Spinning the white blend of the North Country Cheviot

I know that I have started to blend the Llandovery Whiteface Hill ready for spinning but I really should crack on and finish the spinning that I started as well.  I've already spun the lime green version a few months ago now so it was time to spin the natural version of the North Country Cheviot blend.   I almost forgot to take any work in progress photos of the spinning, but at least I did remember, unlike last time!

This one is prettier now that it's spun up and it will be interesting to see how it knits up at some point in the future.  I intend to find a pattern that will use both yarns in one project.

The fibre content of this one is 83% Cheviot Wool, 6% Tussah Silk, 4.5% Silk Noil, 4.5% Hemp, 2% Trilobal Nylon

It has spun up to sport weight and the skeins are 77g/180m and 72g/162m

Combing the rest of the Llandovery Whiteface Hill sheep fleece

This past year or so I've been working on spinning up older braids of fibre and preparing fleece that I have had for the longest time along with either dyeing fibres for my "ingredients cupboard" or using up items from my "ingredients cupboard" in blends.  This particular fleece isn't old, I'd only had it just over a year but I had two pillowcases full of this fleece and there was a lot of kemp that was sticking out through the fabric of the pillowcase so it was making a bit of a mess as well as taking up a lot of space.  I decided to comb this fleece to save on space.  I did actually finish combing the first pillowcase full back in early December 2022 and this contained 583g of fleece and after 19 hours of combing, not in one session, I had 218g of nice soft fluff.  

The second pillowcase full weighs 1,105g and has been sat across the room looking at me menacingly ever since.  I finally started to tackle this monster job on Friday 8th September 2023 and I have worked at it all over the weekend and have now finally finished combing it, 5 days beginning on the 8th and finishing today, on the 12th September.  It took just about 25 and a half hours to comb my way through it and I got 400g of fluff.  So, this almost whole fleece that was left over from the Breeds Project started out at 1,688g and I have got 618g of soft fluff ready for spinning or dyeing and spinning and it has taken me 44 hours and 20 minutes of work to get to that.  Overall though, including that what I used for the project, I got a total of 712g of fluff from 1,916g of kempy fleece and that is a yield of 37.16%.

I didn't take any additional photos, other than what I took last year when I spun some up for the British Breeds Project.

I have plans to dye the fluff, now that the kemp has been removed, and use some of the things in my "ingredients cupboard" to make blends for spinning.  I haven't decided what colours yet, I need to see what I have in the cupboard and dye the wool to match or co-ordinate with that.

Spinning the green blend of the North Country Cheviot

I thought that would make a start on spinning up some of the blends that I have been making in recent months.  I've started with the Lime North Country Cheviot with natural coloured additions.  I completely forgot to take any work in progress photos of the spinning, I think I just got so engrossed with spinning that before I knew it I was all done.

I actually think it looks prettier in the fluffy fibre format than it does now that it's spun up but it will be interesting to see how it knits up at some point in the future.

The fibre content of this one is 86% Cheviot Wool, 6% Tussah Silk, 3% Mulberry Silk Noil, 3% Hemp, 2% Trilobal Nylon.

It has spun up to sport weight and the skeins are 101g/182m and 74g/128m

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2023 Stage 12

The Cycling: Stage 12 is 169km of a hilly route that starts in Roanne and ends in Belleville-en-Beaujolais, France.

The Daily Challenge: Spin a plant fibre - if you want a real challenge, find some plant material from your garden to spin.

Suggested Fibre: Flax/Linen

What I did

I had found a fibre braid that was mostly plant fibre but I was nervous about spinning that as this time.  I want to take my time over it and sometimes the TdF can feel a little bit time pressured because you want to try and attempt the challenges and spin as much as possible for the team.  I'm glad that yesterdays spin has spilled over to today and I will just finish that instead.  It's nice to do the challenges when you can but its not the be-all and end-all of the event.

The finished yarn is greyer than I expected it to be.  I thought it would have more of a brown tinge to it.  I am considering over-dying this in the future and maybe going for a medium blue as the tone of the grey will affect the dye and I will be hoping for something similar to the blue of the last Fibonacci spun yarn, National Trust, that is a lovely muted shade of blue. The finished yarn is 100% Wool (Castlemilk Moorit x Norfolk Horn) and is sport weight.  One skein is 225m/75g and the other is 224m/74g which means overall I have 449m/149g.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 3

Ok, this one is different.  I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this one.  It's pretty enough and is Christmas coloured but how will those colours look once its spun up, will have to be careful not to muddy the colours.  It's 100% Shetland Wool and is called Wreath.

Putting the British Breeds Project together

I have finally finished the British Breeds Project that I have been working on for the best part of 2 years.  I created the knitted charts back in December 2020 using an old Cross Stitch Design programme that I had and that thankfully still worked on updated operating systems.  Each breed had it's own stitch chart that I printed out onto A4 paper and worked from when knitting and using the programme I was also able to move and rotate each individual breed design into a format that would show how it would all fit together.  It took quite a bit of time to get this right as I wanted the coloured fleece evenly distributed and balanced throughout the overall design as best as I could and in one or two cases I had to re-work the breeds name to fit the available space within the overall design, because some of the names are quite long so can fit on one, two or three lines.  This might sound confusing, but when you look at the design layout below it should become clearer.  I also wanted the names radiating outwards from a central descriptive panel, which is why some of them are upside down, and I also left a bit of room between each piece for the joining together, which I knew I would be doing by some kind of crochet method.

So, I spent from December 2020 to around about November 2021 locating pre-prepared fibres for spinning and fleece for preparing and spinning and spinning it all up and knitting the pieces.  As the number of knitted pieces built up I started pinning them together as per the overall design shown above.  By 8th November 2021 I had reached the point where I was just missing the fleece of one particular breed and everything else was knitted up and pinned to each other but I was already aware that there may be a problem with the actual layout of the pieces as a couple of them had knitted up so much bigger and others knitted up a bit smaller.  I decided that there was no point doing anything with regard to re-designing the layout until I had the final breed, which I finally got in June 2022.  

This was how it was looking pinned together as per the first design with a few pieces still missing

I spent most of July participating in the Tour de Fleece 2022 and then I had a weeks holiday.  Once back from holiday I knitted up the piece and spent the next couple of weeks washing and blocking all of the individual pieces and measuring the actual physical size of each one and then re-drawing each one on the Cross Stitch programme but all the wording got messed up doing this so I decided that I no longer needed the stitched text in each box and so just use typed text to identify what each piece is.  Typed text cannot be rotated, which is why it is all facing one way in the design below, despite the fact that it is also broken up and it is clear the some of the boxes will be sideways on in real life.  This new design, whilst not true to size, does at least show the true size correlation between each of the pieces.  I also left larger gaps for the crochet joins, with each row/column of squares on the graph representing one row of crochet.

My crochet joins were started by working 5ch, 1sc, 5ch, 1sc all the way around each piece with the 1sc being spaced at 2cm intervals and however many rows were needed, keeping in mind that there is at least one row needs around each knitted piece and the row that joins the two together, so if there is 5 graph squares between knitted pieces that is two rows around each piece and one row of loops to crochet the pieces together.  I started with the centre square, the description, and worked outwards from there, creating strips with small joins between each piece where needs be that fitted edge to edge, keeping it square/rectangular at every addition thus: Ryeland, North Country Cheviot, Description, South Country Cheviot were joined together to make a strip.  Devon and Cornwall Longwool was added onto the side of that, which kept it square.  Welsh Hill Speckled Face was added across the bottom of those, then Devon Closewool and Beulah Speckled Face were joined to each other and then that strip added to the rest and so on.  If you look at the design you can see how it would build up bit by bit and by doing the small joins between short edges first and then joining the long strips in one piece it makes for neater joins

Close up of one of the joins

Starting to build up, the centre isn't in the centre right now but its all remaining square

I don't have anywhere large enough to get a full shot of it but it fits a King Size bed and hangs slightly over the side nicely

After laying it out on the bed once it was all joined together I realised that it needed a couple of rounds of crochet around the entire outer edge and maybe some kind of finishing edging to it, so I done the two rounds of chain and single crochet, increasing to from 5 to 7 chains on the 4 corners and then looked for an edging.  I found one and tried it out but whilst it went well with it it didn't quite fit, it had too many stitches and wouldn't lie flat so I adapted it and removed some of the stitches.

All my crochet instructions are the English terminology so my edging was: 2 treble into the chain space, 3ch, single crochet into the back of the first chain to make a picot, 2 treble into the same chain space, single crochet into the single crochet between chain spaces. Repeat in each chain space until the corner: 4 treble, 3ch, single crochet into the back of the first chain to make a picot, 4 treble into the same 7ch space, single crochet into the single crochet and then revert back to the regular 2 treble, picot, 2 treble pattern down the next edge.

It's all done and for the time being has been put into storage until the time that I can show it off somewhere at some distant time in the future.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2022 Stage 19 - Castelnau-Magnoac to Cahors

Stage 19 of the Tour de France and it is a 188.3km long flat race that starts in Castelnau-Magnoac and ends in Cahors.

