Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2024 Stage 14

The Cycling: Stage 14 is 151.9km of a mountain route that starts in Pau and ends in Saint Lary Soulan Pla D'Adet.

The Daily Challenge: We love a good board game and if they're your cup of tea then the board game festival in Pau is the place to visit (if you're not cycling through!)  Time to up the ante; get something finished.  (We're pretty sure that finishing a packet of biscuits counts too).

Suggested Fibre: You're spinning to finish something - anything!  Grab what you need and go go go!

What I did

I spun the second single of the second skein and plied and although I am very proud of the 4 blends that I dyed and put together myself I am really pleased that they are finally spun and finished.  It has been a long journey and a lot of hard work.

This spun up to sport weight and the skeins are 97g/203m and 95g/205m.  The fibre content is 76.5% Llandovery Whiteface Hill Wool, 9.5% Tussah Silk, 5% Hemp, 4.5% Silk Noil, 4.5% Trilobal Nylon.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2024 Stage 13

The Cycling: Stage 13 is 165.3km of a flat route that starts in Agen and ends in Pau.

The Daily Challenge: We've gone from the umbrella capital of France to the prune capital of France!  They've even got a show.  We're going for a simple one; spin something purple.

Suggested Fibre: Bio-nylon Plum, this biodegradable synthetic fibre will surprise you.  It has a soft handle and doesn't squeak!

What I did

I continued to spin what I started yesterday and spun the second single and plied my first skein.  I also managed to spin the first single of the second skein.  I don't have any additional photos to show off at this stage.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2024 Stage 8

The Cycling: Stage 8 is 183.4km of a flat route that starts in Semur-en-Auxois and ends in Colombey Les Deux Églises.

The Daily Challenge: The town of Semur-en-Auxios used to have a lot of mills supporting its industry, but the building of the Lac de Pont dam caused a change in the river which meant it was no longer powerful enough to run the mills.  Introduce a bit of texture to your spin, extra points for river-theming it.

Suggested Fibre: All of our Sari Silks will bring texture to s a spin, and River Rapids is quite thematic!

What I did

I spun and plied the next two singles of my Llandovery Whiteface Hill blend "Evening at the Bay".  It contains texture and is river themed.  I think the lighter blue parts of the Silk Noil looks like whitewater rapids in the river of blue.

This is spun to sport weight and the skeins are 99g/218m and 98g/204m.  The fibre content is 75% Llandovery Whiteface Hill Wool, 10% Tussah Silk, 6% Trilobal Nylon, 5% Hemp, 4%Silk Noil.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2024 Stage 7

The Cycling: Stage 7 is 25.3km of a time trial that starts in Nuits Saint Georges and ends in Gevrey-Chambertin.

The Daily Challenge: Gevrey-Chambertin was originally known as Gevrey.  It added the name of it's most successful vineyard to the town name and others soon follow suit.  It is well know for it's burgundy wine production.  Pick any fibre you like, you've got the length of the song "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" by Daft Punk (3 minutes and 42 seconds) to see how much you can spin!

Suggested Fibre: Your choice!  Pick something you know you can whizz along with.  We'd go for Natural Bluefaced Leicester.

What I did

Well, I'm certainly not doing today's challenge.  I only ever done one of these "spin as much as you can in a given time" challenges once before and it was such a pain in backside trying to measure how much I spun and I got into such a tangled mess in doing so that I refuse to participate in those kind of challenges anymore.  

Following on from what I started yesterday, after I plied the Saffron Sunshine, and spun the first single of my next chosen fibre I spun the second single and plied them together.  This the third of my Llandovery Whiteface Hill blends and this one is called Evening at the Bay.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2024 Stage 6

The Cycling: Stage 6 is 163.5km of a flat route that starts in Mâcon and ends in Dijon.

The Daily Challenge: Dijon is the birthplace of Dijon Mustard - if you hadn't already guessed.  But did you know, in 2022 there was a mustard shortage as Dijon's main supply of mustard seed from Ukraine and Russia was reduced due to the war.  Instead, seed had to be produced from Canada.  This is an easy peasy lemon squeezy one today - spin something yellow!

Suggested Fibre: Corriedale Mustard is the obvious choice; it's yellow and a nice, fast spin.

What I did

Oh wouldn't you know, my current spin also fits today's challenge, kind of, as I consider the colour of my blend to fit in with the mustardy-yellow range of colours.  Did I plan my spins this way?  A hill breed yesterday and something yellow today, oh yes I certainly did!

