The last prize for the year

I hope this is the last prize for this year. I am now feeling extremely guilty about all the stuff I've won this year. But this lovely bag showed up in the mail today.

It is the perfect size for a project bag and has the perfect theme. This is a Tour de Fleece prize from one of the teams I was on.

So adorable!

Woo Hoo! another prize

A long time ago, a colleague and friend told me that I should enter more contests and lotteries. The topic came up because I told him it was useless entering because I never win. At the time, he said that everyone's luck evens out over time so if I had not won, then there were a lot of wins stacked up in my corner. Yeah right....

Well, I now believe he was right. A few years ago, I won some yarn and a book at the Knitting Camp raffle. And since then, I've won a few other things. But I seem to have hit the jackpot this year.

I won a pattern as a prize in the 12 shawls in 2012 group. a cookbook from Serious Eats, and a pretty nice door prize at the Fiber Fallout 2012 (that one is still on my list of topics to write about). But I really made it big in the Tour de Fleece this year.

First of all, I won a great supported trindle from Momi on Etsy. Now, last week I won two more belated prizes. One isn't here yet but the other one arrived yesterday.

It is a pretty shawl pin with a lovely note from the donor (and maker of the pin). Just in time for shawl weather too!

Un-plying

I just spent a couple of hours taking plying twist out of the last fiber I finished. It was just too tightly plied for my taste. I wanted a fluffy, lofty yarn and it was exactly the opposite. I spun it woolen to get that lofty, fluffy, springy yarn. So I wanted to fix it and get what I wanted. Interestingly, after I took out some of the plying twist, it took up more space on the bobbin!

 This is the picture of the yarn after the first plying, when it was too tight.

Now look at it after taking out some of the plying twist. It barely fit on the bobbin and is much more spongy.

 I finished my Tour de Fleece project also. The skein is finished and done.

I am not a big fan of this yarn but it actually looks better in the skein than it did on the bobbin or the spindle.

I also took a few pictures of the Girl Friday sweater after it was completed. And I started a new knitting project.

 I think the sweater is lovely, even though I say it myself. It really was hard on my hands though, more than anything else I've knitted lately.

 

 I am knitting a second Dancing Cranes stole for a gift. Same yarn as before, different color. It is an easy knit and looks great. The new one is purple, although it looks blue in this photo.

It has been a busy week as far as knitting and spinning are concerned. I have not done much the last couple of days as I had to have a vertically fractured tooth extracted. It was completely unplanned. I thought I was going to have a root canal and came back sans tooth. I am doing quite well now although the past 48 hours have been a bit painful.

Plied up a storm!

I finished spinning and plying the Coopworth/silk that I was working on. It is looking lovely.

I also thought I had finished plying the Targhee I started during the Tour de Fleece. But I hadn't. I have one spindle full left! big sigh 

I will have to wind it off and Andean ply it. At least the rest of it is still on the bobbin so I will have one skein. looking for the silver lining

Now off to plan more spinning. I also started knitting a new project but I haven't taken pictures of it yet. That will be for the next post.

I won a prize!

I was part of Team Trindle in this Year's Tour de Fleece. And the lovely folks at Momi awarded me one of the prizes, a supported Trindle. It arrived today and it is so cool!

It is my favorite color combination - red and black. And it spins and spins. Now I have to learn to spin on a supported spindle.

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Tour de Fleece Day 6

Today I needed a break from spindling so I spun some lovely pink Blue-Faced Leicester from Miss Babs.

On another note, I think I am going to rip out the sock I started. It will be easier for the class to do it top down and the instructions are rather terse. So I will have to rewrite portions of it anyway.

Fortunately it is only an evening or two's worth of effort that will have to be redone.

I also took advantage of my day off to do some dyeing. I am not done with this skein. I want to tie off the brightly colored sections with cotton twine and then dye it with a grey or a black. The cotton twine will act as a resist and prevent the colored sections from being overdyed by the grey or black dye.

 The colors make me happy... Some more than others.

Also, to answer a question on one of the comments: No, I don't have a shawl picked out for the Polwarth. Any ideas? I have about 800 yards.

Tour de Fleece Day 5

I have only been spinning a little every day. There are lots of other things to work on and this is all I can manage. But that is the objective of the Tour. I am working on building the largest cop I can build. I want it to get to the width of the arms before I wind off.


I am also knitting these socks. The pattern is called Vellamo and the yarn is Cascade Heritage, a nice sock yarn.

 That is all for now...

Tour de Fleece Day 3

First the bragging. There's the Briar Rose Polwarth, in all its glory.... The splotches of color have turned into subtle shading..

 Now the obligatory photo with the quarter to show off how thin and nice it is. The skein feels soft and squishy. There are about 750 yds there so enough to make a nice shawl.

 And last, but not least, today's TdF spinning. I'm trying to spin this soft and bulky for a nice hat or a pair of mittens.

Tour de Fleece 2012 Day 1 and 2

 First of all, here is the Briar Rose Polwarth all plied up. It is a lot of yardage as that is a big bobbin and it is a 2-ply laceweight. I am excited about this. I think I will enough for a decent-sized shawl.

Now on to the Tour...

 This is a better picture of the braid. I took the other ones at dusk and the colors didn't come out right.

 I am going to spin this from the fold and fractally. I divided the braid in half and then one of the halves into quarters. All the division was done length-wise.

 Here is the beginning. I am also going to build up this cop very precisely and see how much I can get on.

I hope to be blogging more during the Tour but we will see how it goes.

Tour de Fleece 2012

I have been spinning a lot this week because I wanted to finish up the Briar Rose Polwarth. It is all done! I am plying it.

 

That is part of it plied on the Hansen. It is looking as pretty as I expected it to.

I had an interesting week. I went to see a minor league baseball game for the first time. It was the Montgomery Biscuits in Montgomery AL. 

This is a sumo wrestling match that you can see in the center right of the photo.

The stadium is beautiful and there is a lovely lit up building in the background in this photo.

And now that we have finished the preliminaries, on to the Tour de Fleece. It starts tomorrow. My goal is to spin from the fold on the spindle. I am going to use one of my Trindles.

This is what I am going to use. It weighs 24 gms with the arms. I also took the opportunity to take photos of all my arm sets. The arms above weigh 18 gms.

These two sets weigh 10 gms each set. The bottom ones are copper hearts and are new.

The two above weigh 4 gms each. The bottom ones are new again and are golden dragons on a clear bead.

I took a close-up hoping you could see the dragon. But you can't. It is tough to see. Last but not least, here is the fiber I will be spinning. My goal is to spin at least 10 mins a day.

It is from Into the Whirled and is a Targhee top.
Now to just wait for the starting gun.