rainbow helped with these battlings.

They're a bit darker in real life than they appear here; for some reason, my camera doesn't like to capture the color of Buoy accurately. These aren't great, but they're certainly spinable. I think I need to learn more about how to use my drum carder, as I have a feeling I'm doing something wrong or not optimally. If anyone knows of a good class or resource, I'd love to hear it!

I Should Do That More Often

I haven't done much spinning this week, so I don't have anything much different to show you as far as what's on the bobbin. I'll be doing my best to finish up that spin this week so I can be ready for the start of Spinzilla next week.

Last Sunday, however, I went over to the Steel City Fiber Collective for a Spinzilla sign-up party and took advantage of their fiber bar. I selected several colors of dyed fiber and threw in some nylon sparkle, then drum carded it on their drum carder. The result was this gorgeous floofy batt that I can't wait to spin up:

I haven't spun from batts very much, but I always enjoy it when I do, so I really should do it more often. The funny thing is that I own a drum carder and have hardly used it. I don't tend to have any fiber scraps (anything that doesn't get spun when I'm spinning is either VM or nepps), so I haven't really had much to experiment with. But I do have a fair amount of undyed fiber thanks to a friend unloading some stash on me before she moved, so I think Rainbow and I might try a little food coloring or Kool Aid dyeing and then I can card it up. I might just have a new obsession!