Hopelessly Overcommitted as Usual

On My Spindles:

Hopelessly Overcommitted was one of the teams in last year's Tour de Fleece, one that I wasn't on. This year's TdF planning has started and I have not only picked my project (spinning cotton) but my teams (Spindlers, Hopelessly Overcommitted) and my tools (spindles, cotton carders). I'm good to go. Cotton will be a nice change of pace from all the wool I'll be spinning. Speaking of which....

The Knitmore Girls are starting a Spin-along/Knit-along or SPAKAL in which we will spin a sweater's worth of yarn and then knit the sweater. I've joined the Ravelry thread for this and will be spinning and knitting along with everyone. I'm actually hoping to spin for two sweaters: last year's BFL natural multi, and a lovely fleece I'm currently processing that I've dubbed "Tex".

Last year I spun 36 ounces of the BFL natural multi into a little over a thousand yards of 2x2 cabled yarn (wpi 11+|-), not enough for a sweater to fit me. So I bought another pound of fiber last month which I will spin up for the SPAKAL. I also got a multi cross fleece last year that is washing and combing up nicely. It's a cross of 1/4 Texel and 3/4 Border Leicester, Coopworth, Corriedale and Finn, with three to four inch locks with nice crimp. See...



Soft and squishy. I like this fleece enough to contact the shepherd to try for this sheep's this year's fleece.

"Cape Cod" is spinning along nicely. I just plied my first two skeins and am very happy with the way they've turned out. They're drying now so pics or measurements yet but they look like the wpi will be around 20 and the total yardage around 400. That will be the best I've done from a chain plied four ounce braid.

On The Needles:

The Charlotte Bronte Shawl is on hiatus while I'm working on the Margarethe Lace Shawl which I cast on last week in Knit Picks Gloss DK. I'm making it as a thank you to a friend; her color choice is black :-( not the easiest color to work with. The pattern is not complicated but I'm having trouble anyway - my stitch count keeps going awry. Sooo, I'm frogging back to the garter stitch border and putting in a lifeline and lots of stitch markers. If I have to take baby steps to get this done right I will, and toddle along. Most of my other knitting is on hold while I work on this. I'm not ordinarily a monogamous knitter but I want to get this done by mid-April.

Finished Objects Part II

Off my Spindles:

The "peach stuff" is done. Actually, it's the "Shadows on the Wall" colorway from Crown Mountain Farms in Polworth. An 8oz bump gave me 567 yards of chain ply (3ply) yarn in varying colors of peach, pink, blush, and a wee bit of greenish. Not really my kind of colors, but it was an easy spin. Total singles yardage spun this year: 1,398 (I had spun and plied a 101 yard skein last year that I'm not counting in this year's ten mile goal.)

The "Valley Stream" colorway that I started spinning last year is finished, finally, thank the fiber gods! This was four ounces of hand painted organic merino. The colors were beautiful, but the fiber was hell to work with. I've never had to work with such matted fiber before; it was almost felted. I eventually cut (yes, with a scissor) the color sections apart and ran them through my hand combs, and the comb waste through my hand carders. I chain plied and ended up with 284 yards of DK weight yarn. (429 yards singles spun this year.)

Also finished in February is the "purple stuff", actually, it's variants of purple through rose but it seemed mostly purple when I was spinning it. In stark contrast to the Valley Stream fiber, this was an absolute joy to spin. Unfortunately, I lost the tag so I don't know who hand dyed the fiber or what fiber it is (my guess is BFL). My only problem with this yarn is in my plying - the last two skeins are nowhere near balanced, even after soaking, snapping and thwacking (right skein in pic). I will have to try taking out some plying twist from the smaller skein, see if that works. Probably a good idea to use my Navajo spindle for this.....

2012 Yardage Goal: 17,600 Total to Date: 3,360

Finished Objects Part I

Will wonders never cease, I have finished objects, both knitting and spinning.  Part I, the Knitting.

Off My Needles:

The Tucson Nights fair isle socks are finally done. I don't know why it took me so long to finish them. They were fun to knit. Reminded me that I enjoy stranded knitting so much. In Knit Picks yarn and my own design.



The orange and green socks, my Halloweenish? Maybe? Socks were finished in mid-January. They were plain vanilla socks; a very easy knit while I was recuperating and a break from the Charlotte Bronte shawl. 



Right after I finished the orange socks, I cast on another pr out of Lang Jawoll yarn in dark blue, burgundy, green and white.  I really liked the colors and the yarn, and dubbed them my "Starry Night" socks. They were finished in a month (haven't done that in a while). 




Annual yardage goal: 17,600. Yardage to date: 960

Catching Up and Looking Ahead

I know, I know, it's been a while. Life just got in the way. You know how it goes.  So let's play catch-up for 2011 and consider what 2012 will bring.

I have a little over eight hundred yards of the BFL natural multi 2x2 cabled yarn finished.  It is a heavy DK or light worsted weight yarn.  I seriously doubt this will be enough for a sweater so my next decision will be whether or not to use the white BFL I have already or buy another bump of the natural multi-colored. I'm leaning towards buying more. Then again I'm supposed to be using my stash so I should use what I have before buying more. As I keep changing my mind about which sweater pattern to use with this yarn, I have time to decide. 

I've finished washing the Cotswold/Shetland fleece.  I started combing it, but found I didn't get all the lanolin out in some sections, so I will have to go over the whole bag and rewash the sticky locks. 

