Fiber Arts Friday: Tour de Fleece - 2011, week 3

My Tour de Fleece installments for week one and two are linked and week three is below.  :-)

Friday, July 15th

No spinning today.  Which means I have skipped three days and made up one.  Therefore I have a deficit of two days and only one more opportunity to make it up.  :-(

Saturday, July 16th

Well, I was planning to return to spinning my Tibetan Mastiff Fur this week.  Instead, I took one of my Tibetan Mastiffs to the park with the drop spindle and paco-vicuna  roving.  :-)

This is Wonton, she is seven months old now and pushing 75 lbs.  It's crazy to go back to when she first came to live with us.  We thought she was big then.  ;-)

Sunday, July 17th

Well, I'm finally back to my wheel and Tibetan Mastiff Fur.  I added two half-batts this morning and have four to go.  So it will be a couple of days before both spindles are full and I can begin plying.  :-)

I think taking the photo outside shows the fiber color much better.

Monday, July 18th - Rest Day

I didn't spin today.  So I continue to have a spinning deficit of two days.  I did however, make it to knit night which was super fun.  :-)

Tuesday, July 19th

I finished the Tibetan Mastiff Singles! Tomorrow, I ply!!

Wednesday, July 20th

I plied!

It turns out that my (new and still unused) Lazy Kate is narrower than my bobbins, so I wound each bobbin into a ball prior to plying.  Which isn't terrible as it gave me the opportunity to evaluate my work.

The first bobbin was thinner at the front and had more over-spun areas than the second bobbin.  The second bobbin was a more consistent thickness through-out.  So I am improving on my goal of no over-spun yarn, but I am not there yet.  :-)

I really like the finished yarn.  It's quite balanced and nearly even weight throughout.

The lot weighs 6 5/8 ounces and measures 127.5 yards over two skeins at 8-10 wpi.

Regarding some questions on the Tibetan Mastiff Fur.

I think I should wash the fiber prior to carding next time. Also a third run through the carder or a pass through a diz would make the batt/roving a bit more homogeneous and therefore nicer to spin.

The unwashed TM Fur has a faint smell of stinky feet, but it's not overtly smelly.  It certainly is not wet-dog-like nor anywhere close to the one raw sheep's fleece I've had the pleasure of smelling and now that it's been washed, it has a faint smell of lavender and mint.  :-)

I don't know the diameter of the TM Fur, so I attempted a photo comparison.  The Paco-Vicuna fiber on the left measures 17.3 microns and TM Fur is on the right.  The TM fur is definitely more coarse but the character is similar with a subtle crimp in both fibers.

Both fibers also have a good staple length of about 2 inches.

Thursday, July 21st

(Finally) I am back to the Black Huacaya Batts of Wonder.  :-)

I've been saying I'm half-way complete with the lot for quite some time.  I started with 17 ounces and have about 12 ounces to go.  So that's a long way from half-way complete. ;-)

At my approximate spinning rate of one ounce per hour, that's 12 hours of spinning between now and Sunday or three hours of spinning each day between now and then.  I'm usually not a negative person, but I'm  pretty sure that is not going to happen, especially since I didn't spin for 3 hours today.  So, I'll do what I can and be happy with the result.  :-)

So that's it for week three.  Be sure to visit the Wonder Why Gal and everyone else participating in Fiber Arts Friday.  :-)