I plied the second set of singles today and the photos of the finished yarn actually represents the true colour (because I took these photos using my Canon camera and not my phone!).  This is spun to double-knit weight and the skeins are 82g/171m and 86g/177m.  The fibre content is 77.5% Llandovery Whiteface Hill Wool, 8.5% Tussah Silk, 5% Silk Noil, 5% Hemp, 4% Trilobal Nylon.

After I finished this yarn, I spun the first single of my next spin, which I have chosen to spin for the Stage 8 challenge.

Blending the Purple Llandovery Whiteface Hill - Mist at Twlight

Yay, the last one!  Oh I really do ache now because it is tiring on the arms and shoulders loading up the blending hackle four times and dizzing off the blend, especially when you're using wool that you have stupidly managed to felt slightly during the dye process. I seriously need to look at my temperature probe in my dye kit, I'm positive it's on the fritz and I have tried changing the battery but that hasn't resolved the issue.  I think it's a damaged wire problem.  So, the Llandovery Whiteface Hill fleece that I dyed back in September.  I sorted out the additional fibres that I would be adding to all four lots of Llandovery Whiteface Hill back at that time and then dyed the lots of fleece colours to go with the additional fibres that I had chosen.  All of the additional fibres in the different colours are within a few grams of each other and I plan to use all of each bump of fibre so that the final fibre content won't be exactly the same for all four blends but will be very close.

The other fibres that I chose to put in this blend are, from left to right, top to bottom: 19g Tussah Silk in shade Twilight, 9g Trilobal Nylon in shade Violet, 9g Silk Noil in shade Sea Mist, 10g Hemp that I dyed myself in June 2023 using cold water dyes and finally 153g Llandovery Whiteface Hill fibre that I dyed in September.  I have decided to call this colourway "Mist at Twilight".

I discovered that I had somehow managed to felt the wool slightly during the dye process so I had a little bit of trouble getting it to open up again.  I didn't pre-comb this one again either.  I've ended up with 200g of a lovely unique blend ready to spin.

The fibre content of this one works out to be:

76.5% Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool
9.5% Tussah Silk
5% Hemp
4.5% Silk Noil
4.5% Trilobal Nylon

Blending the Blue Llandovery Whiteface Hill - Evening at the Bay

Pushing on with my quest to tackle the Llandovery Whiteface Hill fleece that I dyed back in September, today I am tackling the blue one.  I sorted out the additional fibres that I would be adding to all four lots of Llandovery Whiteface Hill back at that time and then dyed the lots of fleece colours to go with the additional fibres that I had chosen.  All of the additional fibres in the different colours are within a few grams of each other and I plan to use all of each bump of fibre so that the final fibre content won't be exactly the same for all four blends but will be very close.

The other fibres that I chose to put in this blend are, from left to right, top to bottom: 21g Tussah Silk in shade Evening, 12g Trilobal Nylon in shade Bay, 9g Silk Noil in shade Colbalt, 11g Hemp in shade Bright Blue and finally 155g Llandovery Whiteface Hill fibre that I dyed in September.  I have decided to call this colourway "Evening at the Bay".

I discovered that I had somehow managed to felt the wool slightly during the dye process so I had a little bit of trouble getting it to open up again.  I didn't pre-comb this one this time, I learnt my lesson on the last one.  I've ended up with 208g of a lovely unique blend ready to spin.

The fibre content of this one works out to be:

75% Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool
10% Tussah Silk
4% Silk Noil
6% Trilobal Nylon
5% Hemp
4% Silk Noil

Blending the Yellow-Orange Llandovery Whiteface Hill - Saffron Sunshine

It's been a few weeks since I last played with my blending hackle, I've been doing some spinning as well as preparing for the festive celebrations, but I really need to tackle the Llandovery Whiteface Hill fleece that I dyed back in September.  I sorted out the additional fibres that I would be adding to all four lots of Llandovery Whiteface Hill back at that time and then dyed the lots of fleece colours to go with the additional fibres that I had chosen.  All of the additional fibres in the different colours are within a few grams of each other and I plan to use all of each bump of fibre so that the final fibre content won't be exactly the same for all four blends but will be very close.

The other fibres that I chose to put in this blend are, from left to right, top to bottom: 15g Tussah Silk in shade Saffron, 7g Trilobal Nylon in shade Sun, 9g Silk Noil in shade Saffron, 9g Hemp that I dyed myself in June 2023 using cold water dyes and finally 139g Llandovery Whiteface Hill fibre that I dyed in September.  I have decided to call this colourway "Saffron Sunshine".

