In which the Rabbit spins in the Tour de Fleece

The Tour de Fleece is an annual event for spinners that takes place, not so surprisingly, at the same time as the Tour de France. The idea is that one chooses a more or less challenging spinning project and works away at it every day the racers in the Tour de France are riding. So as Lance and co. are spinning away, so are we.

Having crashed and burned during the Ravelympics, I was a little reluctant about the TdF. But I thought I should probably join in for the podcast's sake. So I threw in my lot with Team Sasquatch, an amalgamated group of podcasters and their listeners on Ravelry. I'm so glad that I did.

I decided that I wanted to spin the California Red lamb's fleece from Apple Rose farm. It was a small fleece; after washing and doing some preliminary sampling I had about twenty ounces. That seemed like a manageable amount to work on for the TdF; the challenge, I thought, would come from the day-in, day-out sameness of the color.

Using my handy digital kitchen scale purchased for fibery pursuits, I divided the fleece into one-ounce clumps, which I spent most of June, it seemed, painstakingly turning into one-ounce batts. Twenty in all. Here's a picture of half of them:



I used one of the batts for training purposes--to experiment with wheel settings, etc. I decided to add to the challenge by using this as an opportunity to practice my long draw, recently fine-tuned in a class with Maggie Casey (more on this in the podcast). I wanted to make a nice, round three-ply yarn, so I wanted the individual plies to be as fine as I could comfortably make them with a long draw at this stage. So I'm spinning at a 14:1 ratio and plan to ply at 16:1.

This is the first big spinning project I've done and so I decided to invest in a bobbin winder and storage bobbins. I'm spinning the 19 ounces, putting them on bobbins as I go. When I ply, I'll be selecting bobbins randomly in hopes that this will tend to even out any differences in width and color and produce the most consistent yarn possible.

Here's how the bobbins look, all lined up like little soldiers.



I took this picture several days ago. These have been joined by seven more. Very satisfying.

In addition to the pleasure of working methodically through the carding and spinning of this lovely fiber, I've also had the fun of being part of Team Sasquatch. Folks are reporting daily or every other day on their progress, and generally cheering each other on. It's a lovely group of people.

In which the Rabbit apologizes to her blog for neglecting it

Not much has been going on here.  All the activity around the podcast these days has been eating up a lot of my creative energy.  I haven't been doing much knitting.  The projects I have going seem either stale (Mr. Rabbit's Smooshy socks) or, like the afghan, interminable.  And while I have been spinning, it's all been podcast related, so I'm loathe to scoop my own podcast by revealing it here.

I'm going to cast on a couple of new things today in hopes of jumpstarting my knitting mojo.  I'll report back soon.  Promise.

In which the Rabbit makes a list

Five things I should have on the needles at all times:

1.  Something that is knitted from handspun

2.  Something that is  all garter stitch

3.  Something that is a gift for someone

4.  Something that is a challenge

5.  A sock

In which the Rabbit waxes philosophical about fulling

So yesterday, I was plying up some yarn that I made with Coopworth roving.  It is a lovely dark, rich brown.

I bought it because a) I wanted to practice supported long draw (see Abby Franquemont's video here), which is best done with roving, and b) it's lovely and soft.  In that respect, it's a way better version of the Coopworth fleece I bought at the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival, which is so coarse that no matter how I process it, and no matter how I spin it, I can't seem to make a yarn that I would want to spend any time knitting:

Anyway, I was finding this roving a little, well, challenging.  Mostly because I'm not so good at supported long draw.  I'm way too much of a control freak, and you pretty much have to abandon yourself to the twist and let it do what it's going to do.  And what it's going to do—at least, if you're me—is pull the fiber out of the supply hand in a somewhat uneven way.  And, since I'm a control freak, this makes me a little crazy.  Did I mention that I'm a control freak?

Compounding what I have come to think of as my long draw problem is the fact that this roving has some of what spinners call "VM"—vegetable matter—in it.  Mostly this is little bits of hay.  So I'm spinning along, trying to get into some kind of rhythm with the long draw, and having to keep stopping to pick out the hay, which is surprisingly tenacious.  Suffice to say, I found this a less than entirely relaxing experience.

So last night I plied about half of it, and I wasn't happy.  It just didn't look good.  It was uneven.  It was fuzzy, and not in a way I liked.   But, hearing Abby Franquemont's voice in my head, from her video on drafting, saying that woolen yarns change a lot when they are washed, I dutifully went downstairs to my basement, where the yarn washing happens, and fulled the heck out of that yarn, using the method Judith McKenzie McCuin describes in Teach Yourself Visually Handspinning.  In other words, I felted the yarn a bit to give it more structure, help the plies cohere, and encourage the fiber to puff up and take up more space.  I soaked it in hot water and Eucalan for a bit, then moved it to very cold water to shock it, then back to hot.  Then I agitated it with a sink plunger (brilliant, Judith) purchased for the purpose.  Then back to cold.  Etc.  Then, as usual, I wrapped it in a towel and spun the water out using the spin cycle of my washing machine, gave it a few good smacks against the stainless steel surface of my laundry folding table, and put my hands through the loop of the skein and snapped it a few times, a la Maggie Casey.  The last two steps are said to distribute the twist.

