Advent Calendar 2024 Day 1 - Fezziwig

So, this year's Advent Calendar fibres have been created around the theme of "Christmas Characters".  The first one is Fezziwig from Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol".  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 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. I like this one.  I have no idea, yet, what I will do with it though.

Advent Calendar 2023 Day 21

The Tradition

Day 21 is called Roller Blades and the tradition comes from Venezuela, the capital Caracas to be exact.  It is thought that because Venezuela is a melting pot of migrants, including German and other European settlers along with Portuguese, Spanish, Brazilian and other South American countries and, of course, Caribbean, that for some the traditional sledding and ice-skating at Christmas time was replaced with roller skating as there is no ice in the southern hemisphere country where temperatures are usually in the high thirties in December.  Skating to Mass became so popular that the Government closes the streets until 8am in the morning so that families can skate safely together and this happens on the 9 days in the run up to Christmas with a Mass being held in the churches at 5am or 6am, the Mass of the Cockerel, which was the tradition from Spain on Day 14, so this is another influence from the migrants into Venezuela.  After the morning Mass families gather in the street or each others homes to share food, play music and dance. 

The Fibre

The actual fibre content is 80% Superfine Merino (Damson, Violet, Cerulean), 20% Suri Alpaca (White).  In Venezuela some people skate to mass so between the 16th and 24th it's not uncommon for roads to be closed so that people can skate about in their roller blades and basically enjoy being outside during this time.  This has got Superfine Merino and Suri Alpaca so it's going to be very soft and the last time I saw colours like this was probably on a pair of roller blades.  A colour theme that is quite popular with skating.  All of the colours come from the Superfine Merino and Superfine is 18.5 microns which means it has a comfort factor of 99% and I would challenge anybody to find an itch in this.  The Suri Alpaca is the white that you see and because of the locks it has got a little bit more drape to it and there' not a huge amount in here but there is enough just to add a little bit of colour and also a little bit of texture to the blend as well.  In terms of spinning this will spin very quickly and it will make a very fine laceweight but if you do spin it to laceweight there is a chance you will loose all these colours so I'd probably suggest a slightly heavier yarn so you don't get everything mixed and muddied up.

My Thoughts

This is very nice and my kind of colours.  It's fine and soft and I am thinking that it there are not enough colours in this one to make an interesting Fibonacci spin so I might go with an over the fold spin to have splodges of colour or I may just draft it out and spin it and mix up the colours a little bit more.  I may work some other blue and purple Merino with this one to bulk it out a bit, I just don't know at this stage.  The camera on my phone struggled to capture all of the colours at the time and the colours came out too vivid but my proper Canon camera has done a great job.

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.  

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.

Advent Calendar 2023 Day 12

The Tradition

Day 12 is called Oplatek and the tradition comes from Poland, dating back to the 10th century.  The custom is traditionally observed during Wigilia, a traditional Christmas Eve vigil that extends into Midnight Mass in Roman Cathollic Churches all over Poland. The pale unleavened wafers are baked from pure wheat flour and water are thin and identical to the alter bread given during Mass. The special Christmas wafers are rectangular and embossed with Christmas-related religious images such as the nativity scene, Mary and child or the Star of Bethleham.  The family gather around the table to feast but first the eldest takes one of these large wafers and breaks a piece off and the wafers passes around the table whilst a prayer is said and each person breaks off a piece of wafer.  Once everyone has a piece of wafer they wish good things for friends and family for the coming year whilst consuming the piece of wafer.

The Fibre

The actual fibre content is 50% Suri Alpaca, 25% Shetland, 25% Bluefaced Leicester.  The wafers tend to be pale in colour and so is this blend too.  We've selected some really interesting fibres.  This is Suri Alpaca, Shetland and Bluefaced Leicester.  Everybody knows BFL, they're an iconic UK breed and they have a lovely soft fleece.  Everybody knows Shetland but again they're another well known UK breed with a load of different colours and a very springy fleece but how many people Suri Alpaca, their fibre is silky and it's got a lovely drape to it and you can really feel it in this blend  The Suri adds a whiteness to it whereas the BFL and the Shetland give much more of creamy texture. This is a really versatile blend, whatever you want to do with it it will happily go along with it.  If you're spinning you can spin this to a fine weight, like a lace weight if you wanted to, or you could make something really rather bulky for a nice sumptuous squish that will knit and crochet really nicely.

