Combing the Castlemilk Moorit x Norfolk Horn fleece

8 years ago I bought a 350g bag of raw Castlemilk Moorit x Norfolk Horn fleece.  After a sort and a wash I was left with 248g of clean fleece to prepare.  With one thing and another, being busy with all kinds of other stuff, this bag has been overlooked.  Until now.  One of the fibres on the shopping list for the upcoming TdF was "Faroe Island" and it transpires that this suggestion was for a challenge that will involve a natural dark fibre.  I have this bag of natural dark fleece that is just waiting to become natural dark fibre. 

It is really difficult to describe the colour, kind of dark grey brown but the brown does seem to be more focused on the tips so maybe it is just a bit of sunbleaching?  Castlemilk Moorit sheep are kind of tan through to dark brown so I am expecting some kind of brown in there anyway.

After combing I was left with 163g of hand-combed nests in a whole range of shades so what I decided to do was to combine them on my blending hackle to even out the colours more and this resulted in just a 10g loss, leaving me with 153g of lovely brown-grey top to spin.

I'm ready for the TdF now.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2022 Stage 16 - Carcassone to Foix

Stage 16 of the Tour de France and it is a 178.5km long hilly race that starts in Carcassone and ends in Foix.

The Map

Sights and points of interest along the route

The race starts in Carcassone, which I blogged about yesterday and so there is nothing more to add about that here so lets just get on the road with the first village of Leuc with its 14th century castle and then onto Saint-Hilaire which has the 8th century Abbey of Saint-Hilaire and abbey church, a former fortified Benedictine monastery that closed its doors in 1748 following devastation from the Hundred Years War, plague and famine.  It is currently used to host regular painting, sculpture and photography exhibitions as well as classical music concerts.  The next town is Peusse, which used to have a castle but that is now mostly destroyed with remaining structures being converted into living accommodation.  Limoux is a large town on today's route and is famous for its wine and there is the Petiet Museum where you can view paintings and also a Piano Museum.

Limoux

The town of Chalabre has pretty corbelled houses and was active in producing hats in the early part of the 20th century.  There is Chalabre Castle, built in the 13th century but now the Knights of Kercorb (an association) run workshops that allow visitors to step into history and become actors in the life of the castle.  They also have jousting shows and medieval dances and other such like activities.

At 60km along the route is the village of La Bastide-sur-l'Hers and then Lavelanet, which used to be a textile town but now has a museum that shows weaving, spinning and vegetable dies and runs workshops for people to touch and experiment with them. Mercus-Garrabet and the Devil's Bridge which has many legends attached to it and there is also 12th century Saint-Louis Church.  Tarascon-sur-Ariège is a very old town that has seen much war and destruction throughout many centuries and has a river running through it and there is the local Eastern Pyrenees Regional National Park, which is a very large green space with lakes, ponds and peat bogs and also rivers that run through it.

Tarascon-sur-Ariège

At 103km along the route is Niaux, with its huge decorated cave which has more than 200 entrances, the "Cathedral Hall" which is as large as Notre-Dame in Paris and 4km into the cave tunnels is the hall of the "Empire of Satan", which is three to four times larger.  The caves were used by priests during the revolution to hide in.  The next towns are Val-de-Sos, Port de Lers, Massat, Mur de Péguère, the later of which has a pass that is a bit of a climb, an average of 7.9% but the final part is almost 12%.  Serres-su-Arget is 170km along the route and it is here that a Benedictine Abbey was formed in 1991 by taking over former agricultural buildings.

Today's race ends in Foix, dominated by the 11th century medieval castle which has recently undergone a major restoration and rehabilitation project costing 9 million Euros and has created a museum within the now restored castle.  Locally there is also the 12th century Abbey of Saint Volusian, the Underground River of the Labouiche where you sit in a boat and see the city from below with rooms and galleries along the 4km route.  The 13th century Devil's Bridge with the legend that the architect made a pact with the Devil and could only finish building the bridge in exchange for the first soul to cross it.  Being smarter than the Devil the architect made a cat cross it

Foix Castle

Who Won the Stage and Who Won What Jersey

The Stage winner is Hugo Houle for Israel-Premier Tech/ISR.

