It just jumped into my shopping basket by itself, honest...

Ha, ha, ha, of course it did, that is my story and I'm sticking to it.  Last year they were earlier than the previous year and this year they are even earlier!  5th September last year is the date that World of Wool released pre-order for their annual Fibre Advent Calendar.  This year it was 31st July!  That is that date that I ordered it, no messing around.  The price has gone up a bit, again, but I was kind of expecting that anyway.  Because of the amount of money it costs it automatically triggers a 5% discount on the website and the money you save pretty much covers the cost of delivery within the UK.  

Last year it was a limited edition of 250 and this year it has risen to 500.  Last year there were 24 x 50g bumps of fibre, this year it has risen to 25 x 50g bumps of fibre.  This years theme is "Christmas Characters", inspired by Christmas Characters past and present.  This is their fourth Advent Calendar and it will be presented in a black gift box for the third year in row and the individual bags are similar to last years but feature a different style of design printed on the bags. They have now released some photos and I am pretty excited.  The designs on the bags appear to be a mix of modern and nostalgic Christmas wrapping paper patterns and it looks like the bags will only have a number printed on them this year, rather than all the details which kind of ruined the surprise a little last year whilst looking for the right bag to open each day.  All the fibre details and information about the Christmas Characters are printed in a booklet.  The Advent Calendars will be shipped from November.

This year they are also doing a matching Yarn Advent Calendar, exactly the same blends and fibres as the Fibre one but it's pre-spun for you.  It is considerably more expensive though but then once you factor in the labour costs of spinning it, it's probably not that bad.  It is a limited edition of just 100, I guess that is to see how popular it will be. 25 x 50g of Double Knit yarn in a handy cardboard tubes within the black gift box with the same book as the fibres.

Continuing to spin some older fibres

This is an older fibre from March 2015, although I have only owned it since May 2022 after purchasing it from another spinner who was having a destash, and this another fibre that was from the monthly fibre club that I used to participate in between May 2018 and May 2020, but from its earlier days.

This one is called "Suffragette" and there are two braids, which total 212g together.  The fibre content is 49% Merino, 17% Corriedale, 17% Bluefaced Leicester, 17% Bamboo.

With this one I did a very simple break the braid into two lengths, pre-draft, spin from the end and ply together to create two very straight forward 2ply skeins.

These yarns have spun up as fingering weight and there is 212g/743m of soft, squishy yarn.  It's not my favourite colour, it is a dark green with a kind of dark smokey mauve-grey colour.  It does remind me a lot of another from the same fibre club that I spun a long time ago that was called "Emerald City" and I've included photos of that yarn below and as you can see they are almost identical.  The fibre content on that one was 50% Merino, 25% Bluefaced Leicester, 12.5% Mulberry Silk, 12.5% Bamboo and that also spun up to fingering weight.

Spinning some Faux Cashmere

If I can spin 100% Silk yarns then spinning another braid of Faux Cashmere should be a breeze.  I've tackled a braid before, back in 2022 for the TDF, where I spun that as a 2ply yarn and just pre-drafted and spun from the end and plied. Faux Cashmere is actually 100% Nylon

This time I decided to try something different with my new found confidence in different spinning techniques that I have been trying out in more recent times.

I'm working on spinning my way through some of my older braids of fibre and this one I got from Yummy Yarns UK back in August 2018, 6 years ago!  The colour of this is called Pebble.

What I noticed when I undone the braid is that the dye didn't go all the way through the thickness of the braid in most places.  A lot of it was just on the surface which means that there is way more white fibres than anticipated.  I decided that I would probably be best to pull off small chunks and spin over the fold to try and keep the splodges of colour together in one long single and then to chain ply to keep the colours together even more.  For this to work effectively and give me a decent amount of meterage to knit with I will have to spin as fine as I can.

As you can see from the spinning on the bobbin, this method is working pretty well, producing lengths of different colours/shades.  I like the way this is spinning up, it's really pretty.

I think this has spun up much better than the braid I spun back in 2022.  It has a different feel to it.  The first skein feels "heavy, dense" whilst this one feels light, airy and soft and that has to be to do with spinning it over-the-fold which traps more air between the fibres.  Maybe I should spin over-the-fold more often.  Choosing to chain ply has helped keep the colours together but I think this could have been improved on further had I been more selective and flexible in the lengths of my chain loops to keep like for like colours even more together. This yarn is still gorgeous and is 97g/244m and comes in at a light fingering weight.

