Tour de Fleece Check In

"You still spinning every day?"

I haven't missed a day of the Tour this year.  On a couple days I only spun for 10-15 minutes, but that's better than the zero minutes I was spinning before :-).  

I've got all the Tunis spun and am working on chain plying it.  Chain plying is taking your spun single and making a really long looped crochet stitch with it and then adding your ply twist and winding it on the bobbin.  Make a loop, add twist, wind on the bobbin.  Make a loop, add twist...  You start with one strand of yarn and end up with basically a three ply yarn.

I washed Kaala's fleece yesterday...and my washing machine died on the final rinse (thanks, 2020 :-/).  At least it was the final rinse.  I'm hoping it can be fixed because the newfangled washing machines are not useful for washing wool and the old ones are hard to find.  Kaala should be dry today and I'll start carding it.  I'm planning on spinning six ounces.

The Leicester Longwool curls are also sitting out ready for some attention.  I'm still trying to decide exactly what I want to do with them.  There are four ounces of curls.

There's still a decent risk of a photo finish for the end of the Tour, but I'm hopeful I can complete my challenge before the end.  

Keep spinning!

The Plan...There's Always A Plan

I am spinning three Shave 'Em to Save 'Em breed wools for my Tour de Fleece challenge this year.  

The Livestock Conservancy has a five breed incentive challenge that I am going to try to complete.  I've covered Jacob and Cotswold.  Kaala, as a Clun Forest, was an obvious next pick.  The Tunis roving came from Woolhalla Tunis and the Leicester Longwool locks came from Flock and Forge, fellow SESE farms I follow on Instagram.

I've started spinning the Tunis and it's lovely.  The Clun Forest needs to be washed and carded before spinning.  The Leicester locks...I'm going to comb some and maybe keep a few set aside to use as an edging or trim.  They are so pretty I'm enjoying just looking at them :-).   

Wool is beautiful.

The 2020 Tour de Fleece

The 2020 Tour de Fleece starts this Saturday.  I've had my plan set for months...but I'm not ready.  It's been a rough year.  It's been a rough week.  I'm going to need some cheerleaders to keep me in the race.  To get me to the starting line.

Obviously Early would have lead the team...so Cheeto and B. Willard have stepped in.  They are wearing hand knit wool crowns that were gifted to me and Auntie Reg.  We had planned to wear them at the spring fiber festival...but Cheeto and B. Willard have stepped in.

For anyone not familiar with the Tour de Fleece, it is a spinning challenge that usually follows the Tour de France, but this year the actual bike race has been rescheduled to a later date I believe.  

Here are the specs from the main Tour de Fleece group on Ravelry: 

Challenge Yourself.
Spin.
Have fun.

This year, the Tour de Fleece starts on Saturday June 27 and runs until Sunday July 19, 2020.

Guidelines (NOT RULES):

Spin every day the Tour rides, if
possible. Saturday June 27 through
Sunday July 19th. Days of rest:
Monday, July 6th and Monday, July
13th. (Just like the actual tour.)

Spin something challenging on the challenge days (usually the toughest high mountain stage: this year, the first one is Stage 9, on Sunday July 5, when the mountainous program of the day starts with the discovery of the Col de la Hourcère which will immediately precede the climb to the Col de Soudet. For the seventh time since the beginning of the Tour, the riders will ride at an altitude of over 1,500m. They will then battle it out on the extremely steep climb up to the Col de Marie Blanque before heading back down to Laruns. The second is stage 18, on Thursday, July 15th, when the course of the day is made for the most enduring climbers. Indeed over 4,000m of climbing will be on the menu. In the following order, the peloton will lead up to the Cormet de Roselend, then the Col des Saisies followed by Les Aravis and finally the Plateau des Glières, a key location of the French Resistance, before continuing towards La Roche-sur-Foron.

Wear yellow on Sunday July 19th to announce victory. Why not wear yellow on any day you feel particularly successful? (Yellow is the color of the race leader in the Tour - but here we are all ‘race leaders’) Other colors if desired: Green (sprinter - think FAST), Polka-dot (climber - as in uphill), and white (rookie).

You do not have to be a member of Ravelry to spin with the Punkin's Patch team.  That's where most of the daily fun happens, but feel free to spin on your own and challenge yourself.  Drop me an email or leave a comment if you'd like to keep us posted :-).

I'll try to get some fleece pictures tomorrow later today and outline my goal, but for now I'm headed to bed.  How did it get to be Wednesday already?!?

And Then I'll Shut Up About It

One last Tour de Fleece post.

Of course the best prize for completing the Tour de Fleece is all the yarn you've enjoyed spinning throughout the race.  However, most teams award other prizes as well.  As our fearless leader, Maisie helped with one of the prizes for Team My Favorite Sheep this year.  

This bracelet is made from her wool :-).  It's needle felted and then wet felted and assembled with a simple clasp.  I then attached a small silver sheep charm.  I think it turned out pretty cute.  Maisie and I hope the winner likes it. 

It was a good tour!

If You Want To Get All Technical About It

With enough cute corgi pictures to keep it interesting ;-).  And some stats at the end that will probably surprise you.

Even 20 looks overwhelmed with trying to decide how to decide which singles to ply to which to get the most evenly matched skeins in the end. 

Here is what we did:

Re-weigh each finished ball.  The reason?  A big fluffy pile of wool doesn't necessarily weigh the same as a compressed ball of wool.  I used my "science" scale to get really fussy technical.

I then put the ball in a water pitcher (so it wouldn't bounce all around the room) and pulling from the outside of the ball carefully wound it into a two yard skein.

Note yardage.  I love, love, love having a counter on my skein winder*.  It's life changing...well spinning life at least...but spinning is life...no wait, sheeps are life... ;-)

I tied a piece of yarn to the loose end of the single.  I did that so I'd easily know which end I was supposed to start with for plying.

I also tied a couple of tight bow knots to secure the rest of the skein.  I used the bows to be easy to untie but also to help keep track of the outsides of each skein.  

Do the Jethro cipherin'.  Skein #11 actually weighted 2.024 ounces.  It is 220 yards long.  Solve for x to get the yards per ounce, in this case 108.7.

You can do the next part by hand...or use a spreadsheet.  I like math, but love spreadsheets ;-).

I sorted the skeins by yards per ounce and then paired of skein #6 with skein #17, #4 with #9, #3 with #7...

Making sure you have the two loose ends facing the same direction...

 ...and the bows are all facing up (if facing down then the skein is twisted)...

...and your skein winder securely anchored with a corgi butt...

...ply as usual.  My skein winder has a tensioning feature and I cranked it down pretty tight so I didn't go free wheeling off into space.  

The final results?  

First I re-weighed all the plied skeins.  The yardage of each skein could only be as long as the shortest single so there were leftovers on several of the skeins.  The leftover singles were all on the thinner side (longer yardage per ounce) so when they were plied together, the resulting two ply is significantly thinner, hence they are separated out at the bottom.

Ply shrinkage - when you ply the two singles, the plied yard will end up shorter than the original singles because as you twist the two yarns together, the yarns are no longer straight.  The more you twist them, the shorter the yarn will become.  

That skein with the shrinkage of 14 was either plied with more twist or I wrote something down wrong.  Just looking at the finished skein I can't see a significant difference from the others so regardless it will knit up just fine.  Likewise with the shrinkage of 4 yards.  

Overall, I am much happier with my finished yarn this time.  The difference between skeins now is much less than any yarns I've spun previously.  Plus I found it interesting to track all the stats.  

While I was thinking along the lines of statistics, I decided to track my time spinning and plying.  It took me 27 hours to spin the singles and 6 hours to ply them.  I didn't figure in my time cipherin'.  That would have been an embarrassing number ;-).

Want to take this a little further?  If I paid myself $10 an hour, that's $330 just for the spinning work.  It costs $10 per sheep for shearing and about an hour for skirting, so another $10 there.  $24 to wash and $27.50 for processing into roving, not counting gas and time going up to the mill and back.  

