Saturday, 7 July 2012

Tour de Fleece week 1

Handspun! Tour de Fleece week 1

This has, without a doubt, been the most productive spinning week of my life! Of course, that means that it has not been the most productive knitting, working or housekeeping week of my life, but I'm ok with that trade off. The 3 skeins pictured above make me literally squeal with delight at the fact that I made them! I spun a little bit every day (and a lotta bit on some days) and spun about 300g and 1100yds! It's been fun and I plan to keep up the momentum this week. 

I am not the worlds fastest spinner, and I'm not 100% certain that I'm doing it right because when I do it I end up getting a bit of a leg workout, which I'm thrilled by because it makes me feel like I'm exercising, but I don't think that it's supposed to feel like that... I could not spin a skein a day even if I tried. At most I can sit at my wheel for an hour, maybe an hour and a half at a time before I need a break and in that amount of time I've usually just made a small dent in my singles. I figure that each skein probably takes me between 6-8 hours to complete. Between spinning the singles, then the plying, it's not for the faint of heart, but to me it's oh so worth it! Just look at those gorgeous skeins!

TDF week1 collage
That last skein is something that I've never tried before, it's my first time spinning a single ply yarn. With the long graduating colour shifts I plan on knitting it up into a beautiful simple shawl like this.

Details about these handspun yarns (yardage etc.) can be found on my Ravelry Stash page here