Suddenly, I loved this yarn.  I loved the way it felt, and looked, and smelled.  It's still quite "rustic," but it's also soft and lovely and bouncy.  And much more even in diameter than I expected.

And then I had two thoughts.

Thought Number One: this is why I spin.  Because even though I disliked picking out all the little bits of hay, this is a much nicer, livelier yarn because the fiber has been so minimally processed.  It still smells a tiny bit sheepy (in a good way).  It's a little tweedy because it hasn't been carded to within an inch of its life to blend the colors.  And it's bouncy in a way that most commercial yarn isn't, because most commercial yarn has been made from wool that has been through a process that literally burns the VM out of the fiber.  It really is a different creature from commercial yarn.

Thought Number Two: fulling is a pretty good metaphor for life.  You're all ugly and uneven and imperfect and full of little bits of hay.  Then you get beaten up--tossed from hot to cold, agitated with a plunger, smacked against a table.  And then it turns out, after all that, that the abuse has smoothed you out, rendered you shiny and resilient.  You're still imperfect, yes, and you're beautiful.

In which the Rabbit announces a new endeavor

The Rabbit has started a podcast!  It's called SpinDoctor, and it's a show that reviews stuff for spinning.  It's not up on iTunes yet, but the show notes page, where you can download the first episode, is here.  Give it a listen and let me know what you think.

It's bi-monthly; I'm going to shoot for the first and the fifteenth of the month as posting dates.

If you're on Ravelry, there's a discussion group for listeners here.

In which our story continues . . .

In the car on the way to and from Maryland I continued working on the Log Cabin afghan.  These squares are big fun—just when the garter stitch starts to get tedious, it's time to bind off and pick up stitches again. So I'm feeling quite enthusiastic about this project.  Hence my conclusion that it needs more pink and green, and my purchase of three more colors for it yesterday.  Do I need this yarn?  Nope.

Really: no.  But, as the woman in the store said: "they look like a watermelon."  How could I resist?

In which the Rabbit, and Mr. Rabbit, go to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival

Along with a lot of other people!

So last weekend the Rabbit and the ever-stalwart Mr. Rabbit got in their car and headed south to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.  The Rabbit was so excited she could hardly contain herself.

I used to live in Baltimore, you see, and I love the city and miss it terribly.  So this trip meant not only unparalleled fiber-y shopping opportunities, but also a chance to eat the best crab cakes in the universe—Faidley's, in Lexington Market, below, hands down—drive by my old house in Charles Village (no pics, sorry).

Then we went to the Baltimore Museum of Art, and generally hung out in the city on Saturday.  At the Market we were even treated to some live music by a fabulous blues band, which afforded me a chance to dance (and sing!) with total strangers.  Fabulous.  And in the BMA sculpture garden we even found a lagomorph!

Then, after a nice dinner in Canton, we went home to bed so that we could head to the festival early Sunday morning.

I knew from my study of the Maryland Sheep and Wool group on Ravelry that Sundays at the festival are generally less crowded than Saturdays, so we opted for Sunday and boy oh boy was I glad we did!  Apparently the crowds and traffic on Saturday were insane.  Sunday was managable, but still blistering hot.  All the animals were panting.  So were we, at times.

We saw some Alpaca.  Mr. Rabbit said that they look like Dr. Seuss characters, and, as usual, he's right:

We also saw  tons of sheep breeds in person that I'd only read about, and a blade shearing competition.

While we were watching the competition, Heather Ordover of CraftLit happened by and struck up a conversation about lamb sausage.  I knew it was Heather Ordover because a) I recognized her voice from the podcast and b) she was helpfully wearing a CraftLit tee-shirt.  We had a nice chat about Dracula, among other things.  She is lovely.

I picked up an absolutely gorgeous Corriedale fleece that I had selected a couple of weeks earlier, sight unseen, from Ruppert's Corriedales.  I wish I had thought to take its picture before I handed it, and the nine-pound (!) black Cormo-Corriedale cross fleece I bought at the festival's fleece sale, off to Ozark Carding Mill for processing.  (Added bonus: in the Ozark booth I met spinning guru Maggie Casey, whose classes I'll be taking next month at The Spinning Loft.) You'll just have to take my word for the fact that the Ruppert's fleece was stunning.  And the black fleece was also pretty lovely.

Aside from the two big fleeces, I was pretty restrained.  I bought some lovely silk and merino painted top from Cloverleaf Farms in their "Autumn" colorway.

And two skeins of worsted, minimally-processed Polwarth yarn, dyed in seawater, from Seacolors Yarn (they don't have much of a web presence, but they're profiled in the book Shear Spirit).  I've been wanting to see this yarn in person since reading about it, and it didn't disappoint.  One skein for me, one for my friend Aara.

Last, but not least, I was able to visit the Three Waters Farm booth, meet Mary Ann Pagano, and see her beautiful hand-dyed yarn and fiber in person.  Wow.  Just . . . wow.  The pictures on her website are impressive—I've been stalking this fiber online for a while now; the color palette is so rich and original I couldn't decide which I wanted—but they really don't do the fiber justice.  My pictures don't either (my camera seems a bit vague and unfocused today), but they give a hint.

It was so hot that we actually left the festival around 2.  I know I didn't see everything, but that just means more discoveries next year, right?  We drove back Monday.  It was pretty much a perfect weekend.