My Thoughts

I like this one. Soft with almost a halo about it but at the same time it feels like it has a bit of a bite, grip, but not too much, it will still be a nice soft yarn.  I will most likely pair this one with one of the white ones from last years Advent Calendar as there were a number of white blends in that one too that will work lovely with this one to give me a nice amount to make something with.  

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.  

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.

Combing the Suri Alpaca

I recently dyed some Suri Alpaca in 4 different colours.  I got 200g of fleece back in 2015 from a lady in Gloucestershire who keeps Alpacas and this came from a Suri Alpaca called Butterscotch.  I washed it on arrival and was left with 162g of fleece to prepare for spinning.

I did nothing with this alpaca fleece until recently, when I decided to split it into 4 amounts and dye each amount a different colour.  

Over the past couple of days I have combed this Suri Alpaca so that it is ready to use when I need it.  Each lot started out at 42-44g and it took me 90 minutes to comb each lot and each time I was left with just 15g of lovely hand combed top, except for the orange-brown one where I was left with 12g.  It's not a lot but at least I did get something from this fairly old fleece that I had somehow overlooked for so long.

Dyeing an array of fibres purple

Further to my previous three posts I have continued to dye the Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool and fibre selection that I have chosen and now that the third lot is dry I can get on with my fourth and final lot. 

So, what I will be dyeing in each dye pot is:

150-155g of Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool that I hand combed myself
40g Suri Alpaca, this is some raw fleece from an alpaca called "Butterscotch"
25g of 14.5 micron Merino, which was from Day 23 of the 2021 Advent Calendar
25g of Mulberry Silk
12g of Tussah Silk Noil
12g of Trilobal Nylon
12g Milk Protein, which was from Day 19 of the 2021 Advent Calendar

I soaked all of the fibres in warm water with a splash of Synthropol added to the water to remove any "chemical finish" that may have been added to the fibres during production.  This also removes any grease and dirt that may be left in the fleece.

I made up a dye bath of 1% dye depth made up of 67.5% River Blue and 22.5% Flame Red and 10% Midnight Black.  What I weighed out was 1.86g of River Blue, 0.62g of Flame Red and 0.276g of Midnight Black.  The dye didn't take so well on the two Silk lots, they are little bit patchy but they are OK.

Dyeing an array of fibres blue

Further to my previous two posts I have continued to dye the Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool and fibre selection that I have chosen and now that the first two lots are dry I can get on with my third. 

So, what I will be dyeing in each dye pot is:

150-155g of Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool that I hand combed myself
40g Suri Alpaca, this is some raw fleece from an alpaca called "Butterscotch"
25g of 14.5 micron Merino, which was from Day 23 of the 2021 Advent Calendar
25g of Mulberry Silk
12g of Tussah Silk Noil
12g of Trilobal Nylon
12g Milk Protein, which was from Day 19 of the 2021 Advent Calendar

I soaked all of the fibres in warm water with a splash of Synthropol added to the water to remove any "chemical finish" that may have been added to the fibres during production.  This also removes any grease and dirt that may be left in the fleece.

I made up a dye bath of 1% dye depth made up of 75% River Blue and 25% Amazon Green.  What I weighed out was 2.07g of River Blue and 0.69g of Amazon Green.  The dye didn't take so well on the two Silk lots, they are little bit patchy but they are OK.

Dyeing an array of fibres yellow-orange

Further to my post of earlier today I have also dyed a second batch of fibres the colour that I had intended to the first time around, before I weighed the dye out incorrectly.

So, what I will be dyeing in each dye pot is:

150-155g of Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool that I hand combed myself
40g Suri Alpaca, this is some raw fleece from an alpaca called "Butterscotch"
25g of 14.5 micron Merino, which was from Day 23 of the 2021 Advent Calendar
25g of Mulberry Silk
12g of Tussah Silk Noil
12g of Trilobal Nylon
12g Milk Protein, which was from Day 19 of the 2021 Advent Calendar

I soaked all of the fibres in warm water with a splash of Synthropol added to the water to remove any "chemical finish" that may have been added to the fibres during production.  This also removes any grease and dirt that may be left in the fleece.

