Friday, July 30, 2010

Fiber Arts Friday: Tour de Fleece 2010, part 4

The Tour de Fleece (Ravelry Link) is over now.  We finished on Sunday.

As usual, I have my daily progress is here and you can compare to parts one, two or three if you wish.

Friday, July 23rd:
I finished up the Huacaya Alpaca from last week's post.


Saturday, July 24th:


Sunday, July 25th:


401.6 yards

Sunday marks my third and final goal as complete.  I spun every day the Tour de France raced.

Epilogue:

I really enjoyed this year's Tour de Fleece.  I met my all of my goals and the quality of my spinning has improved greatly.  It was wonderful to take a daily intention to spin.  I enjoyed spinning with an end product in mind, spinning for the sake of spinning and challenging myself with the drop spindle.  I greatly enjoyed the camaraderie with the awesome ladies of the Team of Wonder (Ravelry Link) and I'm already looking forward to next year.

In the meantime here are shots of my finished yarns.

219 yards, 3.875 ounces of hand painted Bamboo/Merino aka my BFF yarn.

130.5 yards, 2.375ounces of Jacob Wool.

9.3 yards, 5/8 ounce of Navajo-Churro that has been Navajo-plied.

59.3 yards, 1.75 ounces of Wool/Mohair spun entirely on a drop spindle.

17 yards, 1/8 ounce of Natural Green Cotton spun entirely on a drop spindle.

401.6 yards, 4.5 ounces of Huacaya Alpaca.

While I was spinning the cotton and having trouble with the short staple length, it occurred to me that some readers may not know that staple length means the length of the fiber being spun.  Two to six inches are common, but you can see from the photo below, the cotton is significantly shorter than the other fibers I worked with over the last several weeks.

Top, L-R: bamboo/merino, Jacob wool, Navajo-Churro wool
Bottom, L-R: wool/mohair, huacaya alpaca, cotton

One last photo: All of my finished yarns together... 836.7 yards, 13.25 ounces.

As always, please check out what's going on for Fiber Arts Friday.

Fin

7 comments:

Dutch Hollow said...

I'm still drooling over those metalic colors. I love fiber variety you spun this TDF

Linda said...

Staple is the most difficult thing to explain to non fiber friends. LOVE your finished products! That blue color especially.

Kate (KnitsInClass) said...

Amazing work for the Tour de Fleece! I had high intentions, but barely spun at all.

Sarah {The Student Knitter} said...

congrats! everything looks really beautiful. :) I'd call this one a successful tour de fleece for sure!

Kathryn Ray said...

Thank you guys. I really had fun.

I think the metalic effect is from the bamboo... I love it too. I'm looking forward to starting my BFF Hat with my BFF yarn. :-)

WonderWhyGal said...

You are a rockstar! I have massive difficulties with short staple and that photo made the decision that I'm not ready for cotton...yet.

Thanks for sharing and being a part of the Team of Wonder.

Kristi aka Fiber Fool said...

Well done!