We were lucky enough to get two attempts at Tour de Fleece this year. The first during the originally scheduled dates (which I wrote about here). The second during the actual delayed Tour de France, which nobody was sure was going to happen, but culminated with a very exciting hilly time trial. I still had some beautiful gradient packs from Hilltop Cloud, leftover from the first Tour, and these were the perfect amount of fibre to spin over the 3 weeks, including taking rest days this time. Two packs of 3 different colourways (Atoll, Shepherds Delight, and Hawaiian Sunset), allowed me to spin ..read more

Against all expectations, the Tour de France is actually starting on 29th August, and so we get a second bout of spinning with Tour de Fleece. I still have 6 gradient packs left of Hilltop Cloud gradient fibre (in Atoll, Shepherds Delight, and Hawaiian Sunset), so these will be my fibres for take 2 of TdF. I would like to take my rest days this time around, and not stay up spinning too late into the night, so shall have to see how much of the 840g of fibre over the 21 stages ..read more

Tour de Fleece was a bit different this year. Normally following the schedule of the Tour de France, with coronavirus postponing the cycling it was decided to follow the original schedule, as the rescheduled bike ride may not happen later in August/September. So I dug out my fibre (all from Hilltop Cloud) and set to work. Starting with a gradient pack of Parrakeet (50% merino, 32.5% South American Wool, 12.5% baby llama, 5% viscose tweed nepps), I spun the first pack over days 1 and 2, the second on days 3 and 4, plying them together on day 5. 1,398 yards of 2-ply fingering weight yarn. Day ..read more

I had a relatively quiet Tour de Fleece this year, mostly because I was away for a week towards the end of it, so I knew I wouldn’t get much done. I initially got out all of my fibre with the intention of spinning it up: This included (going anti-clockwise from the right) 291g of Raven’s Wing gradient, 302g of Dephinium gradient, 293g of Hummingbird gradient, 280g of Mermaid’s Lair gradient, 280g of Mineralise gradient and 300g of a cashmere, silk and BFL gradient. I have made a collage of my daily progress pics: And the finished skeins came out like this:   1,376 yards of 2-ply finge ..read more

From you have I been absent since the spring. Oops. I have been busy knitting and spinning, but I’ve managed to completely fail to update here (mostly because I’ve been rubbish at getting photos done). I will cover Tour de Fleece in its own post, but will just summarise here that I turned 886g of fibre into 3,500 yards of yarn during the TdF period. So, what have I been otherwise up to since April? After finishing Abisko (the last recorded stashdown entry), I worked my Winged Fancy gradient into a short-sleeved pullover (Cullum), using up 904 yards in the process: https://www.ravelry.com/proj ..read more

I started 2018 with 54,562.1 yards or 13,076g of yarn in stash and 1,680g of fibre. My aim for 2018 is still to try and work through as much of this as possible, whilst limiting my purchases (but not going the full ‘cold sheep’). Ravelry has also included a ‘challenge’ feature in which I have committed to try and complete 12 knitting projects during the year, and I’m going to try and make them all sweaters (all the better to use up yarn). Alas there isn’t also a spinning challenge option, but Tour de Fleece will be coming up again in July and I’ve probably not got enough fibre for the duration ..read more

August saw my first yarn purchase in over 2 years when I needed to buy some additional yarn to finish the following sweater (which used a total of 1,834 yards of yarn):   http://www.ravelry.com/projects/fak/krone That added 374 yards to my stash (before finishing the sweater). I also carded and then spun some alpaca fibre into 348 yards of light fingering weight yarn, losing some of the fibre along the way (I started with 100g but ended up with 87g). There was a lot of grease in the fibre which led to some gentle felting whilst washing it out, but I’m pretty happy with the end result ..read more

July was dominated by Tour de Fleece. Although I did also knit a sweater the fit wasn’t quite right and it got ripped out and re-worked, not counting for July yardage. Instead all I managed to do was add to my stash as follows: 300g of Little Owl Crafts Wensleydale in natural grey became 1,080 yards of 2-ply fingering weight yarn http://www.ravelry.com/people/fak/handspun/wensleydale 100g of Sara’s Texture Crafts BFL in Strawberry colourway became 502 yards of 2-ply light-fingering weight yarn http://www.ravelry.com/people/fak/handspun/strawberry-bfl 200g of Sara’s Texture Crafts Meri ..read more

Just as Chris Froome only had to finish the final stage to with the Tour de France, I managed to complete my spinning in advance of the final day. I had gone from TDF 2017 – start to TDF 2017 – finish Spinning up the following fibre: 300g of Little Owl Crafts Wensleydale in natural grey became 1,080 yards of 2-ply fingering weight yarn http://www.ravelry.com/people/fak/handspun/wensleydale 100g of Sara’s Texture Crafts BFL in Strawberry colourway became 502 yards of 2-ply light-fingering weight yarn http://www.ravelry.com/people/fak/handspun/strawberry-bfl 200g of Sara’s Texture C ..read more

June, the halfway point in the year, saw the completion of both knitting and spinning projects, both decreasing and increasing my stash. Let’s see how it all played out. It began with the completion of another Viajante (aka giant vagina) which I had been working on at Bungay. This used up a total of 2,078 yards. http://www.ravelry.com/projects/fak/viajante-2 I also did a little pre-Tour spinning, turning 100g of Oatmeal BFL into 526 yards (and 113g) of a light fingering weight 2-ply yarn: http://www.ravelry.com/people/fak/handspun/oatmeal-bfl Another 100g of BFL, this time in a natural bro ..read more