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 Simon Geschke for Cofidis/FRA.

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

Combatif Award won by Hugo Houle for Israel-Premier Tech/ISR

Leading team: Ineos-Grenadiers

The Challenge: Carcassone inspired the popular game where you compete against other players to score points by building roads, cities and fields.  In Team Wow we don't really compete during TDF, but we do encourage you to blow you own trumpet and celebrate your own victories - however big or small.

Spin something you love and share a proud picture of your work!

Suggested Fibre:  Anything that you enjoy working with.  We're going to have a go with some of our grey BFL

What I did

It has been far too hot to spin today, high 30's, hitting 40 in some parts.  I did do a little bit of wool combing but it was really too hot to do that for too long.  It's supposed to be going cooler now, although we are still waiting for that to happen, certainly doesn't feel any cooler now that it's dark than it did earlier.   

Cotswold Sheep

I've decided to start off with some Cotswold, as I have some of this spun up already in sport weight, so that makes sense to me to use that to make my test samples for the knitted pieces for my throw.  I wrote blog posts at the time of spinning and these can be found here and here.  Sport weight is probably a good weight of yarn to use as all the different fleece types should be able to be spun at this weight without any issues as some breeds just can't be spun too finely and others can't be spun too thickly so sport weight is a good mid-weight yarn to aim for.

This is Angelo from the award winning Pickwick Flock owned by Rob Harvey Long of Malmesbury, Wiltshire and it is yarn I produced from his fleece that I have used for my sampler.

This photo I download from the internet and it shows off the fleece nicely.

The Cotswold sheep, at the time of writing, is in the "At Risk" category, according to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.  This means that there is between 900 and 1500 sheep of this breed registered with the relevant breed society.

Historically they are a descendent of sheep introduced to the Cotswold Hills by the Romans and by the middle ages the area was known as a centre of the English wool trade but as the wool market slowed down their popularity fell and by the end of WWI just a few flocks remained and by the 1950's the numbers had fallen even further.  Numbers have since risen but and the breed is currently at a stable position but is not out of danger yet.  According to the British Wool Marketing Board the breed was established in the UK during the 13th century.

The Cotswold is a fairly large, hardy breed and is one of the English Longwool breeds with a well developed forelock of curly fleece.  They stand tall and their bodies are quite long and their face and legs are white and free from wool.  The produce a heavy, lustrous fleece that is in high demand with hand spinners.  Depending on the source of information, the staple length is between 6 and 15 inches long (15-38 cm long) and can be anything from 4-10 kilos in weight. The majority are white but black and grey can also be found, although these are rare.

You can spin this fleece straight from the locks if you like or you can flick or comb them.  Personally I go with wool combs all the way.  The locks can also be used as they are to create novelty yarns by spinning the ends in and letting the lock fall free and dangly, the same can be done in weaving.  They are also often used to make doll's wigs.  The Cotswold fleece takes dye well and the lustrousness makes the colours really shine.  Its good for heavyweight items that need to endure a lot of wear such as rugs, bags and furnishings but if you spin it fine it is wonderful for lace as it produces very good distinct stitches.  I made lace with some of Angelo's fleece and you can see photos here.

When it came to knitting up my sample for my throw, it took me 3 attempts before I was happy with the chosen alphabet style, undoing each one and reusing the yarn.  The knack is being able to read what you have knitted, if you can't make out what it says then its useless. I used an old cross stitch design programme to make the charts for knitting the words.

This is the yarn that I used.

I am sure you can read what it says

My knitted piece took just 22g/42m of yarn and I haven't washed and blocked the knitted piece yet, I want to wait until I've made a good number of them but I've pinned it out to take a photo as without the pins it just rolls up on itself.  It is a fair size so I know that the finished throw is going to be massive but I'm OK with that.