I discovered that I had somehow managed to felt the wool slightly during the dye process so I had a little bit of trouble getting it to open up again.  This time I decided to try combing it again before using it on the hackle to try to make it easier but I've lost quite a lot of fibre doing that and it hasn't made it feel any softer than just opening it up on the hackle during the blending.  I've ended up with 179g of a lovely unique blend ready to spin.

The fibre content of this one works out to be:

77.5% Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool
8.5% Tussah Silk
5% Silk Noil
5% Hemp
4% Trilobal Nylon

Spinning the Olive Green Jacob blend

I have found the time to finally spin the blend that I made back in June with the Olive Green Jacob wool.  I forgot to take any photos of the pre-drafted fibre in my spinning basket and I had plenty of chances to do that because I made 4 skeins and each has two halves so I had 8 opportunities and I just didn't take any photos because I'm dippy!  Thankfully I did remember to take at least one photo of the spinning-in-progress.

When I pre-drafted this I had to thin out all of the additions that I added and then when I spun it I thinned it out some more and was mindful when the silk noil came up to make sure that got thinned out too so that I got some texture but not great big bumps of it.  Some people love really really textured yarns but I do not, I don't mind a little bit of interest but I'm not into overly textured yarns.

I got 4 skeins, all sport weight, 101g/215m, 105g/215m, 104g/221m and 103g/228m. The final fibre content is: 54% Jacob Wool, 16% 23 micron Merino Wool, 14% mixed white wools, 5.5% Cellulose, 4% Tussah Silk, 3% Hemp, 2.5% Silk Noil, 1% Trilobal Nylon.  I had trouble capturing the true colour in photographs and I had to manually adjust them to increase the green as they were showing as almost greyscale photos.

Blending the Orange-Brown Llandovery Whiteface Hill - Foxes and Pumpkins

Today I have been having fun with my blending hackle and tackling the Llandovery Whiteface Hill fleece that I dyed orange-brown back in September.  I sorted out the additional fibres that I would be adding to all four lots of Llandovery Whiteface Hill back at that time and then dyed the lots of fleece colours to go with the additional fibres that I had chosen.  All of the additional fibres in the different colours are within a few grams of each other and I plan to use all of each bump of fibre so that the final fibre content won't be exactly the same for all four blends but will be very close.

The other fibres that I chose to put in this blend are, from left to right, top to bottom: 19g Tussah Silk in shade Rust, 12g Trilobal Nylon in shade Pumpkin Spice, 10g Silk Noil in shade Pumpkin, 11g Hemp that I dyed myself in June 2023 using cold water dyes and finally 156g Llandovery Whiteface Hill fibre that I dyed in September that I think looks like the colour of foxes.  With this in mind I have decided to call this colourway "Foxes and Pumpkins".

I discovered that I had somehow managed to felt the wool slightly during the dye process so I had a little bit of trouble getting it to open up again but I managed it and I ended up with 208g of a lovely unique blend ready to spin.

The fibre content of this one works out to be:

75% Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool
9% Tussah Silk
6% Trilobal Nylon
5% Silk Noil
5% Hemp

Making my own matching reverse blends from some North Country Cheviot fleece

I'm carrying on with more blending today, although I might pay for this later with some serious shoulder ache.  I keep forgetting that I'm not as young as I once was and the old bones and muscles moan and creek these days.

A few days ago I dyed some North Country Cheviot fleece a gorgeous shade of green that is certainly different to anything you could possibly find in any shop.  Today I am going to blend everything together that I have picked out and I am going to do it twice, in reverse colours.  Bear with me, all will be revealed and will make sense shortly.

So, first up is the Lime coloured Cheviot with the natural or white textures. In this blend was 157g North Country Cheviot wool, 10g Tussah Silk, 6g Hemp, 5g Mulberry Silk Noil, 4g Trilobal Nylon.

Top left: Natural undyed hemp and below that is natural undyed Mulberry Silk Noil
Top right: Dyed North Country Cheviot hand combed nests
Bottom left: White Trilobal Nylon and bleached Tussah Silk

Next up is the natural coloured Cheviot with lime coloured textures.  In this blend was 137g undyed North Country Cheviot wool, 10g Tussah Silk in shade Caiprinha, 7g Hemp in shade Caiprinha, 7g Silk Noil in shade Chlorophyll and finally 2g each of the Trilobal Nylon in shade Caiprinha and Neon Green, the later I dyed myself a few days ago because I knew I hadn't got enough of the Caiprinha for this project.