I made up a dye bath of 1% dye depth made up of 95% Sunshine Yellow, 2.5% River Blue and 2.5% Flame Red.  What I weighed out was 2.62g of Sunshine Yellow and 0.138g each of River Blue and Flame Red.  The dye didn't take so well on the two Silk lots or the Milk Protein, they are little bit patchy but they are OK.

Dyeing an array of fibres orange-brown

Further to my post of a few days ago I have now decided what I am going to do with the combed Llandovery Whiteface Hill fibre.  I decided to split the fibre into 4 lots of around 155g each and add the same fibres to each lot but in different colours so that I can dye the fibre an appropriate colour and make 4 yarns that are almost identical but just in different colours.  The total amount of fibre in each lot will be enough to make 2 skeins of yarn and a nice amount to make a shawl.

I started out by sorting items from my ingredients cupboard into colour groups and then checking if I had at least 4 different colours of any given fibre.  Where I didn't have the necessary 4 colours that fibre was eliminated from the piles.  Next I had to decide which fibres in each colour group worked well together, such as which shades of blue out of all of the packets looked good together.  I ended up with 5 piles of 4 small packets of fibres so I had to eliminate one colour group, which I did easily as the colours didn't work together as well as the other piles.

I also decided that I would take the opportunity to dye some of the currently undyed fibres in my stash at the same time so that these would go into my "ingredients cupboard" for use at a later date.

So, what I will be dyeing in each dye pot is:

150-155g of Llandovery Whiteface Hill wool that I hand combed myself
40g Suri Alpaca, this is some raw fleece from an alpaca called "Butterscotch"
25g of 14.5 micron Merino, which was from Day 23 of the 2021 Advent Calendar
25g of Mulberry Silk
12g of Tussah Silk Noil
12g of Trilobal Nylon
12g Milk Protein, which was from Day 19 of the 2021 Advent Calendar

I soaked all of the fibres in warm water with a splash of Synthropol added to the water to remove any "chemical finish" that may have been added to the fibres during production.  This also removes any grease and dirt that may be left in the fleece.

I had intended my first batch to be dyed a kind of mustard yellow but I made a really stupid mistake when I was weighing the dye out and only realised once I added the fibres to the dye pot and saw the colour it all went.  Whoops, but a happy mistake because the fibres have turned out almost the exact colour I had intended for my second batch.

What I had planned was 1% dye depth made up of 95% Sunshine Yellow, 2.5% River Blue and 2.5% Flame Red.  What I should have weighed out was 2.62g of Sunshine Yellow and 0.138g each of River Blue and Flame Red.  What I actually weighed out was the correct amount of Sunshine Yellow and then I messed up and weighed out 1.38g each of River Blue and Flame Red (10 times too much of each colour).  The dye didn't take so well on the two Silk lots and in both cases they are kind of a peachy-coral colour along with what can only be described as grey and it looks like a pile of burnt rubbish. 

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2023 Stage 21

The Cycling: Stage 21 is 115km of a flat route that starts in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines and ends on the Paris Champs-Elysees.

The Daily Challenge: As always - spin something yellow (and try to finish it)

Suggested Fibre: Destination

What I did

I finished spinning my own blend for the Yellow Jersey celebration.  It hasn't turned out light and fluffy like the fibre at all, it's actually spun up quite dense despite me trying to keep it thinned out and light and I think some of that is down to the Suri Alpaca element of the original main blend that I dyed yellow.

The finished yarn is 50% Merino, 21.5% Suri Alpaca, 7% Cellulose, 7% Bamboo, 4.5% Angelina, 3.5% Mulberry Silk, 3.5% Trilobal Nylon, 3% Sari Silk, fingering weight and 338m/125g.  I have named this braid after the winner of the yellow jersey, Jonas Vinegaard.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2023 Stage 20

The Cycling: Stage 20 is 133km of a mountain route that starts in Belford and ends in Le Markstein-Fellering.

The Daily Challenge: Share something that you are immensely proud of.  It could be your achievements so far this tour or something completely unrelated.  Time to blow your own trumpet.

Suggested Fibre: Leo

What I did

I made a start on something that I am proud of and also it is something I created especially for tomorrow and the celebration of the Yellow Jersey.  There is enough of this to take more than one day to spin.

