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TDF Part 1

         On Saturday June 27 Tour De Fleece started and runs to July 19th. Our yearly big 3 weeks of spinning that runs along Tour De France bike race. But wait there is no race this year you are saying. Yeah we know Covid19 has just put a major, I mean MAJOR, monkey wrench in all our lives. And I was like most, just going to skip it. Then my girlfriend, a fellow spinner and indie dyer asked me to participate through WAFA. Like most small businesses, the world of indie dryers and Fiber farms have been kicked in the teeth by shutdowns, cancellations of festivals, and life in general. So the Hive Mind of social media came together and created some amazing groups that has held online sales with live streaming shows. One of those groups is WAFA, Wool and Fiber Arts and they decided who needs a bike race to keep the tradition going. I love it, plus they made their challenges inclusive for none spinners who have been keeping WAFA venders making money.
For those who have never participated in TDF here is a quick rundown of its history, from Google. In 2006 a spinner and fiber loving designer name Star Athena invited a few friends to spin during TDF thinking it would never become “a Thing”. The idea is to spin while the race is going, they rest we rest. And as it stands over 8000 participants did TDF last year.  On Ravelry and social media, spinners and teams post pictures of progress. Some common goal are yardage, stash busting or daily participation. This year groups have change the game a bit. For example WAFA set goals that included using goods from their venders and including support member like our family who keep us hydrated and fed during this. And some are waiting for the actual race this year, while other are holding it twice. It’s something spinners truly plan for.
This year my personal goals are spinning for 90 minutes a day with my spindles, learning a new technique (spinning from the fold), using a new Fiber (Columbia/Leicester top) and posting a review blog post on each rest day. So far, I have met my daily spinning goal and new Fiber goal, along the daily goals of the WAFA group. I currently have 5 spindles going because I added to the new Fiber challenge with a hand carded blend of grey Finn with husky undercoat. Why so many you ask, I get board and wanted options. 
We spent the first day on the road so my Corgi Hill Farms sample pack and my clay spindle came out. I finished a 25g silvery grey sample in BFL and silk and started a stunning 25g ruby red Polwarth and silk.  I have also pulled out another project in process like my Turkish spindle as an old project. That spin is lovely rolags of merino, alpaca, mohair and a touch of sparkle, again a home blend and I have spun 6 rolags on that project so far. My planed new fiber of Columbia x Leicester was a WAFA venders purchase from Desert Panda Fiber Arts in social justice colorway Pixie Dreams. This fiber is being spun on my gemstone spindles. I wanted to spin it across the top but that’s a lot to hold with a spindle without a wrist distaff. So I’m chunking it by colors and striping out the chunks. So far I have done a full spindle plus started a second. Finally I have another Corgi Hill Farms spin. It’s a beautiful hackle blend in blue. I did a test spin before TDF to see how the fiber worked up. It muddied and lost all the shades of blue with hints of white and red. It looked like a soft denim, which is still lovely, but not what I hoped for.  So I tried spinning from the fold and it amazed me at the difference. So far I have done about half a spindle. What about my lovely wheel, yes my lovely Gypsy has been in use too. A few time my girlfriend has stopped by for some spinning so after making my daily goals I have done some wheel work of Falkland from Desert Panda Fiber Arts. But I’m not counting it towards me TDF goals. That’s is just some good fun gal time spinning. 

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Processing Wool In The Desert

I discovered early into my adventures in spinning, I wanted to spin every fiber I could get my hands on. But with a tight budget I was going to have to work for it. So I started to look into purchasing raw fleece and how to process or clean it. I knew it would be work but it would give me enough fiber for each breed to have room to make mistakes. My first fleece was a 4lbs Cormo and fairly clean. Very little VM and grease so it was a cake walk to clean. With it I experimented with Kool-Aid and food coloring dye pots and making batts on a drum carder. I got a taste and wanted more. Along came my girlfriend, who said she had two big Rambouillet fleece that had sat for years boxes in her garage and would I be interested in processing them for her. Sure Why not! These were very dirty, loaded w VM, heavy in grease, and perfectly formed to the square shape from the box from sitting in the Vegas heat. So I set out to clean these bad boys. Three big black bins of hot water from the tap, a bottle of soap and a mess of mesh bags. It’s took days just to get through one and a lot of back pain, but I ended up with close to 8lbs of lovely white fleece from just one. 15lbs in total from both and days of back wrenching work.       

Through the process I learned my scouring process used entirely too much water for were I lived. Living the Las Vegas Valley, in Southern Nevada water is a precious commodity and your neighbors notice when you are pouring buckets of dirty mucky water into your plants. I needed to find a better way. Processing raw wool was a happy place for me, but it would take me days to recover just from washing. So I went searching the internet and found the Suint Fermentation Method. It seamed pretty easy, get a good size dark opaque plastic tub with lid, fill with rain water or from the hose, add a raw fleece, and ignore for a few weeks. Too easy, and extremely stinky, revolting in fact, but it works. Suint works by using the natural salts in the sweat left in the fleece and bacteria to eat away at the dirt n lanolin. Medium grease seems to be best and allow one to clean an entire fleece at once, plus you can use the same tub of water 3 or 4 times. The first fleece I used was a big grey Finn from Sophia. So I waited for a good rain and set my buckets out to fill my tub, it took 20 gallons of rain water.  I bagged my fleece in 2 large mesh wash bags and put them in, adding a layer of black plastic bags between the tub and lid to keep the bugs out and walked away.        

