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Thursday, July 10, 2008

And She's Off!

Not "off" off (take it easy!), but off to the races. I signed up for the 2008 Tour de Fleece. My challenge is to spin the B&B yarn for the sweater I picked out from the new A Fine Fleece, knitting with handspun yarns. If you already have the book, it's the "Harriet" pattern. If you don't already have the book, run out to your local yarn shop and grab one. It's fabulous!

I realize I'm starting from behind the pack, but I already had the appointment at Ohio Valley Natural Fibers on the 8th, so I decided I'd just have to work hard to come back from behind. We had a great time running up there and Saint Tim aka Two Sheds and aka mapboy even came up with a route that involved taking the ferry across the river at Augusta!



The folks at OVNF were fabulous to work with and were kind enough to let me go back and watch some of our fleeces being processed while we waited. The two colored wool in these pictures is the B&B mix - 75% Boudreaux (black with the faded tips snipped off) and 25% Buddy (white Cotswold). I'd saved Buddy's lamb fleece from his first shearing back in the early summer last year to go with Boudreaux's lamb fleece shorn this spring. The solid white in the other pictures is the rest of Buddy's lamb fleece combined with Woolliam's lamb fleece shorn a couple weeks ago.

So, in 25 words or less, you blend in the appropriate ratios of colored wool and put it in the magic cave,



it picks it's way up the spikes,



into the next bin,



onto the carding rollers



and then out the side



where it's hand stuffed into a box, taped up and then practically explodes when you open it when you get home. It just does not get any better than this!



I'm going to spin this on my Jensen Production wheel,



and if I didn't have a new baby last night (oops, spoiler for the next blog entry ;-), I'd already have my first 2 ounces spun. At this rate Saint Tim thinks I'm going to need some performance enhancing drugs. Can't figure out if that would be wine, coffee or good chocolate.

I might use the "shotgun" approach and try all three.

1 comment:

Dianne MacDonald said...

Beautiful fleece! I bought that book several months ago and I think it is my favorite new knitting book to come out in quite a while.Love the idea of showing the sweaters in handspun and commercial yarn.