Just counting BASIC yearly costs for hay, grain, bedding, vet work...it costs us $100 to produce a fleece.  That doesn't include mortgage, insurance, utilities, fuel, buying the sheep, farm equipment... Also, spinning wheels aren't cheap.  Neither are the workshops I've traveled to take...

The moral of this story?  I might just print this out and hand it to the next person who can't believe I can't sell them a handspun and hand knit sweater.  That's $501.50 Just. For. The. Yarn.  Figure in the weeks I spent knitting the Muffin sweater?  Even if it wasn't Muffin...it would be priceless.

*     *     *     *     *

*My skein winder is from Nistock Farms.  Even if they weren't good friends of ours, I would say this is the very best skein winder I've ever used.  It's solid and stable, easy to use winding on or off and being able to easily track yardage is...life changing ;-).

The 2019 Tour de Fleece

Mini Maisie and Big Maisie did a great job cheer leading and occasionally threatening the My Favorite Sheep team this year.  I loved seeing posts from people reporting in to that affect :-D.  I made the mistake of letting her come out into the aisleway for a private Cheerio party one night...and have been fighting that battle every night since :-o.

I got my whole 2 1/2 pounds finished.  The last six ounces were a bit of a slog mentally, but it's summer and most everything is a slog mentally right now.  All in all it was a fun spin.

I liked my two ounce bundles plan.  That was a pretty do-able daily amount of spinning and a couple days I was able to spin two and catch up from days I didn't get as much done as I planned.  The other benefit was I knew when I plied two together they would easily fit on my big bobbins.

This has become my basic plan any time I spin a large amount of yarn.  I spin each bundle, trying hard to match the thickness and twist of each to the next to the next...  That never happens.  Even with a spin card and sampling, I never keep consistent throughout.

In the past I've wound off each ply into a ball and marked the number.  Theoretically the practice is ply the first with the last, the second to the second from the last...  I can't even get that consistent so I try to eyeball each ball and match it accordingly.  

That plan doesn't work super well for me either because after it's in a ball I can only see the outer wraps of yarn.  What's inside could be totally different.  Yeah...  I got popped by that that on a couple of the Muffin skeins and ended up with several skeins that were thicker than the others.  

I over thought that came up with a plan to counteract that...and it worked!  This is my most consistent spinning to date.  

Washed and drying - my favorite part of spinning.

1,850 yard of worsted weight yarn, skeined up and ready to become a sweater.

Exactly what I wanted :-D. 

Shouldn't You Be Spinning?

Yes.  Yes I should.  I'll get right on that, ma'am.

The Tour de Fleece continues.  I have 12 ounces spun so far.  I'm hoping to hit the one pound mark this evening.  

I'm not sure why Maisie was the only sheep up and moving around when I peeked into the barn a few minutes ago.  Everyone else is miserable and cashed out.  The weather is hotter than H-E-double hockey sticks.  Oh, yeah, now I get it... ;-D.

Busy As A Butterfly

My Tour de Fleece spinning the first four days was...a bit disappointing. I did spin every day, but not the two ounces I'd "budgeted" for each day and I was slipping way behind.  After some encouragement from the Wool House Crafters last night, I put my "butt in seat" this afternoon and got quite a bit done.  The "butt in seat" principle may apply to other aspects of life, but I haven't fully researched that ;-).

As I worked, I watched a beautiful butterfly working the Blanket Flowers outside the front windows. I now know it's a Red Admiral.  I've seen one Monarch so far, but haven't started looking for eggs and caterpillars.  I've also seen a couple Swallowtails.  I planted parsley and dill to encourage more of them and milkweed for the Monarchs.  

 

Click to biggify this picture :-).

The Start Of The 2019 Tour De Fleece

As I posted last week, our team captain this year is Maisie.  She's let it go to her head just a little, but so far, so good...unless something has happened late today and I haven't heard yet.  I happen to have a small sheep in my "inside flock" that reminds me of Maisie, so I've picked her to be my spinning mascot.

She's wearing a warm jacket because I have turned the air conditioner in the Wool House on high :-o.

I'm spinning something pretty neat this year.  17 years ago, when I was just getting started with our wool flock, we were gifted five Jacob sheep from a kind shepherdess in Indiana.  I really didn't know what to do with So Much Wool (hahahahaha), so I had some processed into roving and some into quilt batts.  

