Fiber Arts Friday: Tour de Fleece, 2025 - part 3

For Part 3 - - My goal this week is to continue to spin for the Joy of it.

TdF Stage 7 - Friday, July 11

No Spinning today.

Having tweaked my back last Thursday morning, I decided to let it rest one more day.

TdF Stage 8 - Saturday, July 12

Tibetan Mastiff:

• Time Spent: 14 minutes
• How I felt:  I was feeling significantly better this morning.  Spinning makes me happy.

TdF Stage 9 - Sunday, July 13

No Spinning today.

TdF Stage 10 - Monday, July 14 - Challenge Day

Tibetan Mastiff:

• Time Spent: 10 minutes
• How I felt: My brain and day was full.  I have one more major thing to get done today, but decided to spin for about 10 minutes to give my brain a rest...  So today, my challenge was just to spin.  :-)

TdF  - Tuesday, July 15 - Rest Day

Tibetan Mastiff: 

• Time Spent: 18 minutes
• How I felt:  While today was supposed to be a Rest Day, it was nice have a break in the middle of the day that allowed for a bit of spinning.

TdF Stage 11 - Wednesday, July 16

Tibetan Mastiff:

• Time Spent: 27 minutes
• How I felt:  After several extremely full days, today was more relaxed and I was able to spin some over the afternoon.  Feels nice.

TdF Stage 12 - Thursday, July 17

Tibetan Mastiff:

• Time Spent: 24 minutes
• How I felt:  It was nice to spin while listening to the news and not feel rushed for other things that must be done today.

Weekly Wrap-up:

• Days Spent:  5 of 6 days + 5 of 6 days = 10 of 12 days thus far
• Time Spent: 137 minutes (2:17) + 93 minutes (1:33) = 3 hrs 50 minutes thus far
• Overall Feeling:  I have started to wonder how much I’ve spun…. and since I didn’t weigh the prepared fiber, nor have I weighed the bobbin I’m using, nor have I kept track of how many balls of roving I’ve completed, I really don’t know. Apparently I took myself seriously when I embarked upon this year being about fun and not task completion.  This is good for me.  But it also means that my type-A self is starting to get itchy about the county fair deadline and the fact that each skein must be at least 2 ounces in order to be entered. sigh.

Happy Fiber Arts Friday!

Fiber Arts Friday: Tour de Fleece, 2025 - part 2

For Part 2 - - My goal this week is to spin for the Joy of it.... let's see how it goes.

TdF Stage 1 - Saturday, July 5

Tibetan Mastiff:

• Time Spent: 32 minutes
• How I felt: I almost forgot that today is Saturday and the beginning of the TdF, but I am feeling happy and hopeful after yesterday's Independence Day Parade.  The support for the Dems was significantly more than the others.

TdF Stage 2 - Sunday, July 6

Tibetan Mastiff:

• Time Spent: 21 minutes
• How I felt: I felt distracted today with too many things to do this morning.

TdF Stage 3 - Monday, July 7

Tibetan Mastiff:

• Time Spent: 16 minutes
• How I felt: I was feeling anxious, with a lot of things on my To Do List for today, but I decided to spin anyway... and to spin until my mind calmed down.  It fought me, but we did get there... it took about 15 minutes.

TdF Stage 4 - Tuesday, July 8

Tibetan Mastiff:

• Time Spent: 54 minutes
• How I felt: Theoretically, my Internet has been fixed…. I did get some spinning done since I could not accomplish any internet-y things while the Tech was working on our service.  It was nice to spin, knowing there wasn’t anything else I should be doing.   Also, my bobbin is fully covered now, which always makes me happy.

TdF Stage 5 - Wednesday, July 9

Tibetan Mastiff:

• Time Spent:  14 minutes
• How I felt:  What a day.  It feels like there's been a sea change and the day has been full because of it.  I didn't get to spinning until about 8:30pm.

TdF Stage 6 - Thursday, July 10

No Spinning today.

I tweaked my back in the morning and followed it up with far too many meetings that required me to sit for most of the day.  Which meant that by the end of the day, my back was far too tight to treadle my wheel.  sigh.

Hopefully I'm feeling better tomorrow. 

Weekly Wrap-up:

• Days Spent:  5 of 6 days
• Time Spent: 137 minutes (2 hrs 17 minutes)
• Overall Feeling:  I'm having fun and while I didn't spin yesterday, I've decided it doesn't really matter.

Happy Fiber Arts Friday!

Fiber Arts Friday: Tour de Fleece, 2025

I started thinking about my upcoming Tour de Fleece plans since March.  At that time I wanted to spin for my long-term chiengora project, but realized I had no fiber ready for spinning.  *sigh*

I want this year's TdF to be more about playing and mental rest than accomplishing a daily task that needs to be squeezed in between other work... aka this Type A personality has learned that sometimes the "fun" things should be just about having fun... and for me, spinning has been more about work than fun over the last few years.

So my goals for this year are to spin every day... but only for the joy of spinning.  I may track time spent, but I don't intend to have any specific time-spent goals or number of skeins completed goals... We'll see how that goes.  ;-)

Fortunately I have been able to spend some time over the last couple of weeks to prepare a few batts of Tibetan Mastiff for spinning... so at least I can get started.  :-)

Per usual, I am spinning with the Chiengora Group.

Tour de Fleece (TdF): This year, the Tour de France starts on
Saturday, July 05, 2025 and runs until Sunday, July 27, 2025

Tour de Fleece Femmes (TdFF): We will also spin along with the Tour’s women’s race, Tour de France Femmes, which start on Saturday, July 26, 2025 and runs until Sunday, August 8, 2025

• Spinning Days: TdF Saturday, July 05 through Sunday, July 27. TdFF Saturday, July 26 through Sunday, August 8.

• Rest Days: Tuesday, July 15 and Monday, July 21.

• Challenge Days: Spin something challenging on the challenge days (or pick your own Challenge Day to suit your needs and schedule). TdF: The first one is Stage 10, on Monday, July 14. The second is Stage 15, on Sunday, July 20. TdFF: Saturday, July 21.

It is nice to see the TdFF being a longer race this year.... 14 days, instead of 8.

Happy Fiber Arts Friday!  The game starts tomorrow.

Fiber Arts Friday: Estes Park Wool Market, 2025

In February 2025, soon after the schedule came out, I signed up for two classes for this year's Estes Park Wool Market.

Thursday was Blending Board Primer - this is my fourth class with Clemes and Clemes and was focused on making rolags.

Friday was Spin Goldilocks with Maggie Casey.  This class was focused on medium wools, which are some of my favorite.  I also want to soak up as much of Maggie Casey's knowledge as I can while she's still teaching.  :-)

So ultimately the weekend was focused on Woolen style prep and spinning techniques.

I got the long-draw working a little bit.  Spinning from the rolag felt weird at first, but I think I have a much better understanding between the Worsted and Woolen techniques now.

I also found it nice that we were in the Government and Spanish Language Classrooms of the High School.

I had a schedule conflict for the remainder of the weekend, so I spent some time at the Friday open market for students... I was kind of looking for a yarn suitable for a project I am pondering.  I didn't find anything that grabbed me.  Which is unusual.

I guess, the more I have the skills to make what I want, the less I'm interested in purchasing it.  But in this case, I'm not quite sure what I want yet, other than fine gauge and a moody color.

Happy Fiber Arts Friday!

Fiber Arts Friday: Cozy Stripes Sweater, part 10

We're getting close to the home stretch for this project.... As of the last post, only 2 arms, sewing on buttons, weaving in ends, and repairing two dropped stitches is ALL that remains.  Ha.  :-)

At the beginning of this section, I have 3 full brown skeins available for the arms and 14g of Skein #7 that I will reserve for button sewing.

AND.... we've reached the warm part of the year.  Progress on this project has slowed way down.

Since it will be 100F today, I think the responsible thing to do is to recognize that very little work will be completed on this project over the next few months.  Which means it is essentially in Time Out and I will be focusing on much smaller projects such as socks for the near term.

As of this writing, I am about half-complete with the first arm.

Skein duration:

• #1 (11/2/24 - 12/10/24) 5wks 3days
• #2 (12/10/24 - 12/30/24) 2wks 6days
• #3 (12/30/24 - 1/6/25) 1 week
• #4 (1/6/25 - 1/18/25) 1wk 5days
• #5 (1/18/25 - 2/5/25) - 2wks 4days - 14 g remain

• Green (2/5/25 - 2/6/25) - 2days - 22 g remain (begin body stripes)
• Orange (2/6/25 - 2/8/25) - 3days - 23g remain
• #5 (2/8/25 - 2/9/25) - 2days - 11 g remain
• Orange (2/9/25) - 1day - 18 g remain
• Green (2/10/25 - 2/14/25) - 5days - 17 g remain (complete body stripes)

• #5 (2/14/25 - 2/20/25) - 6days (begin hem)
• #6 (2/20/25 - 2/25/25) - 5days - 20g remain (complete hem, bind off pending)

• TINK Body Hem (2/27/25 - 3/6/25)  - 8days
• #5 (3/6/25 - 3/22/25) - 2 wks 2 days (begin re-Knitting Body Hem with smaller needles, US3)
• #6 (3/22/25 - 3/23/25) - 2 days (complete and bind-off Body Hem) - 19g remain

• Pickup Collar/Button Band Stitches (3/24/25 - 3/30/25) - 6days
• #6 (3/30/25 - 4/10/25) - 11days (begin Button Band/Collar, US3)
• #7 (4/10/25 - 4/22/25) - 12days (complete Button Band/Collar and Bind off) - 14g remain

• #8 (4/23/25 - 6/4/25) - 6wks (begin Arm #1, on hold for the summer) - 10g remain

Happy Fiber Arts Friday!

Fiber Arts Friday: Rainbow Vanilla Socks, part 2

I spent a little bit of time working on these Rainbow Vanilla Socks while at a Dog Show on Mother's Day.

I had set these up in early April in preparation for some travelling I have planned for next month... and also for the warmer days that happen during a Colorado spring which was certainly the case last weekend.

I realized that I cast one one more stitch for one sock, so I corrected that and now have both toes complete.

I also took some measurements and set the plan for when to place the scrap lines for the Afterthought Heel.

Happy Fiber Arts Friday!

Fiber Arts Friday: Cozy Stripes Sweater, part 9

While the pattern calls for the sleeves to be completed next, I will do the Collar/Button Band next... I am feeling more confident about the remaining Brown Skeins, but I want to be certain. :-)

My original thought was to start with a fresh skein to hopefully prevent the need to join skeins in the midst of this section, or worse in the midst of the button holes.

So I spent some time reviewing the instructions for the Collar/Button Band and estimating how many grams would be required for each row...  That brought me to ~25g, or one complete skein, to make the Collar/Button Band.   Then, I still need yarn to make the i-cord bind-off.  Which means I will definitely have a join in this section.

So with that information, I decided to continue with Skein #6 and force the join to be somewhere in the middle.

But first, I need to pick-up the stitches...

Picking up the stitches has been kind of a drag on this project.  I had the thought of creating a life-line as I went, but I was pretty far down the body before I had that thought.  :-/  Also, it's typical to pick up 3 of 4 rows, rather than all of them.... Anyway, I did finally get there, but not without some pain.

The blue markers are stitches that need to be added and the orange markers need to be dropped.

Since there were so many, I decided to slip the stitches and add/drop as marked and then re-count, before beginning to work the Collar/Button Band Section, which now looks a lot less ominous.  lol.

The body is shorter than the pattern calls for.  So I have the collar marked as written and the Stripe/Hem section marked as written, with the middle being fewer stitches.  I will need to keep this in mind as I work the pattern.

At the beginning of this section, I had 19g available in Skein #6.  The join to Skein #7 happened on the lapel in the short row section, so it is not obvious.  WooHoo!

Upon finishing all of the short rows and being ready to bind-off, I used the 19g from Skein #6 and 8g from Skein #7 for a total of ~26g... which means my estimate was close.

You can see from the above photo that it's hard to really see how the project looks while it's still on the needles, but I do like how the collar is laying.

I have 17g available in Skein #7 for the bind-off which is more than enough.

I am a little annoyed that the Button Holes are hard to find, but it did help me choose which buttons to use... I will think a bit on how to make them more visible.  In the meantime, the stitch markers are holding the places for the buttons.

This section took a lot longer that I hoped, and you see I have set up a second project which is resting.  I want to finish this sweater before the warm weather really arrives.  Otherwise, it will not get worked on until the fall.... AND I want to wear this sweater in the fall.  So you see, I am starting to feel a bit of urgency.  :-D

At this point I have 3 skeins of Brown remaining for the sleeves.... which I will begin next.

Skein duration:

• #1 (11/2/24 - 12/10/24) 5wks 3days
• #2 (12/10/24 - 12/30/24) 2wks 6days
• #3 (12/30/24 - 1/6/25) 1 week
• #4 (1/6/25 - 1/18/25) 1wk 5days
• #5 (1/18/25 - 2/5/25) - 2wks 4days - 14 g remain

• Green (2/5/25 - 2/6/25) - 2days - 22 g remain (begin body stripes)
• Orange (2/6/25 - 2/8/25) - 3days - 23g remain
• #5 (2/8/25 - 2/9/25) - 2days - 11 g remain
• Orange (2/9/25) - 1day - 18 g remain
• Green (2/10/25 - 2/14/25) - 5days - 17 g remain (complete body stripes)

• #5 (2/14/25 - 2/20/25) - 6days (begin hem)
• #6 (2/20/25 - 2/25/25) - 5days - 20g remain (complete hem, bind off pending)

• TINK Body Hem (2/27/25 - 3/6/25)  - 8days
• #5 (3/6/25 - 3/22/25) - 2 wks 2 days (begin re-Knitting Body Hem with smaller needles, US3)
• #6 (3/22/25 - 3/23/25) - 2 days (complete and bind-off Body Hem) - 19g remain

• Pickup Collar/Button Band Stitches (3/24/25 - 3/30/25) - 6days
• #6 (3/30/25 - 4/10/25) - 11days (begin Button Band/Collar, US3)
• #7 (4/10/25 - 4/22/25) - 12days (complete Button Band/Collar and Bind off) - 14g remain

Happy Fiber Arts Friday!