Tour de Fleece 09 — Week 3

Well, the tour is over and I made some great progress. Got out of my spinning slump and taught myself to use a drop-spindle besides. Here are the results of the final week… I didn’t keep great notes on the dates, but I’ll estimate.

Days 17-19 (July 20-22)

Monday was a rest day, but I kept practicing with the drop -spindle:

Days 20-21 (July 23-24)

Decided to go back to the wheel & ply the fiber from Sporfarm. I thought about plying with beads, and even started stringing some, but in the end I didn’t want to bother:

Lousy photo. I know.

Day 22  (July 25)

Started spinning this BFL from Easy Knits. It was gorgeous & so easy to spin. These are probably my best singles ever, mostly even & quite thin:

Day 23 (July 26)

Final day! I wanted to finish the entire roving from Easy Knits and ply it. This is the completed second bobbin:

Unfortunately, I was hating the way it plied together. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I’d done one bobbin without tearing the roving into strips, so the color repeats were extremely long. The second bobbin I tore into strips and had shorter repeats. With these colors, it just wasn’t working out at all. So, I scrapped that idea and decided to practice my chain-plying (aka Navajo-plying):

OMGWTF, why is this technique so difficult for me?! I finally, FINALLY ended up with this tiny little amount of chain-plied yarn with which I am somewhat happy. I like the way the colors  came together, at least. It’s way over-twisted and broke in a couple of places. What a pain.

So, of course, I am now spinning up another bobbin of BFL and I’m going to Try. It. Again.

And there you have it — the tour is over. No prizes won by me, but I spun every single day and I (sorta) learned new things (which need lots of practice). Need more wool…

P.S. This is way better than last year when I joined the rookie team and started to spin this:

… and then never went back to the group after day 2. Heh.