I think I must have divided up the black and white wools because I remember having some light gray batts and one dark one that I kept for myself in hopes I could find someone to make a real quilt from our barn quilt. Sigh...

You know...I thought this spring...rather than just sitting in the loft, that dark batt could be re-run as roving.  Roving from our very first five Jacob sheep.  Wouldn't that be neat?  Like an historical do-over now that I'm a better spinner...and those sheep are no longer with us.

This year for the Tour I'm spinning Elizabeth, Esther, Jester, Joshua and Jacob :-).  There are 2.5 pounds of dark gray roving.  I'd like to spin all of that, but I'm off to a slow start, so I may not be able to reach that goal...but I'm going to try.

So what is Mini Maisie looking at in the picture above?

View this post on Instagram

Posting this here so I can post it to the blog. It will all make more sense in a bit 😉. #tdf2019 #jacobsheep

A post shared by Sara Dunham (@thecrazysheeplady) on Jul 7, 2019 at 7:03pm PDT

The legacy of those five Jacobs :-).

And we're off!

Excuse Me?!?

"I ain't riding a bike nowhere in this heat!"

And the 2019 Tour de Fleece is already heading off the rails ;-D.

Are You Ready To Treadle?

The 2019 Tour de France/Tour de Fleece starts next Saturday, July 6.  As always, the Punkin's Patch team will be loosely following the schedule of the actual race and the primary purpose of this world wide spinning challenge is to have fun learning something new or doing something challenging, but mostly to Just Sit Down And Spin.  

Maisie is going to be our team captain this year.  Yes, Maisie :-o.  We would normally never put her in any position of leadership or authority, but she's been exceptionally agreeable lately so I think our wheels, spindles and wool should be safe...mostly ;-).

The main group will be checking in and cheerleading here (the best fun), but you can spin along with us without joining the online group and just shoot me an email to let me know you are spinning and what your goal is and how well you complete it by the end.  There will be prizes :-).

Ready to start peddling/treadling?

*     *     *     *     *

Challenge Yourself.  
Spin.  
Have fun.

This year, the Tour de Fleece starts on Saturday July 6 and runs until Sunday July 28th, 2019.

Guidelines (NOT RULES):

Spin every day the Tour rides, if 
possible. Saturday July 6 through 
Sunday July 28th. Days of rest: 
Tuesday, July 16th and Monday, July 
22nd. (Just like the actual tour.)

Spin something challenging on the challenge days (usually the toughest high mountain stage: this year, the first one is Stage 12, on Thursday July 18, when, Following the start in Toulouse the route travels flat to rolling roads for more than 120 kilometres before the first mountain appears. The Col de Peyresourde (15.2 kilometres at 6.1%) is crested at kilometre 138 and the riders plunge down to the valley. Up next is La Hourquette d’Ancizan, which is a 9.9 kilometres climb at 7.5%. . The second is stage 19, on Friday, July 26th, when the riders leave for Tignes on a short yet demanding route. Basically, the road goes up once the flag is dropped – not dramatically, but stoically. On rolling and constantly sloping terrain the riders reach Montée d’Aussois after almost 40 kilometres and following a short drop it continues like before. The route moves through Lanslebourg-Mont-Cenis and tackles the Col d’Iseran, a climb of 32.9 kilometres with an average gradient of 4.2%. Sure, the sheer distance is a killer, but even more so are the last 3 kilometres with double digit ramps

Wear yellow on Sunday July 28th to announce victory. Why not wear yellow on any day you feel particularly successful? (Yellow is the color of the race leader in the Tour - but here we are all ‘race leaders’) Other colors if desired: Green (sprinter - think FAST), Polka-dot (climber - as in uphill), and white (rookie).

Tomorrow?!?

For those of us apparently not keeping score at home...

...the Tour de Fleece starts tomorrow.  Yes...tomorrow :-o.

Buddy is going to be our Team My Favorite Sheep cheerleader this year, because who's better at yelling than Buddy?  So, if you need some encouragement, he's your sheep.  If you need a kick in the butt, he's your sheep.  If he wants a cookie...

