Advent Calendar 2024 Day 2 - Zuzu's Petals

The second one is Zuzu's Petals.  This is to do with the old black and white film "A Wonderful Life", which I think I saw as a kid in the late 1970's/early 1980's and I actually went out of my way last year to watch this for the first time as an adult.  I don't think I need to write anything up as all the information can be found in the first photo and if you click on the photo you can zoom in if you need to.

I do like the designs on the little packets though.  Each one is different.  I think the designs on the packets might be loosely based on the character or the theme of the yarn as this one features flowers, although not roses.

I have undone the tightly wrapped little bundles and made them into braids to take any pressures off the fibres and also so that I can see the colours properly and feel the texture too.  Although this one is pink, which is definitely not my favourite colour, I do like this one, probably because it's not bright and gaudy like the hot pinks and Barbie girly girly pinks in the world.

Advent Calendar 2023 Day 9

The Tradition

Day 9 is called Julebord and the tradition comes from Norway and translates as "Christmas Table", also called Julefrokost in Denmark, Julbord in Sweden.  This tradition is about feasting and drinking with friends and family.  People gather and enjoy all of their favourite sweet and savoury traditional Christmas food.  This can include lamb, spiced sausages, rice pudding, jam and mulled wine and also Akevitt, which is a distilled Scandinavian spirit that has been made since the 15th century and is distilled from grain or potatoes and flavoured with a variety of herbs.

The Fibre

The actual fibre content is 50% Superwash Merino (Syrup), 20% Soybean, 20% Milk Protein, 10% Tussah Silk (Kale). With this blend we have been very careful with what we've put in it because we wanted to mimic the sort of foods that you might have at a Juleboard so specifically we have a Superwash Merino which is named Syrup and we've got Soybean and, Milk fibre and then we have Tussah Silk in the colour of Kale.  We wouldn't recommend eating all of these together by the way as it probably wouldn't taste very nice.  We have a lovely bright yellow blend and this is immensely soft and the kale in this is very very pale blue green colour coming through it, which adds a nice bit of depth to this blend.  This is very soft but unfortunately this will not work for felting.  If you spin, crochet or weave this will work very well in everything that you do and you can also put it through the washing machine but only on a gentle wash.  You can see the white of the Milk fibre and the Soybean in it.  The Soybean is slightly more creamy and the Milk is a bright white.  Merino in Syrup is the yellow and the Tussah Silk in kale is the green and that is a lovely blend and it really is so soft without being overly drapey.  You find that sometimes if you put too much of a fibre, such as a Mulberry Silk into it the drape is so heavy it pulls the blend apart but the Merino does a really good job of holding everything together and giving it a really great handle.

My Thoughts

This is a really fine fly-away blend, there is Milk fibre and Soybean in this, which are cellulose based fibres and these are very much like the Tussah Silk, which is also in this and these fibres make up 50% of the blend with the other 50% being the Superwash Merino. This one is a lot brighter/bolder than how the camera on my phone captured the colours, which looked quite washed out. I think I will need to spin this quite slowly and carefully so that it doesn't clump up.

The information that has been printed on the bags is not always correct and there are no fibre content percentages, these have been provided on the chat boards.  The percentages that they gave on the chat boards seem to be correct for this one.  

What I have done with my bags is to write the actual fibre content on the bag using a gold gel pen in the gap immediately below the printed details, pretty much the only thing that will show up on black are the metallic gel pens.  This is why I have not taken "new" photos of the bags.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2023 Stage 9

 The Cycling: Stage 9 is 184km of a mountain route that starts in Saint-Leonard-de-Noblat in west central France and ends in Puy de Dome, a volcano in central France.

The Daily Challenge: Have a go at Fractal Spinning - this is a great technique if you have some blocky-coloured tops to spin.

Suggested Fibre: Space dyed Mercury

What I did

I am going to tackle the challenge.  I've had to quickly learn what a Fractal Spin is and it's relatively simple. You do need a braid of fibre that has clumps of colour throughout the length of the braid or is constantly colour changing or a gradient braid could work as well.  A Fractal Spin is when you split the braid into two down the length of the braid.  Spin the first single from the end as it comes, you can pre-draft it first if you wish.  The second half of the braid needs to be split in half again down the length and then each of those two lengths are then split again down the length until you have a total of 4 long narrow strips of fibre.  Spin each of these in turn from the same end each time and from the same end of the braid that you started from for the first single. You then ply the two singles together.

I chose a braid of fibre that I bought not too long ago from a newly discovered Indie dyer.  It is called "Down the Garden" and is 100% Superwash Merino.

With both singles spun I put this to one side as it's late and I will have to ply it either tomorrow or another day.