Treadle to the Medal
I had a lovely time last weekend at JadeCon and basically want to hug half my flist for contributing to that :-).
And today is the start of the Tour de France, which means it's the start of the Tour de Fleece! It's a spinnerthing; the idea is that we're treadling away every day the Tour is on the road. There are several thousand people participating of course (oh Ravelry, how I love thee) and my LYS is kicking the Tour off with a party this morning.
My big tour project will be some lovely red Blue Faced Leicester (a breed of sheep) that I want to spin into a consistent yarn. I'm not very patient with sampling and checking as I spin, so my yarn tends to turn out somewhat uneven. And I'm going to push myself to spin a little thinner than my usual default yarn.
This is going to be a big spinning month. The LYS is sponsoring another farmer's market in three weeks, where they take over the community center and local shepherds come in to sell yarn/fiber. I'll be part of the fleece-to-scarf demo team again, and this time we'll be practicing for our first ever competition coming up at the end of September. And as part of that I'm picking up a pound of raw fleece this morning.
Fleece comes off the sheep coated in lanolin (and sometimes other Things, depending on how clean the shepherd kept the sheep). This time we're going to card and spin washed fleece, so that means washing. We're each doing a pound. This is the first time I've washed fleece so it will be interesting to see how it goes!
And today is the start of the Tour de France, which means it's the start of the Tour de Fleece! It's a spinnerthing; the idea is that we're treadling away every day the Tour is on the road. There are several thousand people participating of course (oh Ravelry, how I love thee) and my LYS is kicking the Tour off with a party this morning.
My big tour project will be some lovely red Blue Faced Leicester (a breed of sheep) that I want to spin into a consistent yarn. I'm not very patient with sampling and checking as I spin, so my yarn tends to turn out somewhat uneven. And I'm going to push myself to spin a little thinner than my usual default yarn.
This is going to be a big spinning month. The LYS is sponsoring another farmer's market in three weeks, where they take over the community center and local shepherds come in to sell yarn/fiber. I'll be part of the fleece-to-scarf demo team again, and this time we'll be practicing for our first ever competition coming up at the end of September. And as part of that I'm picking up a pound of raw fleece this morning.
Fleece comes off the sheep coated in lanolin (and sometimes other Things, depending on how clean the shepherd kept the sheep). This time we're going to card and spin washed fleece, so that means washing. We're each doing a pound. This is the first time I've washed fleece so it will be interesting to see how it goes!