The Map

Sights and points of interest along the route

The start town is situated on a castral mound that once had a 13th century castle sat on the top and at the time of its formation there was a phenomenon whereby people spread across the local countryside were grouping together at the foot of castles to gain protection from the local lord.  There is a memorial and museum dedicated to the Pommiès Corps Franc, a clandestine unit sponsored by the Army Resistance Organisation that operated during WWII, especially noted for sabotaging the Hispano-Suiza (Alstom) factory and thereby saving locals from an air bombardment.  There is also the 15th century Collegiate Church of the Assumption.

Castelnau-Magnoac

As they get on the road today they pass through Chélan, Masseube, Ornézan with its 13th century church, Orbessan with a 17th century castle and then onto the city of Auch, with many of the building being built by Louis XV and you will find the Museum of the Americas and 15th century St Mary's Cathedral.  They leave the city and onto Preignan, with 18th century Testère Castle, Sainte-Christie with a population of 550 and then onto Fleurance, which hosts an annual Astronomy Festival for the first 10 days of August and has 14th century St Laurent Church.  Saint-Clar is next along the route quickly followed by Saint-Créac and then Marsac, with its 12th century castle.

Marsac Castle

At 86km along the route is Poupas, with a population of just 90 it has 15th century St Christopher's Church and the ruins of a 17th century castle.  Lachapelle with St Peter's Church being built in the 13th century.  Lamotte Castle, also built in the 13th century is in the village of Bardigues, with the castle now being used to host exhibitions and has a shop selling local products.  Auvillar has been listed as one of the most beautiful villages in France.  During the 18th and 19th centuries it was one of the largest earthenware producers and the museum exhibits almost 500 pieces.

Auvillar

The town of Valence d'Agen was founded in 1283 by King Edward I of England and is home to some 5,200 people.  Further on the route is Goudourville which has a 12th century castle and the 15th century Saint-Julien-de-Brioude Church, which is plain looking from the outside but has two ceiling paintings representing the resurrection of Lazarus and the burial.  

24km further along the riders reach Lauzerte which has some 15th century houses and 13th century Saint Bartholomew's Church.  The place of note is Montcuq-en-Quercy-Blanc, which was popularised in the 1970s by a French TV show and was the home of Nino Ferrer, a singer of Jazz and Blues, although I myself have heard of him but then I'm not into Jazz and Blues music.

The finish town today is Cahors, famous for its wine and the 14th century Valentré Bridge which has eight arches and three towers and each end was protected by a small castle but these have since disappeared. Since 1995 it has been a pedestrian only bridge.  Other sites include St Etienne's Cathedral, medieval Cahors prison and 22 secret gardens designed in 2002 to enhance unused spaces and offer various themes such as the Herbularium which is a garden of medicinal plants and the Witch and Dragon garden is themed on demonic plants and legends.

Valentré Bridge 

Who Won the Stage and Who Won What Jersey

The Stage winner is Christophe Laporte for Jumbo-Visma

The Yellow Jersey won by Jonas Vingegaard for Jumbo-Visma

The Green Jersey won by Wout van Aert for Jumbo-Visma.

The Polka Dot Jersey won by Jonas Vingegaard for Jumbo-Visma

The White Jersey won by Tadej Pogacar for UAE Team Emirates.

Combatif Award won by Quinn Simmons for Trek-Segafredo/USA.

Leading team: Ineos-Grenadiers

The Challenge: Ooh look!  It's a flat bit.  After the uphill push yesterday, it is time t take a step back and get back in to our normal rhythms - no need to rush or zoom today! (Unless you're actually cycling the Tour de France, in that case keep going!).  The final destination today is Cahors, homme to a bridge with an interesting story.

Spin something you wouldn't normally spin.  This can be a different preparation (e.g. tops, batts, roving) or a different fibre type.  If you're a woolly wonder, why not try a plant fibre.

Suggested Fibre:  Gourami is our suggested fibre for those who want to give a pure bamboo yarn a go.

What I did

I already knew that I would be spinning today's choice on this TDF as carded slivers was on the shopping list but I had some in the Advent Calendar.

I wasn't able to pre-draft in the way that I am used to but I was able to open it up.

It was a tricky spin for me as I always do short-forward draw, where you keep the twist away from the draft zone and only allow the twist in once you moved your hand holding the fibre backwards revealing the small group of fibres that the twist will be added to and then allow the twist in and I always spin from either commercial top or hand combed top.  For me to be able to spin this and also to spin it fairly fine and even I had to venture into new territory for me and do some kind of short-forward-longdraw mash up, so allowing the twist into the draft zone and pulling the fibres back to thin out and even out the yarn.  Not my best spinning and not my favourite spinning, I found it quite stressful but I do love the end result, especially the colour.

The finished yarn is double-knit weight and 100g/201m which in terms of the TdF length calculations is 303m - 2 singles plus the plied length = 3 x finished yarn length.