Jane of All Trades

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 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.