So Monica asked for pictures of the doggies–the same doggies that entertained themselves for hours with my possum roving. Here they are…
This is Kona:
And this is Jack:
Jack’s a bit languorous.
But sometimes Kona goads him into action:
And sometimes he’ll trade sleep for a belly rub.
And then he retreats to his den:
I would have more pictures of Kona, but whenever she sees the camera, she pretty much rushes to kiss it:
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…
I confess, my spinning has slowed down for the past couple of days. I have picked up some knitting projects again, and taught my daughter and her friend to spin on a drop-spindle (which was too fun), but the Tour de Fleece spinning has slowed.
So I figure today is as good a day as any to take a look back at some previous spinning projects.
Here we have the first yarn I ever spun. I used a drop-spindle and some blue-faced Leicester (BFL) roving I dyed using Kool-Aid. I was thrilled with the colors, less so with the process of spindle-spinning.
Here is more from the same roving, the very first yarn I even spun and plied on my Baynes wheel. It was eventually knit into a very floppy hat. Fun colors, though.
Around about the same time, I dyed this BFL and spun it. Also Kool-Aid. The colors made me very happy, though I’ve had trouble photographing them accurately. Very robin’s-egg blue. That roving was eventually spun and plied and knit:
Into this very fun pattern from Knitty (Yes! See that? I believe I have just successfully hyperlinked some text! Hot damn!). I love this pattern (alright, it’s Foliage) and have knit it several times.
And finally, there is this lovely roving (Merino, I think) which I hand-dyed (again, the Kool-Aid). I divided the total roving in half, and dyed each half for a long color change sequence. Then I spun half of it, plied it, and knit it into a capelet for Daughter #1, starting with the red at the neckline and transitioning to the blue along the hem. The second bump will eventually be knit in reverse order, blue along the neckline, for Daughter #2, ideally while she’s still small enough to wear it. I should get some pictures of the capelet…
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.
