Monday, July 22, 2013

Tour de Fleece 2013: The Final Reckoning



The stats:
1615 yds/30.6 oz total finished yarn spun.
783 yds of 3-ply, for 2349 yds of singles.
832 yds of 2-ply, for 1664 yds of singles.

Total singles length: 4013 yds, 3.7 km, 2.3 miles spun over 23 days.


The yarns: top left corner is 607 yds/14.4 oz of 3-ply bulky black Shetland, spun from drum carded batts, from a fleece that I bought at Wonderwool Wales this past April. This was my second fleece-to-hadnspun-sweaterlot I've done for Tour de Fleece - my first was last year, and it was a total failure. I credit this year's success to the fact that I was able to borrow a drum carder, which made the fiber prep so much easier! The finished yarn is soft and squishy, and is going to make a really cozy sweater. I'm hoping there's enough yardage for a full jumper, but we'll see! Top down sweater knitting is going to be my friend on this one.

Circling around to the right side is my project specific spin: Hello Yarn Finn in "Winter Storage"
I split the multi-colored top into 6 groups and spun a 2-ply sport/fingering weight to knit Brenda's Now in a Minute shawl. I think I might have to cast on this week. It's lovely soft stuff, 590 yds/7.8 oz - I'm about 10 yds short of the amount called for in the pattern, but I think it will be ok. We will see...

Next up: I had to take a break in the middle of the never-ending Shetland spin to do something with color, so I spun up a bag of ends of my own Euglena Suffolk.


One skein of 2-ply, 229 yds/3.3 oz, and one mini-skein of chain ply from the left over singles. It's about 14 wpi, so fingering weight, and is going to make some seriously awesome green socks.

The final yarn, singles started on Thursday, yarn plied and finished on Saturday:

Spunky Eclectic Bluefaced Leicester in "Autumn". I bought this top in a whirlwind stash enhancing trip to Amy's shop in August 2009, and it's been marinating in my stash ever since. I've got one more braid left from that trip, so I think I'll need to be stocking up again next month when we visit my parents.

I managed to make a collage for every day I spun during the Tour, and I've uploaded them all to a flickr set here if you're interested.

My only TdF letdown this year? I didn't manage to get as much spindling done as I wanted to.

I only managed to get through 10 gr (of 78 gr) of cashmere carding waste. But I've made a good start on it, so I'm going to keep trucking!

So how did your Tour de Fleece come out? Did you meet your goals? And are you going to keep spinning? My wrist is due for a bit of a rest, although spindling is ok, so I think I'm going to get back to that knitting thing and start using up some of this new stash. 

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