It took about 4 weeks to get a good heat and fermentation going. New tubs take longer I read. I was curious but after reading on a social media group page for SFM just how nasty the smell was, I avoided peaking. When the day came to rinse I did it first thing,  before most of my neighbors were up to avoid offending them with the odor, rinsing with the hose and a good pressure sprayer, over a 15 gallon tub I rinsed the entire fleece and filled the tub. Being early summer my plants enjoy and good drink and since there was no chemicals or soap it was safe for all my garden beds. Next step was to lay it out in the sun it went for a good dry. It still had a light touch of lanolin left so another few days would not have hurt. Seeing it was the first go, with a learning curve, I took it as a successful experience and my back was happy, 3 hours vs. days of hard work.        

Since I only had one fleece at the time to clean but plan to order more I just covered it back up and left it. Next fleece to go in was a cream colored Perendale for my friend Christin. Since my tub had sat outside in the Vegas heat, it need a bit more water. No biggie, a fabulous winter rain topped it off and it was ready to go. So again I split the fleece into to bags put it and walked away. It was still really cool at night still, I have it plenty of time to get nice and nasty smelling, but this time about a week before I planed to rinse I flipped the bags so ensure a even soak. The tub sat for 3 weeks due to weather, we get a lot of wind in the spring and it was a wet spring too. But in the end it was a great success this time.  I added an extra rinse the next day using roughly 15 gallons extra water but it made big difference in the final result and was still ¼ the water I used washing just one Rambouillet fleece.

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Sharing Creativity Cowl

This project started two plus years ago, it is mostly made from homespun chevoit fiber I dyed in my high school colors of green and gold.  But because I was still learning how to dye fiber, I was using food coloring and mostly Kool-aid.  So rather then a beautiful deep green and gold, I have shades of lime green and lemon yellow.  I still love it.  Then in December 2017 the Thomas Fire broke out in the hills above Ventura.  Burning into the foothills of my home town and areas where my school friends and families lived.  So I started spinning my magic, meditating on good memories and keeping them all safe.  I called this colorway Bonnie Pride, it is 200 grams of a sport weight that I spun this on my Spinolution Pollywog. After that I put it in the stash until I could find the right project for it.

Then came covid19 and using my stash to keep busy became “The Thing” to do.  I liked this project because it was open to yarn weight and yardage.  My homespun is so bright, almost dayglow (very appropriate for a 80s high school themed yarn), but it wasn’t enough yardage alone for the size cowl I wanted and needed more so back to my stash.  The black stripe at the top is also a homespun, soft alpaca gifted to me from a friend.  It gives this project and nice edge since I didn’t want to make the Icord edge the project called for.  Plus it gives me a break from the bright colors right next to my pale skin at my neck.  I love cowls shaped like this because I wear lot of v necks so it keeps me nice n toasty in a long sleeve shirt or as a scarf with a coat.  Sharing Creativity cowl is a project designed by Pamela Kay in A Touch Of Hazel and available on Ravelry

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The Stay Home and Knit Shawl

This shawl was designed by Hanna Maciejewska and is called Stay Home and Knit. It was set up as a Knit Along project on her blog and with so many of us being ask or told to stay home during the Covid 19 outbreak she posted it as a free project on Ravelry. Part of my personal goal during this time was to attack my UFO project bin and finish some projects. In my bin was the Dreaded “pizza” shawl. A project I started last spring and quickly saw now matter how beautiful my homespun yarn was I was always going to see a slice of cheese pizza. And so I ripped (frogged) it out and went on the hunt for a new project. The yarn is made from some of my first dyed projects; 3, 2oz braided of Chevoit roving dye with Kool-Aid and food coloring. I called the color way Candy Corn Candy Cane after a cool candy cane my hubby found at Halloween. Two braids were spun on my Spinolution Pollywog in a fingering weight and the third was spun on my Ashford Traveller in a lace weight. This Shawl done with both yarn weights in sections on garter, stockinette, bobble and open lace. I tweaked the pattern a bit to give the sections more dimension by not always using both yarns together. It worked up to be a bright and fun for a springtime Easter shawl and do justice to the yarn, finally.

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Making Masks

The day PPE became so vital and impossible to find, the sewists around the world stepped up. We revved up our machines, depleted our stashes, and bought up every inch of elastic and fabric available. Read up on what the CDC and WHO said was best style and what the Nurses and Doctors said they needed. We burned our fingers making ties, pricked ourselves on pins but never stopped. Donations of masks went out with love day after day. Myself I have sent masks to a Ronald McDonald home, friends, family, handed them out local post workers and more. Some friends bought masks from me just to keep me in supplies. THANK YOU.

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My Quarantine Socks

         The story of a pair a socks created during a self quarantine, Stay at Home order, during the Covid19 outbreak  This pair of sock was originally started a year ago but after major issues with my stitches I frogged it and tossed into the UFO bin. So when the governor shut down Las Vegas I started pulling out UFO projects to finish. This is the Twisted Flower sock pattern by Cookie A, I found in her book, Knit. Sock. Love. and of course on Ravelry. She designed it as a tessellation sock, meaning the pattern on the leg shifts during the repeat of the chart. I had never done raised cables so new stitches there plus because the pattern carries down the heal there was new stitches there too. I was determined to get every stitch, every row right. I normally stitch up socks using a magic loop method but found the chart and shifts worked better on my DPN sets. The pattern calls for 2.25mm but I have large calves so I went to a 2.5mm. I used Premier Serenity sock yarn in Grey Flannel colorway from my stash and You tube was my friend for the new stitches. So slowly and methodical I worked and two weeks later I have a sock. Now on to the Dreaded second Sock.