On My Spindles are the merino cross and the never-ending Clun Forest. Also a hand dyed top I got at the Long Island Sheep and Wool Festival in May in the Valley Stream colorway, as well as some top from Crown Mountain Farm in a melon/pink/white colorway whose name eludes me.  It breaks up the monotony of all that white fleece. 

Stash Dash ended in August.  I didn't reach the 5k goal but I got more than halfway there. More important to me is that I actually finished stuff: four pair of socks, a shawl, and a bunch of spinning: the Perendale and Montadale, and 804yds of the BFL 4ply 2x2 cable yarn.  That was fun, and I'm hoping The Knit Girllls will do it again this summer. 

I cast on for the Charlotte Bronte shawl in September and am almost finished with the first lace edging band. I modified the pattern slightly by adding beads to the first lace edging band. I haven't decided whether to include them in the second edging band or not. 

Also on my needles or hooks are scadzillion socks, a old sweater, pillow cover, washcloths....I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff.


2012 goals:
1) Knit and/or spin ten miles (17,600 yards) of yarn (about 16 kilometers I think for the metric minded).
2) Once again use stash instead of buying more yarn
3) Finish or frog UFOs
4) Patterns for 75% of what I knit/crochet this year should come from books, mags, patterns in my library. 

Tour de Fleece 2011

This year's goal for the TdF was to spin and ply thirty-six ounces of Bluefaced Leicester (BFL) commercial top for a sweater for me. I split up the top into sixteen daily allotments which was supposed to leave me with days of rest and time for plying. That was the plan. It didn't quite go according to plan. Well, it did, until the heat came and mucked up my spinning mojo. At the end of the Tour, I was left with three days allotments unspun and a lot of plying to do.

This is what I was left with: One completed skein of 4ply 2x2 cable yarn which I really, really like how it came out. Three days allotment unspun, five bobbins of plied 2ply, three and a quarter unplied 2ply plying balls, and two partially filled bobbins of singles.

Each of the plied bobbins and plying balls is about two hundred yards, probably more, of yarn. The big wheel bobbins hold about a thousand yards of singles at the wpi I've been spinning. Which means I managed to spindle spin over four thousand yards of singles in less than 22 days (there were more than a few days when I didn't spin or just plied what was already spun). So I may not have completed my goal, but I'm satisfied with what I've accomplished. Looking forward to next year's Tour when I think I'll concentrate on non-wool spinning. Perhaps cotton or alpaca. Definitely something to look forward to.

Wool Breeds Challenge - Norwegian and Navajo-Churro

Black Norwegian

Black Norwegian is not listed is any of my reference books. The label said "Louet Black Norwegian" which their website says comes from Norwegian sheep. A google search did not find a specific breed called "Black Norwegian", however, I did find an "Old Norwegian Sheep" that I believe is the same (it comes in colors including black).
Norwegian sheep are an old Primitive breed of Northern short-tailed sheep. They are dual-coated with fine undercoat wool.
http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/sheep/oldnorwegian/index.htm

My sample was spun worsted to semi-worsted from the end of commercial top. This has a four inch staple length, and is a very easy spin, drafting smoothly with little to no pre-drafting. VERY nice wool, soft and smooshy, and I think this would make lovely sweater yarn.

Navajo Churro

Churro sheep were brought to the American Southwest in the mid-1500's by the Spanish.
They are dual-coated breed with a coarse, long outercoat (4-14 inch staple, 38+ micron count), and a fine, short undercoat (2-4 inch staple, 22-23 micron count).

My sample came from fleece with an average lock length of five inches, varying from four to seven inches. The undercoat is very soft and silky. I hand combed the locks and spun semi-worsted from the fold for a 2ply yarn. Combing was minimal since I wasn't trying to separate the outer and undercoats, just align the fibers. My singles spun easily when I switched to spinning from the fold instead of from the end.

I liked this fiber and look forward to processing the rest of the fleece at a later date. I'd like to try separating the coats but I think to do that properly I might need different combs. I'd also like to try carding it.

It's been a while!

And I'm falling way behind.

The Wool Breeds Challenge ended on June 30th. I didn't finish all the different breeds I had collected for the Challenge, but I did manage to spin thirty-two of them for a total of seventy points. I have the last few breeds to post here and then I will be officially finished, although I will continue posting about new breeds here as I spin them.

Speaking of spinning and challenges, the Tour de Fleece started on July 2nd. This year my challenge is to spin the thirty-six ounces of BFL (Bluefaced Leicester) natural multicolored top into a 4ply 2x2 cabled yarn for a sweater I'm planning on knitting for myself. At a 4ply yarn I'm not sure if I'll have enough for a sweater, but I also have another pound of plain natural BFL that I can also use if there isn't enough of the multi. Or I can order more of the natural multi top.

This is a pic of my TdF progress thru Day 3 and all the unspun top.

I'm also participating in The Knit Girllls Stash Dash 2011 and have finished objects: the Summer Mystery Shawl, two pair of socks, and some plied yarn. Squeee!

This is the Summer Mystery Shawl by Wendy Johnson, hot off the needles, ends dangling and unblocked. I used one of my beginning handspun yarns (Little Fish colorway spun from hand dyed roving from Enchanted Knoll Farms). The yarn is definitely thick and thin but it doesn't seem to affect the shawl construction or pattern. I like it.

I also finished the "Native Traditions" colorway socks and the modified Hermione pattern socks. Both are afterthought heel socks.

Three Ewes Twisted in Fiber Socks for Ewe sock yarn Native Traditions colorway:


Zen Yarn Garden Tencelicious yarn in Sun Kiss colorway: