Monday, July 26, 2010

Mission Accomplished

At the beginning of the tour, I started with this:

Tour de fleece 2010 - 011

And I ended up with this:

Tour de Fleece 2010 - 079

Goal met. Hurray!!



Tour de Fleece 2010 - 089
Field of Screams
Falkland
11-13 wpi (worsted)
171 yards

Tour de Fleece 2010 - 088
Cold Front
Wensledale
16 wpi (sport)
198 yards

Tour de Fleece 2010 - 087
Pomegranate
Shetland
16 wpi (sport)
296 yards

Tour de Fleece 2010 - 086
Storms of Jupiter
Merino
10 wpi (worsted)
141 yards

Tour de Fleece 2010 - 085
Kentucky Derby
10-13 wpi (light worsted/DK)
135 yards

I'm happiest with the Storms of Jupiter yarn, even though it's one of the heavier yarns. This was my challenge yarn and I was really happy with the results.

I'm the least happy with the Shetland. Frankly...it's crap. It's awful. It's inconsistent and the plies don't want to hold togther at all. This is actually a consistent problem across most of the yarns I have made lately. The two plies don't stick together at all. I make splitty yarn. It seems to me that it means I need more twist per inch, but how do I get that without ending up with an unbalanced yarn? I don't think I can really spin the singles much tighter without kinking. I'm not really sure what to do about this so I'm going to have to do some research.

I finished all of this on Saturday, which meant that Sunday I was free of my spinning obligations. Challenge met, tour over, now I can do whatever I want. So what did I do?

I spun some more. Flush with success, I pulled out a Butterfly Girl bat and spun it up. Spun it, plied it, and washed it, in fact, so hopefully I can photograph it tonight or tomorrow. It's super bulky, but I don't really mind, because it's also totally awesome. It's a blend of green bamboo and black merino and it practically glows. Seriously awesome stuff so even though the spinning was more difficult than I anticipated, I really like the yarn.

This does mean, however, that I am not ready to spin the Blue Morpho versions that I have in the stash. I am saving that until I am good enough to make some really good yarn out of it, because I think it is going to be really, really cool.

I hope I will continue spinning more regularly (although my back pleads, not every night any more).

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