Spinning up an old 12 Days of Advent set from 2018

Yesterday I finished spinning a set of 11 silks and a main braid that I started spinning on 16th July for the TDF2024 challenge of spinning something that you find tricky, your arch-nemesis.  This set was from way back to Christmas 2018 and was a set put together to celebrate the 12 Days of Advent by a supplier that I no longer use.  There were a few different options available at the time and I chose one called Pine Forest, as those colours appealed to me more than some of the brighter, bolder, or gaudy colour options.

The main braid is really soft and an interesting medium grey colour with splodges of dye along it which match some, but not all, of the colours of the Tussah Silks.  The set is designed to be used together in one project, or at least most of it together in one project, and there are plenty of patterns available that use a main yarn together with smaller amounts of other colours.

So although I spun the first two skeins of silk on 16th and 17th July I didn't spin anything else until 7th August as I was away or busy doing other things.  The Tussah Silk was all spun first, over-the-fold and plied as a standard 2ply yarn.  I used the same over-the-fold method for the main braid too with, again, the standard 2ply.  With hindsight I kind of wish I had spun the main braid as one big single and then chain plied it to keep the colours more together but it's done now and I like it as it is anyway.

The colours of the silks, starting with the pale blue in the 12 o'clock position and working clockwise around are: Sunrise, Fir, Milk, Storm, Twilight, Wood, Cloud, Tuareg, Fog, Thyme, Paradise.  The main braid I have called "Pine Forest", after the name of the entire pack, and the fibre content is 50% Corriedale, 25% Yak, 25% Rose Rayon.  All of the yarns have spun up at 16-18wpi, which is the range for Light Fingering weight.

I am very happy with the way the entire set turned out and I am no longer scared of spinning 100% Silk and I found spinning over-the-fold to be quite enjoyable.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2024 Stage 21

The Cycling: Stage 21 is 33.7km of a time trial that starts in Monaco and ends in Nice.

The Daily Challenge: Monaco is the 2nd smallest independent country in the world (after Vatican City). It's only 2.1sqKm but has 19,000 people per square kilometre, which makes it the most densely populated independent country!  We're crossing the line with a technical spin - see how many metres you can spin from 10g of fibre.  No time limit!

Suggested Fibre: For the final spin, we've left the fibre choice to you!  We like to use lower micron fibres for these epic spins, so we'd go for 14.5 mic Ultra Fine Merino

What I did

We had another day out in Great Yarmouth but this time we travelled to and from the caravan holiday park by the little land train as that really long walk yesterday was just too much in this heat.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2024 Stage 20

The Cycling: Stage 20 is 132.8km of a mountain route that starts in Nice and ends in Col de la Couillole.

The Daily Challenge: Nice has a stunning even named Bataille de Fleurs which is an annual parade of floats which are adorned with flowers.  Get inspired by the great outdoors and use flowers as an inspiration for this spin.

Suggested Fibre: The final limited edition fibre this year is Flora.  It's made with 37.5% Rambouillet, 25% Corriedale Cornflower, 25% Corriedale Sage and 12.5% Sari Silk Beach Fire and we love the texture the Sari Silk brings to it!

What I did

We walked about 8 and half miles in total today, from the caravan, through the Holiday Park (we were right at the far end of the park, so far back that we were almost in Caister!😂😂) along the coast into Great Yarmouth and then walked around Great Yarmouth for a few hours.  We were all so tired that we decided to get the special "land train" back to the Holiday Park.  It's a special little train with open carriages that is driven on the road and literally just goes from the Holiday Park to Great Yarmouth and back again and I think there is another that goes from Great Yarmouth out along the coast in the other direction too.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2024 Stage 19

The Cycling: Stage 19 is 187.3km of a mountain route that starts in Embrun and ends in Isola 2000.

The Daily Challenge: Isola 2000 is named for the average altitude of the station - very practical.  Spin a mountain breed.

Suggested Fibre: Stricken Scandinavian fits the bill for this challenge very nicely.

What I did

I took my youngest to college and then picked them back up again a couple of hours later.  We all ate lunch and then we got on the road for a few hours to Great Yarmouth on the east coast.  Hubby was driving.  I've never been to this part of the country, ever, in my 51 years of life!  They've got windmills, and lots of them!