Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Le Tour

Yes, I've been watching the Tour de France a little bit. It's kind of like cricket... background TV most of the time with the occasional highlights. Sprints. Crashes. Close finishes.

But mostly, it seems like the right thing to watch while spinning my wheel for the Tour de Fleece :)

So far I've spun up this red/brown one from EGMTK. I got it in Bendigo last year, I think. This was an easy spin, meaning I spun it at a thickness that I can do without thinking, and it ended up being 504m of singles, which I then navajo-plied.



This one, I did have to concentrate on! I was trying to spin a sock yarn, so I made it as thin as I could manage. Man did my left hand ache from pinching the yarn! For you non-spinners, you need to stretch out the fibres before you twist them (which I do with my right hand) and then let some twist up. But you have to stop the twist getting into the unstretched fibre (because you can't stretch it if it's twisted, which is actually the whole point of twisting) so you pinch it between the twist and non-twist with your left hand.  I was trying to twist this tightly, and so I had to pinch harder to stop it getting past my fingers. Ow.


In the end, the navajo-ply was about 220m and had a good sock-yarn thickness of 20 wraps per inch. It's curious, though, because usually 100g of sock yarn is about 380m and 16WPI. So it's both thinner and shorter...?

I guess I spun it into the denseness of wire :)

My goal for the Tour de Fleece is to spin more singles than last year. Last year I managed 2673m, but this year I'm aiming at 3497m. Odd number? Yep, well it's the number of kilometers the cyclists ride during the Tour. Since I have three kids and only one wheel ;) I figure 0.1% is a fair enough goal. hehe.

Next:



Damiknitter on Ravelry sent me some BFL/silk! And the pig. Haha. It was a prize in the HPKCHC game, for the multicolored woven scarf I did in Potions last month, I think.

See you next time, with yet more spinning!

*rides away*

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