Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2023 Stage 1

The Cycling: Stage 1 is 182km of a hilly route that starts and ends in Bilbao, in Basque Country, Northern Spain.

The Daily Challenge: Spin something bold and beautiful.  It can be a particularly vibrant fibre or you can jump straight in with an art yarn with all the bells and whistles!

Suggested Fibre: Pina Colada by Matt

What I did

I didn't watch the cycling today and I'm not sure when I will be able to or even if I will watch the cycling.  I don't seem to be able to get interested in it but I will be tackling the spinning challenges when I can.  I'm certainly not going to blog about the route and sites of interest along the route like I did last year, it was just too much work and I don't think there were any readers other than myself and maybe 1 other person.

I am going to tackle a bold coloured braid of fibre that has been sat in my stash since the 2021 Fibre Advent Calendar.  It is 100% Merino wool and called Ice & Fire.

I have recently been reading and learning about a new-to-me technique called "Fibonacci Spun".  This technique requires a braid of fibre that has long strips of different coloured fibre running the entire length of the braid, like this one does.  It is also best if you spin one long single and chain (Navajo) ply it to keep the colours together.

You have to undo the plaited braid into one long length and then split the braid into lengths that represent the Fibonacci Sequence of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 etc etc.  Most people miss out the first 1 when they are spinning in this method and I am doing the same.  My lengths are going to be multiples of 7 inches.  So, my first one is 7 inches, second one is 14 inches, third one is 21 inches, fourth one is 35 inches and the last one is roughly 56 inches in length.

Starting with the shortest length of braid, 7 inches, you then split the colours as best as you can into however many colours you can or you want but you don't have do it perfectly.  I split it into 4 colours, dark red, dark blue, orange and pale blue.  Choose which order you want to spin them and then spin each colour bundle in turn.  Work through each length of braid in the same way from shortest to longest and spin the colours in the same sequence each time so by the time you reach the longest part of the braid and split the colours out, each colour bundle will be pretty big.

The resulting spun single will have progressively longer and longer lengths of individual colours and you spin your way through the braid.  To keep the colours together you will need to chain ply (Navajo ply) the yarn on itself.  I can't finish this yarn today, I will have to ply it tomorrow.

She sells sea shells...

I bought this fibre direct from my previous supplier that I no longer use and I think it may have been some kind of stock clearance or something because I bought this in August 2018 but this fibre was from February 2015.  

Its a larger amount of fibre than usual and the description from the website is "Gradient Packs are a clever way of creating a subtle gradient skein of yarn.  Careful design means you can just sit down and spin and get a great result. 140g of fibre designed to give you seamless colour transitions.  I take some shades of dyed wool, combine them with natural colours of wool and other non-wool fibres.  There are 5 main shades in each gradient, but in addition there are smaller amounts of transition colours.  This means that you get gradual shifts in colour, rather than broad stripes.  The colourways are all limited edition, so if you see a colour you like it's best to get it while you can.  The good news however, is that I keep introducing new and exciting shades."

I have always wanted to try one of her gradient packs but usually as soon as she releases them they are gone so fast and it usually works out that I don't have spare money to treat myself at the right time but this time I did finally get one and its a really nice colourway.  I did manage to buy a second gradient pack in an unusual but striking colourway last year too so I will have that to spin up in the future as well.  The colour is "Sea Shell" and the fibre content is 50% Merino, 25% Shetland, 25% Seacell.  I split each little fibre bundle into two and spun each single the same and plied them together.  The final yarn is spun to sport weight and is 139g/302m and its really soft.

Luxury blend Autumn yarn

Onto the next fibre braids, again I got this from someone else's de-stash and its only about 2 years old but this time I have two the same but that throws up a few choices or ideas that I need to consider.  Do I spin them both in the same way or do I spin one of them one way and the other one in a different way?  Regardless of whether I do both the same or both differently my first decision is "what are my options?", so I needed to list different ways that I could spin the fibre but to focus only on the methods that would produce a yarn that I would actually use, so not likely to choose any kind of chain spun methods.

Option 1: split the fibre into two down the middle, the full length of the braid, and spin one single from one end and spin the other single by starting at the opposite end and then ply these two singles together.  This would result in a barber-pole yarn, for the most part at least, and each of the colour sections would be quite large due to the amount of fibre in each half of the braid.

Option 2: split the fibre into two down the middle, the full length of the braid, one single being spun from each half with the second single being spun by starting at the opposite end to the first but before I spin each single to split it further, once or multiple times but each half needs to be split the same amount of times, along each length to make each clump of colour smaller and spin each split length starting at the same end and then ply these two singles together.  This would result in a barber-pole yarn, for the most part at least, and each of the colour sections would be smaller, so whilst technically similar to Option 1 it would look different because the colours would change more frequently.

Option 3: split the fibre into two down the middle, the full length of the braid, and spin each single from the same end and then ply these two singles together.  This would result for the most part at least, a solid colour yarn with long colour changes due to the amount of fibre in each half of the braid.

Option 4: split the fibre into two down the middle, the full length of the braid, and spin each single from the same end and then ply these two singles together. but before I spin each single to split it further, once or multiple times but each half needs to be split the same amount of times, along each length to make each clump of colour smaller and spin each split length starting at the same end and then ply these two singles together.   This would result for the most part at least, a solid colour yarn with short colour changes due to the amount of fibre in each half of the braid.

I went with Option 3, splitting it straight down the middle and spinning from the end so that I have long colour changes.  I also decided to spin both braids in the same way.  When I was spinning the first braid I had already spun the first single the previous day and  I spun the second single and plied them together whilst we had a couple of young workmen in fitting an air circulation system in the loft (roof space) with the vent over the stairs.  One of them was fascinated in what I was doing and couldn't believe I had finished it before they left and was watching me split the second fibre braid down the length and could hardly believe that this is what unspun wool looks like and loved the colours and the look of the finished yarn.  His mum knits, apparently, so he is used to seeing yarn but has never seen anything as amazing and as nice as this.

