Torrid de Fleece 2010

Like yesterday's riders, I am off to a bumpy start. It's too hot for wool. 101 degrees too hot. I even woke myself up at 6 am to get outside to comb before the monster wall of heat descended upon us once again. In spite of the early hour, I still made myself completely ill and had to retreat back into the house to recover. I had been doing my combing inside but that was before I put my new white couch cover on this weekend to impress my holiday visitors. As soon as I find the energy, I am going to re-cover the couch with something so I can drag my bucket of wool back inside where I can comb in comfort. As for right now though, I am so not interested in warm fuzzy stuff.

Brain Function (Complete Lack Of)

I have knit some rather complicated lace shawls-several, in fact. So WHY then can't I keep track of the simple pattern rows on my lacy tank top straps? They are supposed to be knit 2 at a time and then joined across the chest but somehow I can't keep track of the damn pattern from side to side. After restarting at least FOUR times, I finally gave up and am now knitting each side separately and ON THEIR OWN NEEDLE. Take that you stupid pattern.

No Weigh

I was spinning along happily on the new little bug, when I realized I was going to have to ply these singles. I hate guessing how much to spin before starting a second bobbin for plying so I bought a scale to weigh out the fiber before spinning.



Did I remember to use it? No way.

Happy 4th!

For some strange reason my little beach town always celebrates the 4th on the 3rd so it's all over for us already.



Just as well as I am temporarily sidelined today due to an unfortunate.... er....umm, butt injury after treadling like a maniac for 2 hours straight yesterday on a non-Tour de Fleece project. I seemed to have strained something back there that is keeping me from sitting for any length of time comfortably so the spinning wheels are out of the question for the time being. I have managed to get some mileage with my spindle, however, so the giant bucket of washed Cormo is a tiny bit emptier today.

Tour de Fleece 2010

And so it begins.....
I have finally figured out how to wash my greasy Cormo. Thanks to the Raw Wool Lovers Group over on Ravelry, I figured out that adding some ammonia to one of the rinses helps cut the last of the grease that makes it so hard to draft.



It is so clean now that am actually combing this lovely wool while sitting on my couch.

This year I am going to COMB AND spin my way through France. Ambitious, yes, but with 9 pounds of dirty wool on my hands, I figure this may be the best way to stay motivated.
Vive la Tour!

False Start

After spending several days washing a few handfuls of my ginormous bag of Cormo, I began several spinning projects with it.



I want to use some of it in a shawl, so I used one of my lace weight spindles to spin some thin singles.



I also want to make a cabled sweater, so I started to spin it on my Ashford Traditional.
The combed fiber was sticky and difficult to draft. Both projects got scrapped.



Back in the pot it all went for another hot water rinse. I have never washed such greasy fleece before. This is going to take a lot more work than I thought but judging from the clean samples, it is going to be worth it.

Batt #5

This is the fifth and hopefully last batt needed to finish my Corriedale socks. Ugly as the socks may be turning out to be, I have had fun making all the little batts. It's not very often that you get to use your dyes as most single projects take months to complete before you get to dye something again. I am thinking I may just have to start another dye-as-I-go project but more socks I certainly DON'T need.