Trenchwork

The Tour de France finished yesterday, and so did the Tour de Fleece.

I am absolutely and totally amazed at what we can accomplish when we have a support group, and how much it can turn out to be when we aren’t checking our progress every five minutes.  It’s rather fun to look back after a longer period of time and see a small pile of completed (or mostly completed) results rather than a single yarn.

From left to right, there’s

• Enchanted Knoll Farm “Mad Hatter” Shetland batts spun into a slubby worsted-weight 2-ply;
• Spunky Eclectic superwash BFL “Ooh-La-La-Tropical” also as a 2-ply;
• fleece to yarn, the Bond you’ve been seeing in recent posts:  a 3-ply worsted-weight for about 1100 yards;
• fleece to yarn, the Gotland/Karakul/Rambouillet also from recent posts:  a 2-ply light fingering for about 573 yards; and
• on top, the remaining batts (about 3.5 ounces) of the G/K/R cross.

The white G/K/R skein on the right has not yet had its finishing bath, and I’ll wait to do that until I spin those remaining batts.  It won’t take long, so that yarn will be done today.  Then instead of just the usual bath, I’ll put it in a dye bath and finish it that way.  It should come out to about 18wpi, give or take a couple, and I’m guessing I’ll end up with around 775 yards when all is said and done.

My goals for this Tour were to finish the Bond and one of the smaller batches of fleece in my stash, and the two indie fibers on the left.  I nearly made that; the only thing I didn’t quite finish was the G/K/R cross, although I met the Raw Power challenge goal of spinning a pound of raw fleece.  I actually managed a bit more than that in fleece-to-yarn spinning; there are 21+ ounces in the Bond, and 9.5 in the G/K/R cross.

However, even without those last three batts, that’s a total of 2168 yards of yarn in the past 21 days—and half of that is in a 3-ply yarn.  Given the sheer amount of time that it takes to prep fiber and a few very low-productivity days, that’s not bad at all.  The reality is that it takes about as much time to prep the fiber as it does to spin it, regardless of whether you’re combing or carding, and not forgetting flicking and diz time.  I have a tendency to overlook this part of the process, I’m afraid.  I tend to overestimate what I can accomplish because I underestimate how long it will actually take to comb that fleece, or flick the locks to prepare for carding, or to run the carder . . . Spinning from fleece is NOT a fast process.  It takes time.  But I love the process, the transformation of one form to another, and I love being able to pick up a yarn I’ve taken from fleece to yarn and say, “I did that.”  How very very cool it all is.

The Tour?  The Tour is finished, and I’m looking forward to it next year.  But, for now, it’s done.  However, as with the riders the Tour de Fleece follows, wheels will keep on spinning.