Jane of All Trades

Ooh yeah baby, that’s right.  I’ve met my self-imposed Tour de Fleece challenge.  I spun up every last tuft of that bizarro mystery fiber, and I have a total of maybe 800-ish yard of heavy worsted weight two ply.  Best part about the challenge?  This fiber would’ve languished for-freaking-ever in my stash, getting spun up in bits and pieces.  Because it wasn’t sexy–there were no great process decisions to make, no colors to watch blend or pop or merge into interesting new things, no fancy techniques.  It started out being several big lumps of animal-brown hair and it turned into many hanks of animal-brown yarn which, while a very gratifying transition indeed, was less than…  riveting. 

Which brought about what was *really* the best part of the challenge.  Even better than watching the fiber turn into yarn was watching my spinning turn into slightly less mediocre spinning.  Again, less than riveting, but very, very gratifying.

Tomorrow there will be pictures.  Tonight there is quiet triumph.

So the Tour de Fleece is coming to a close.  Here is what I have done so far:

That is about 600-ish yards of two-ply yarn spun from the “Magical Mix” possum blend roving.  I have about 5 ounces left to spin and ply.  This should be doable, but it has been a busy, busy, busy few days.

You can see the colors changed across the ‘bumps’ of roving–ranging form a light greyish brown to a distinctively reddish foxy-y sort of color.  I am still debating dyeing the whole lot of it…

So after I had spun my first two bobbins of possum roving into singles, I was ready to ply.  I switched to my jumbo flyer/bobbin, because one thing that frustrated me about spinning is winding off these itty bitty little skeins when it’s all said and done.  This was the first time I had broken out the jumbo set, and I had been warned it was harder to treadle. (FWIW, I spin on a Baynes double treadle, more on that later.) (I seem to be unable to hyperlink text, so here’s their site: http://www.spinning.co.nz/index.html)

The jumbo flyer was a little harder to readle, but not terribly, though it does have a much larger ratio than what I had spun the single on. (The standard flyer comes with 5.5:1 and 7.5:1, whereas the jumbo has a ratio of 3.5:1).  Also, there are some mechanical aspects with the Baynes that I found a bit irritating when using the jumbo flyer, namely, the screw holding the rear flyer upright kept loosening (as you pivot this part to swap bobbins/flyers) and then the jumbo flyer would work itself loose and fall.  (Major PITA).  But the extra capacity was lovely.

I plied my first batch to neutralize the twist in the single, so I had a balanced yarn.  Unfortunately, it was also hideously under-plied.

I didn’t realize this until after I had already set the twist though–which is funny, since it’s totally obvious.  (Since this is a mix of possum and other exotic fibers, I soaked it, brought it up to a boil, plunged it into cold water, flung it a couple of times, and then hung to dry.)

By then, I was ready to ply my second set of singles, which I had spun a little tighter, and then consciously twisted more in the plying stage.  The result was a rounder, tighter, overall nicer yarn.  I plied it until it was a little past balanced (when doubled-back on itself, it would coil up with a loose twist):

After setting the twist as mentioned above, it relaxed into a (basically) balanced, cushy, two-ply.  and I was stoked:

Now I’m debating about color–I love the natural color of the yarn, which has a lot of variation, but I’m planning on knitting this into a vest for my dad, who is not into brown, so much.  So I am debating dyeing it burgundy/marroon-ish.  So far I’ve finished up about 400 yards, and have another bobbin full of unplied single.

So why it wouldn’t occur to me that my dogs would be even more intrigued by a possum-fur-roving than I was, I don’t know.  But here was the result:

Actually, that was not quite accurate, because the *real* result was four ounces of what had been neatly-coiled sliver rendered into bits and pieces and spread all over my room.  I almost cried.  Almost.  Instead, I gathered it all into a box and ignored it for months, then dragged it out last week for the Tour de Fleece.  And here is the result:

So I used to have a blog, and for a variety of reasons I have failed at keeping it up, and was bound and determined to do it over again but–alas and alack–I have been fettered by my utter incapacity for things computer-related.  Enter the good people at Word Press and their too-good-to-be-believed “Free Install” team and–shazam!–I once again have a blog.

What prompted my re-entry into the increasingly populous blogosphere?

The Tour de Fleece. (link in side bar until I figure out why I can’t insert it here.)

So here was my tour de fleece goal: to spin up the roughly 1.25 lbs. of a certain roving I’ve had in my stash for some time.  (pictures to follow, welcome to my learning curve.)

The roving was called “Magical Mix” and came, as do many things strange and mysterious, from ebay.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to contact the seller, and it appears to no longer be available, but i do remember it contained possum fur, and I think camel, and perhaps some wool.  It is the natural tan-brown-grey color one would associate with various animal undercoats, sometimes greyer sometimes redder, and it is soft, but has some random white or black guard hairs (goat? llama? dog? who knows).  The wildly variable staple length ranges from a low of maybe 2 inches to a high of maybe 6.  if you don’t count the sporadic little downy clumps which have no length at all, only puffiness.  It is, in short, a trainwreck, and I love it.