There is about 130g of fibre in this blend so I spun the first 65g, the first single and then made a start on the second single.

Making my own yellow blend for the last day of the TDF2023

I've been playing with my blending hackle again today and making a yellow fibre blend in preparation for the upcoming Tour de Fleece 2023.  There is always a "yellow jersey day", usually on the last day of The Tour.  I'm not buying any fibre for this event this year, I will make do with what I have because I have plenty that needs to be used up.

I have already dyed some fibre for this purpose just a few days ago and I have sorted out what else will be added to it to make it more interesting.

Top row: unknown cellulose/plant fibre and Trilobal Nylon both dyed a few days ago
Middle row: Angelina, Merino/Suri Alpaca blend I dyed a few days ago, Sari Silk in shade Honeycomb
Bottom row: Bamboo in shade Clara and Mulberry Silk Noil I dyed a few days ago

So the fibres I have picked out are all yellow but in different shades and textures and some are matt and some are shiny/lustrous.  In total 140g of fibre went through my blending hackle and I got 130g back out all nice and ready to spin in four bumps of fibre, which when paired up give me two x 65g lots.

Look how soft and fluffy this is.  It's gorgeous and I can't but help think of cute little ducklings.

The final fibre content is: 50% Merino wool, 21.5% Suri Alpaca, 7% Cellulose, 7% Bamboo, 4.5% Angelina, 3.5% Mulberry Silk, 3.5% Trilobal Nylon, 3% Sari Silk

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 23

Another Christmassy coloured fibre today, similar colours to the very first day but this one is different fibres and is called Candy Cane.  The fibre content is 50% Suri Alpaca, 25% Merino, 25% Mulberry Silk.  I might spin this one and Mistletoe & Wine together.

Spinning the Suri Alpaca and merino gradient

Over 9 months have passed since I made the Suri Alpaca and Merino blended gradient and it has been sat on the cardboard tube ever since.  There is over 230g of fibre in the gradient, so I have been worried that each half won't fit on one bobbin, and so how will I handle spinning the last bit as I don't have enough bobbins and right now I really don't have the money nor the storage space to get additional bobbins.  I have four, once for each single, one to ply onto and one spare or just in case I may want to make a 3-ply yarn at any time.

I eventually decided to just get on with it, stop procrastinating and just do it.  Amazingly I discovered that I was able to get the 115-120g of fibre on each bobbin after all.  I think its to do with the density because this is more like human hair to some extent, its smooth and lies flat and takes up less space than the same weight of fibre of a "bouncier" breed like Jacob, Shropshire, Hampshire Down.

Just look at the last photo on the far right.  Wow!  Now that is a beautiful gradient and well worth the hard work that it has taken in combing, planning, weighing and blending and then finally spinning it.  There is one Russian join in the skein purely because each single filled a bobbin so when you ply them together two full bobbins won't fit back onto one bobbin, it fits onto two.  This is a whopping 232g of 50% Suri Alpaca, 50% Merino sport weight yarn, one very long gradient that measures 480m.  All I need to do now is find the right shawl, I'm thinking of a large half circle, or 3/4 circle, lacey design, knitted top down, starting with the lightest colour and ending with the darkest colour along the bottom of the shawl.  It will look spectacular and having fewer stitches at the top will mean that small amount of really light colour yarn will look bigger and in better proportion against the rest.

Blending the Suri Alpaca and Merino

I can't believe it has been a whole year since I combed the Suri alpaca and made a kind of a gradient with it.  I bought the merino I intended to buy to blend with it ages ago now but just procrastinated about it ever since but today is the day that I put my big girly pants on and deal with it.

The plan is to blend an equal amount of merino, made up of however many colours and blends of colours necessary to make it work, with an equal amount of Suri alpaca.  I will be making a 2-ply yarn so everything needs to be split into two equal amounts as well.  I will be using my trusty strong cardboard tube (was previously the inner off a large roll of Christmas wrapping paper, potentially a 25m roll which would need a sturdy inner, as opposed to a smaller 5m roll which usually just has a thin piece of card rolled in with the paper towards the centre of the roll).  I have made "stop ends" and a centre divider for roll by cutting large circles from a cardboard box and making a hole in the middle.  The fibre for each ply should fit on either side of the centre divider.