Top left: Hemp in shade Caiprinha and below that is Silk Noil in shade Chlorophyll
Top right: Undyed North Country Cheviot hand combed nests
Bottom left: Trilobal Nylon in Caiprinha and Neon Green and Tussah Silk in shade Caiprinha

I did try and over-dye the Silk Noil in Chlorophyll a few days ago to make it more like the green of the Caiprinha fibres but it didn't want to take the dye, it might have done slightly, but not very much.

So the finished blended fibres are very pretty.  My favourite right now is the green with the natural coloured textures.  It's a shame that the silk noil in the other blend didn't take on the green dye as it would have made it less "yellow" but I'm happy enough with these.  The amounts are different between the colourways and so is the final fibre content because of that but once spun up I envisage that these two will be worked together in the same project in some kind of striped item.

The fibre content of the Green Cheviot with natural textures is :  86% Cheviot Wool, 6% Tussah Silk, 3% Mulberry Silk Noil, 3% Hemp, 2% Trilobal Nylon.  There is approximately 174g of this to be spun.

The fibre content of the Natural Cheviot with lime textures is : 83% Cheviot Wool, 6% Tussah Silk, 4.5% Silk Noil, 4.5% Hemp, 2% Trilobal Nylon.  There is approximately 153g of this to be spun.

Making a blend using the Olive Green Jacob wool

I have finally found the time to decide on and sort out all the ingredients I need to make a blend using the olive green Jacob wool that I combed back in November last year.  For this blend, I have chosen to use an amount of white wool of unknown specific breed that I got in a "waste" bag a couple of years ago.

A = 3g of unknown superfine white wool
B = 6g of Silk Noil in Ivy
C = 19g of Tussah Silk in Powder
D = 39g of unknown fine white wool
E = 11g of 23 micron Merino in Olive
F = 13 of Hemp in Cyclamen
G = 22g of unknown medium coarse white wool
H = 5g of unknown fine off-white wool
I = 60g of 23 micro Merino in Coral
J = 24g of unknown cellulose based white fibre
K = 6g of Silk Noil in Olive Green
L = 5g of Trilobal Nylon in Olive Green
M = 242g of Jacob Wool in Olive Green

There are also a couple of small samples of wool that I got when buying fibre for the British Breeds Project.  I didn't take any photos of them but they are all natural white and are; 3g of North Country Mule, 3g of Beltex and 6g of Milennium Bleu.  These samples, along with the unknown white wools in the photo above totalled 81g and I decided to blend these together first on my blending hackle to even out the fibre types and remove any really short fibres.  What I was left with weighed 62g of mixed white wool.

I split all of the fibre into 4 equal amounts of everything which totalled about 112g per lot and then each of those was split into two, one for lot for each ply of a 2ply yarn plus the blending hackle can only handle around 50g-60g of fibre at any one time.  See the photo top right of the weighing out and the photo bottom left of one bundle.  I only put everything through the hackle once as I did not want it to be too well blended together.  The photo bottom right shows one of the 50g or so of blended fibre that will make up a single ply of a 2 ply skein together with my inspiration for the colour combination, which is an amount of fabric strips and ribbon that has been tied and twisted together to make a kind of twine and was made by my youngest not too long ago.  I'm not sure what they intend to use it for but its far too stiff and over-twisted to knit with it but very pretty.

I did loose a little bit of fibre during the blending process but not a great deal.  448g went through the hackle and 421g came out in the blends, so each skein will be about 105g.  The final fibre content is: 54% Jacob Wool, 16% 23 micron Merino Wool, 14% mixed white wools, 5.5% Cellulose, 4% Tussah Silk, 3% Hemp, 2.5% Silk Noil, 1% Trilobal Nylon.

Hopefully it won't be too long before I get around to spinning this but it's doubtful that it will anytime in July as that is taken up with the TdF and I have some more preparation to do between now and then.

Blending the Llanwenog

About 10 days ago I wrote a post about combing the rust/brick red Llanwenog fleece and said that I need to figure out what I want to blend with it to make it more interesting.  I have a few purchased braids of fibre of a similar main colour that have been blended with yellows or greens and I wanted something a little different.  The list of blend ingredients is quite large.

Top row: Llanwenog, 4g of Trilobal Nylon in shade "Sun".  
Bottom row: 5g of goodie bag blend, 31g Ceilidh in shade "Beltane"

Top row: 5g of goodie bag blend, 8g of Rose Quartz gradient pack sample.  
Bottom row: 4g Tussah Silk in shade "Saffron", 12g of 23 micron Merino in shade "Denim"

Top row: 2g of silk noil in shade "Colbalt", 4g of 70/30 Merino/Silk blend in shade "Soft Fruit"
Bottom row: 3g of Merino in shade "Red", 3g of silk in a fruity shade.

