Tour de Fleece day 3

Today was all about plying, the two singles from yesterday were spun into a two ply using my wheel. The fibre is a penicl roving 70% alpaca and 30% merino from the Wonder Why Farm.

I realised why one bobbin was much fuller than the other, I had divided it as if it was 100g rather than 4oz (Fibre tends to be done in 100g in the UK), so I had some more lovely fibre than I had realised (Thanks Andrea!).

I plyed the two until I ran out of one single, divided the remaining single in two and plyed that together, which left me with just a tiny length of single.

The large skein is about 90m and the small skein about 20m.

It is a fairly thick two ply, about aran weight.

I am planning to make some slipper socks from this, it is beautifully soft, possibly my most lovely squishy yarn ever as the fibre is wonderful to work with plus I am working on reducing my tendency to overspin during the tour.

Tour de Fleece day one

Today was the first day of the tour de France, and therefore the tour de fleece- hooray! I have been really looking forward to this as I missed it last year. I might not post every day, but thought I would share the progress from my first day.

I have some possibly overly ambitious plans, but today went well.

I started with this beautiful alpaca and merino fibre from the Wonder why alpaca farm and Haze the alpaca.

I thought it was a batt, but when I went to open it up and tear it into strips found it was skinny roving. I love roving (Andrea you may be psychic and are most definitely a star)!

I am trying to spin this fairly thick and not overtwisted, both challenges for me. So far it is going well, the lovely pencil roving means I can work from the bag so no ends to join together and only a little drafting is needed.

I have done about 28g (that's about 1oz) today, this is far more than I ever usually manage to spin in one day so I am really happy. I am going to see how full the bobbin is at 33g and decide if it will be a three ply ,if the bobbin is full; or a two ply, if I can fit another 20g in.