“Hey! I’ve got a chicken on my back!” #buddy #bestsheepever #cotswoldsheep #oldsheep #adventurechicken #sheepchicken #chickensheep #petuniahasthenightoff

A post shared by Sara Dunham (@thecrazysheeplady) on Jun 19, 2018 at 6:19pm PDT

As always, the Tour de Fleece spinning challenge runs in conjunction with the Tour de France bike race.  The full "rules/guidelines" are listed here on Ravelry and if you'd like to officially join the Punkin's Patch team, here is our official group on Ravelry.  You sure don't have to join officially (the primary goal of the Tour is just to encourage you to do some spinning, learn something new...), but we do have prizes :-).

All levels of experience are welcome.  Give it a try!  Our "team" is kind and helpful and very inspirational.  And no worries if you think you are already too far behind.  I'm right there with you ;-).

"BAAAAAA!!!"

Tour de Fleece Wrap Up - Prizes!

Although several of us are still pedaling to catch up, the Tour de Fleece is officially over and the group prizes have all been mailed so I thought I'd share.  

We have new project bags!  I love this design...but with several new additions since last year, it needed an update.  Thanks to Saint Tim, the Ts, Mrs. Pepperpot, Biscuit and Muffin are now all included.  It's a lightweight 10"x12" muslin bag, perfect for smallish projects...or your lunch. He also made us magnets and pins from the Biscuit and Muffin TdF ravatar design. 

I made a "big prize" for this year, too.  These are spinning contrast cloths and the one on the right was for the Punkin's Patch team and the one on the left was for the Meridian Jacobs team.  I picked some sheep that I thought matched some of MJ's sheep and the sheep on the PP cloth are Maisie, Count Chocula and Elizabeth, who were all spun as part of the Tour this year :-).

What exactly is a contrast cloth?  Well, if you were trying to spin some denim colored Elizabeth using your denim colored blue jeans as a back drop...

...it would be much easier to see what you were doing if you were using a different colored background ;-).

Auntie Reg made the cloths and I painted the designs.  I think they are fun and useful and a nice way to finish off the 2017 Tour de Fleece.  Come join us next year!  We had a lot of fun :-).

Most Any Job Is Do-able...

...if you just do it.  I've had a couple of those "do-able" jobs lately.  Putting this blog post up is sort of one as well, just way more fun :-).  

Remember the Tour de Fleece?  Yeah, I barely remember it either.  I didn't get everything done that I wanted to, but I did get enough done that I was happy at the end.  And I did take some pictures throughout even though I didn't post them.  As I really do want to remember at least some of what happened, here goes a flash tour.

First I spun half of Chocula.

Next I spun and plied the dark denim from Elizabeth.

Then I stewed about what to do about all these "not exactly the same" balls of medium blues while I spun the brown and white.

I was really happy with the dark blue and brown and then lost my ever loving mind apparently when I was spinning the white and it came out way thinner than the first two skeins.  I stewed on that for a couple days.

And spun and plied the other half of Chocula to get my nerve back up...while I continued to also stew about the "not exactly the same" medium blues.

Whereas at that point, as I tend to do with most of my yarn/knitting/weaving problems, I turned it all over to 20 and went back to the barn to play with Biscuit and Muffin.

He pulled out all of the brightest blues (on right) that didn't perfectly fit in with all the grayer blues (on left).  He then weighed them and weighed out the same amount of grayer blues.  I spun both separately and then did three plying samples to figure out our next step.

Left to right:  bright blue plied with bright blue, gray blue plied with gray blue and bright blue plied with gray blue.  We decided that the bright blue and gray blue were not significantly different enough to keep separate so I plied them together and then spun the remaining gray blue.

All the blues are twisted together here (including a very small skein of light blue) and you can pick out a few different strands here and there if you look very closely, but if I alternate the all gray blue with the bright and gray blue as I knit or weave, I believe it will all work itself out into a "nearly all exactly the same so Sara is happy" finished project.  

I also found this in the dusty archives of early July.  Those three kids are so stinkin' cute :-).