The result of all this fluff blended together on my blending hackle and dizzed off then braided is...

I'm not 100% happy, it's not quite as I had hoped but let's see how it spins up.

Spinning the Aqua and Pink Falkland

I blended this fibre last week and now I have finished spinning it up.  I've got two skeins of double knit weight yarn and one smaller skein of worsted weight yarn from this.

The double knit yarns are 107g/308m and 106g/311m, lovely and soft and slightly sparkly and was spun short forward draw. The final fibre content worked out at 70% Falkland, 12% Other wool and fibres, 11.5% Merino, 3% Silk Noil, 2% Silk, 1.5% Angelina.  So now you're probably thinking "Other wool and fibres?", yes, there were some elements that went into the recipe that I didn't know for sure what fibres they included and that is one of the downfalls of buying bags of leftovers/oddments/botany lap waste from fibre producers/sellers but in my opinion the positives outweigh the negatives when you buy that stuff.

The worsted weight skein was spun using the blending hackle waste and I have 73g/153m.  I spun this semi-worsted/semi longdraw just as it come which has produced a slightly thick and thin slightly slubby yarn.  The fibre content is a little different on this one due to the fact that there is no silk noil in it but its not all that different at 70% Falkland, 15% Other wool and fibres, 11.5% Merino, 2% Silk, 1.5% Angelina.

I've bought some more Ingredients Boxes

I really do like the Ingredients Boxes from my main fibre supplier and they're not always available but she has them back in stock and in a few colourways so I've bought four of them, yes four!

As always each pack contains: 20g each of three shades of Tussah Silk, 10g each of two shades of Silk Noil, 10g each of two shades of Hemp, 10g each of two shades of Firestar (Trilobal Nylon) and 1g each of two shades of Angelina (in the little bags)

I've created these little collages and in the spare box in the bottom corner I have put an image containing a representation of my interpretation of the colours in the box.

First, we have Hydrangea, so delicate and pretty

Then we have Still Life, quite the opposite in its vibrancy, its certainly not still, its more like a fiesta

Next up we have Threads, which is kind of like half-way between the previous two in terms of colours and vivacity

And finally we have Pear, which is more colour coordinated and calm.

This lot should keep me busy for a while.

I've had some goodies arrive

Whilst I was working in the front garden today the postman bought me a nice parcel. One item is something that once spun will make a fabulous shawl and the other is so that I have small amounts of different fibre in different colours to use with my blending hackle to create my own interesting fibre blends for spinning.

This is another Ingredients Box from my regular fibre supplier and this colourway is called Leaf Kicker, very autumnal. The pack contains: 20g each of three shades of Tussah Silk, 10g each of two shades of Silk Noil, 10g each of two shades of Hemp, 10g each of two shades of Firestar (Trilobal Nylon) and 1g each of two shades of Angelina (in the little bags)

This is a gradient pack in shade Sea Shell and its 50% Merino wool, 25% Shetland wool, 25% Seacell.   There are 5 main shades in a gradient pack with smaller amounts of transition shades to produce a gradual shift in colour and not stripes.  All the colourways are limited edition and so quite unique.

I've bought some small amounts of fibre

I know that I want to buy myself a blending hackle so that I can start making my own interesting blends of fibre for spinning because trying to add sparkle or other bits and pieces as you go along is really difficult and its almost impossible to do it on my wool combs.  I'm in the middle of researching which one will be best for me so I've started buying packs of fibre specifically for this reason.  They are sold by most places that sell spinning fibre and are usually small amounts of left overs, lap waste or sometimes specifically put together and sold for this purpose.

The first is an Ingredients Box from my regular fibre supplier in colourway Forget-me-not: The pack contains: 20g each of three shades of Tussah Silk, 10g each of two shades of Silk Noil, 10g each of two shades of Hemp, 10g each of two shades of Firestar (Trilobal Nylon) and 1g each of two shades of Angelina (in the little bags)

The second pack are small amounts of blended fibre either from where she has been trialling blends or left overs from blends she's put together for the shop or fibre clubs.  You can't choose what colours you get, she just sells them from time to time as random bags containing a certain weight and this is good just to have lots of options in your stash.  The only draw back is that you don't know exactly what each one is or what fibres they contain but other than that its a fun purchase.