Using my trust blending hackle I started by taking the darkest alpaca fibre and the darkest of the merino and blending them.  The next one was a mix of the darkest alpaca fibre, the darkest merino and the next lighter shade of the merino.  I made my way through the alpaca and the merino, matching the colours/shades as best as I could, using a blend of 4 shades to where necessary to make a smoother transition on the gradient.

Top row: Merino shades Pearl and Chocolate.  Middle row: Merino shades Mink and Amber. 
Bottom row: The Suri Alpaca gradient and Merino shade Hazelnut

It took me a few hours of figuring out, deciding what to do, weighing out, a few "don't touch that", "don't move that" to the family, blending and dizzing off but I got there in the end.

There was one fibre nest on each side that I thought stood out a little too much from the others, maybe I put a little too much amber Merino in them, it seemed quite "yellow" compared to the others, but on examination its just that its not quite as blended in so should resolve at the spinning process.  Fingers crossed.

Combing some Suri Alpaca

Way back in 2015 I bought 200g of Suri Alpaca fleece from someone in Gloucestershire.  The fleece came from a female Suri Alpaca called Shimmy.  She must have sent me more than 200g because even after washing the dust and dirt out it still weighed 208g once it was dry.

I've put off working on this because I've never worked with fibre this long, silky and slippery before, most of it is between 5 and 8 inches in length.  Time to stop being scared of it and just get on and at least prepare it.

There are lots of different shades in this fleece and most of it could be easily separated from the other shades and so I kept it this way as I combed it so that I would have hand combed nests in different colours which gives me more options than just blending it all together.

At the end of combing I have 160g left.  Its incredibly soft and silky, very much like long human hair in terms of texture and apparently incredibly difficult to spin on its own as there is no memory to this fibre, no elasticity and you need plenty of twist to keep it together but not too much else it very quickly turns rough and rope textured, but not enough and it will stretch and fall apart. 

From doing some research Suri Alpaca is OK on its own if you want to weave with it but not so much for knitting or spinning, it has good drape but is likely to loose shape completely quite quickly so is better blended with something that will provide grip and elasticity, like wool, merino perhaps.  I do have some small amounts of merino in similar shades of brown so I will compare those and order more if necessarily and then make a gradient yarn in a blend of Suri Alpaca and Merino but I will have to cut the Alpaca fibres in half to make them similar length to Merino so that they will blend.  By blending with Merino it not only will it improve the finished yarn but will make the gradient go further meaning that I can make a much bigger shawl from this.

Parcel of Fibre from World of Wool

I have treated myself to a range of commercial ready-to-spin fibres from World of Wool.

I've bought a couple with the intention of spinning these as they are, a sample pack of British Breeds because I've heard a lot about some of those included in this pack but not sure if they're right for me and my needs and I don't want to fork out on buying a whole or part fleece only to discover its not for me, and the rest I've bought with the intention of using as ingredients with other fibres to create my own blends, although this means that I will have to look at buying dyes specifically for plant based fibres because I only have dyes for animal protein fibres.

The first one is 100g of 50% Polwarth, 25% Alpaca, 25% Silk and the last one is 100g of Zwartbles combed top as I wanted to try Zwartbles again following the poor quality fleece I had the unfortunate opportunity of processing previously.  The samples of British Breeds contain 25g each of Dorset Horn, Whitefaced Woodland, Moorit Shetland, Brown Bluefaced Leicester, Light Grey Herdwick, Light Grey Swaledale, Black Welsh and Black Jacob.

Dorset Horn I have only tried previously as a cross breed fleece I had.  Shetland I have had a few times but never in the Moorit colour.  Bluefaced Leicester I have spun once before, back in my early days of spinning and Black Jacob, well, I've spun lots of Jacob fleece, I've probably spun more Jacob than anything else.  The other breeds, Whitefaced Woodland, Herdwck, Swaledale and Black Welsh I have never spun before so it will be interesting to see how they handle.

The Merino/Suri Alpaca blend I might spin that and then dye it afterwards, not sure yet exactly what I will do with that.  The other fibres are all plant fibres and can be used blended with each other or I can blend them with any of the fleece as I process them.  These will become part of an "ingredients box" along with the various colours of Angelina that I have.