The finished yarn is 200g of Double Knit weight yarn, 360m in total, with a fibre content of 50% Polwarth wool, 25% Black Alpaca and 25% Mulberry Silk.  It is pretty amazing and the colours are spectacular.  There is a tiny amount of barber-poling in the areas where the colours change but this is minimal and has to happen to some degree, it's the nature of the beast with colour changing yarns.

Teeswater - Autumn Gradient

I've made a list of the ready to spin braids of fibre that I have in my list by order of the date they were bought by me and in the case of those I've bought from fellow spinners, the date or approximate date that they bought them.  I intend to spin some of my stash down, starting with the oldest of these braids.

Back in May 2020 I bought a number of braids of fibre that a fellow spinner was selling off because they just either don't have the time to spin any more or they have fallen out of love with it.  This is one of those braids.  They originally bought it in August 2014 but I fell in love with the colours and I do like spinning the longwool breeds.  I have had this for 18 months myself so now is the time to get spinning the older fibres in my stash before they become no good for spinning.

I was a little worried about the quality because it looked a little fuzzy so it may have become a little compacted or felted but I needn't have worried, it was absolutely fine and it's made a lovely fingering weight gradient yarn, 104g/161m of lovely autumnal gradient.

Spinning up Il de France, Demeter

A few months ago I bought some unwanted spinning fibre from a fellow spinner and I am now spinning up the first of these that I have chosen to spin.  Its the Il de France in shade Demeter that I'm going to start with first.  There were just under two full braids of this so I started work on the full braid first, splitting it down the middle as best as I could and pre-drafting before I spun as it was slightly compacted and wouldn't draft straight from the braid without a bit of work.

My dream would be if this spun up as a yarn with long colour changes that transitions from one colour to the next as smoothly as possible with as little mudding or barber poling as possible.

I spun from the same end on both singles and when it came to plying the singles it started off good but didn't last.  The second braid worked out much better and when I finished plying and compared the skeins in good light I could see that one was predominantly barber-poled with smallish sections of smooth colour and the other braid was the complete opposite.  The OCD in me told me to snip out the sections that didn't belong in each skein and swap them over.  It took me a while to do this, re-joining the yarn with Russian joins whilst also making sure the colours still flowed as correctly as I could get them to.  In total, this took me over a month to complete as there were two large braids and with all the Christmas preparations going on but its not a race, I prefer to take my time and get it right.

The finished skein of yarn above is the one that barber-poled whilst still transitioning from one colour to the next.  There is 91g/328m of double knit weight yarn. 

The second skein of yarn above is the one that came out as I wanted it to, the colours matching up and no barber-poling whilst still transitioning from one colour to the next.  There is 91g/318m of double knit weight yarn.

A side by side view of the two skeins to show the difference between them and the different results you can get, accidental or intentional, from spinning the same colour braids.

These two braids will be used together with some natural white wool to make a pretty shawl that I have been itching to make for a long time.

Sunset Baby Jacket

The last pattern that I used to make baby jackets for, the one where I dyed one of them, actually had two designs.  This is the other design.  Its not lace but it does have a honeycomb texture to it.

I bought this yarn about 5 years ago when I was on holiday in Weymouth, on the south coast.  It just called to me and its really soft and squishy.  Its a long colour change double knit weight yarn which is 75% acrylic, 10% wool, 10% mohair, 5% metallic.

Because you knit the jacket from the bottom up and then just work on small sections up to the shoulders I tried my best to make the colours 'flow' and match for the main part of the body upwards from the 'orange' garter stitch border separating the honeycomb pattern from the plain knit.  The sleeves took some a lot of work make them match, trying to find the right place within the long colour changes to cut the yarn and start work, lots of cutting and winding of the yarn to get what I wanted.

I decided to add three matching buttons and luckily I had just the right colours of the same button style.  Another non-traditional baby item from me but its still pretty.

"Aqua" and white baby jackets

I still can't believe that they called the colour of this yarn "aqua".  The mind boggles!  I loved making those baby jackets so much that I've decided to carry on making more of them in different colours, again using the same white as I did for the last batch.

I made enough motifs to be able to make two of these in the same colour but noticed that some were very dark whilst others were a lot lighter in colour so I separated them out as best as I could into those two groupings and got to work.

Please note that since making these I have removed the ribbon, due to a potential choking hazard, and replaced it with 4 buttons.

Dark Aqua

Aqua

I hope that from the photos that you are able to see two different colours of jacket.

One colourful yarn, three baby jackets

I've spent a bit of time making 60 motifs from a colourful yarn that I have for another baby jacket design.  I started out thinking that I was just going to make the 20 motifs needed but as I worked I noticed that they were coming out in pretty much distinct colours, a few were a bit "muddy" in the colours but most could be defined as "blue", "green" or "pink" and so I have separated them into these colours as best as I can in lots of 20.

So the pattern is another vintage pattern, this time from Patons for their Fairytale yarns and the original was all white.  I'm going to use the different colours as the centre of the motifs and join them together with some white brushed acrylic that I have that was originally on a cone but I have skeined up, washed and measured.

I started off with the green motifs and added the white around the motifs and joined them all together, followed by the pink and then the blue.  A nice quick make but really annoying with the amount of yarn ends needed to be sewn in when it was finished.

I really like these, they're certainly different from anything else around.

Please note that since making these I have removed the ribbon, due to a potential choking hazard, and replaced it with 4 buttons.

Greens

Pinks

Blues

I like these so much that I may use up the left overs of other colours of this yarn and make a few more.