Tour de Fleece 2014

As the title suggests, I am taking part in the Tour de Fleece again this year. In short, is a spin along while the Tour de France is going on. The idea is every day the cyclists race, you spin. And you see what you can get done in that time.

The Tour started on the 5th, so my posts will be a round up of what I have been achieving day by day, and I will be posting my round ups every few days or so! So onwards!

When the Tour began I was part way through spinning singles of this gorgeous Blue Faced Leicester / tussah silk blend from Mandacrafts.

I had 200g of it, and what with deciding to do the Ringbearer shawl on the spur of the moment, I never got to clear down my wheel for the tour. In fact on day one I was about half way through the singles:

So day one was spent finishing the singles, and beginning plying (I did have three bobbins of it!)

Day two:

I finished plying, wound off and measured my yarn.:

414m of worsted weight yarn, all ready for my cardigan project! And a good chunk of the yardage I need for it.

But in the evening I got going on some new fibre. this time 100% merino from Yummy Yarns UK, colourway Namibia. Given the colours, I think you can guess what it is going to be part of!

 234m of light worsted weight yarn:

Then some Yummy Yarns UK Batts in Vesuvius:

147m of Aran weight yarn:

And lastly some fibre from Easyknits.co.uk became this yarn:

200m of Worsted weight. Fibre blend 50% White Corriedale/25% Grey Corriedale/ 25% Banana.

That's me up to date all the way to stage 10 of the tour!. Quite a lot done! See you for the next tour update!

Ringbearer Shawl

I have to admit, this was not a planned project. But Patricia of Yummy Yarns UK had spun some beautiful yarn from some fibre she was given in her Ravelry group's secret santa. And she didn't know what to do with it. What she wanted to so was turn it into a pretty wrap for her shoulders, BUT she doesn't knit lace. I have knitted yarn up for Patricia before, and she spins such lovely yarn. So I offered to do so for her. Extremely soon after, her lovely cat Ella went missing, which only made me more determined to knit it for her, in the hope it would provide comfort.

We discussed patterns and she sent me the yarn:

Which is prettier in real life and has sparkle in it, but its one of those colours that is hard to photograph. So I got knitting. The pattern she chose was Ringbearer, which made my geek tendencies happy. It was originally a mystery knit along, and each 'clue' (or section of pattern) represented something from Frodo Baggins journey in Lord of the Rings. They were all lovely lace patterns, though clue six was slow going (its very hard to 'read' your knitting as you go in this one) and the feather and fan edging predictably tripped me up once or twice. While a simple lace pattern, feather and fan is an old nemesis that always gets me a couple of times in the knitting.

Shortly before I finished Ella was found and returned home a little thin, but otherwise well after almost two weeks away from home. So glad that ended well, and I got to show Patricia pictures of her finished shawl.

I am exceedingly happy with it and it came out to such a lovely size. I think I need one for myself so you shall probably see this pattern come up again! It will be winging its way to Patricia soon, as soon as my miss is a little bit better from her chicken pox!

So that's what I have been up to recently. The next couple of weeks I am participating in the Tour de Fleece (all shall be explained in my next post) so watch out for spinning round ups in the coming weeks!

Till next time: