What I spun during Tour De Fleece

Well Tour De Fleece is over, and I must say I did pretty well. I spun a total of 600 yards of yarn, give or take a few yards. One of the projects that make it hard to say exactly how much I spun if part of a felted bag. At the beginning of the Tour I had been knitting a market bag and I ran out of the yarn I had spun for it. So I started off my Tour spinning the yarn to make the handles and finish the market bag. I spun, plied and set the twist and started knitting without measuring the yarn.

The bag is made of Shetland wool, I also spun Wensleydale and Polworth breeds this time. Wensleydale and Polworth are both new breeds for me. I liked spinning them and they both turned out pretty soft. I was skeptical of the Wensleydale as it felt wiry to my hands as I was spinning it. I was not sure I would want that around my neck, but once I had set the twist it became softer. I think it will become a small shawl so I have the option of having it near my neck but most of the time it would be on my shoulders, there is 215 yards of worsted weight so could be fingerless mitts. The Polworth has 162 yards so it could be a narrow shawl, I would really like this one around my neck to maybe a cowl.

Here is a picture of my Tour De Fleece works.

A new awakening

A lot of things have happened to me in the last year that took me away from this blog. I think it is high time to give it one more try.

To start off the blog again since it is supposed to be about my knitting, spinning and grand kids, we shall begin with the start of Tour De Fleece. What is Tour De Fleece or TDF you might ask? While the Tour De France is running people of the knitting community are following the cyclists and encouraging them by spinning along with them, we, however, are spinning yarn.

Here you will see what I accomplished on the first day of the tour. The small skein is Shetland wool and really it is a golden yellow in good light. The lavender on the spool is a breed called Wensleydale a new breed for me to spin. That is a breed I have not spun before not a new breed to the world. I have 8 oz of the lavender and intend to make a shawl or cowl with it. The golden skein will become the handles on a felted bag I am knitting. 

My second day of the tour left me with this much yarn on my Jenkins Turkish spindle.

I have been working with the spindle again today, the third day of the tour. I wonder how the bicyclists are doing?

My grand kids are still living out of state, fortunately less than 2 hours away by car. I only get to see them once a month, most months when they come to our monthly family gatherings. Some months I get to drive up to their house to visit. They will be moving in a few weeks, I had hoped they would be very near me again. But their father was lucky enough to get a fine job in the Beaverton area, so they will be perhaps half an hour closer to me. But in the spirit of combining knitting, spinning and grand kids they will be surrounded by interesting yarn stores and my daughter is planning to entice me into visiting often with the promise of finding Portlands hidden yarn treasures. 

Life has many challenges, I have come to find. Getting through them can be quite time consuming. Knitting, Spinning and family have wonderful healing properties and I am using them to my best abilities. Till next week then, take care.

Christmas is upon us

Wow, a lot has been happening in my life this year.
I have been knitting a lot off and on. I have some projects on the needles for Christmas gifts, hoping to have them done in time. My knitting has slowed a lot since my Dad died in August. I am trying to get back to a daily habit of knitting but it just isn't happening some days. When I was staying with my Dad and taking him to appointments and such I took my knitting with me all the time and made great progress. It amazed him how much I could get done in a day. It was fun knowing he was keeping track of what I was doing. Then in August he was gone and my knitting stopped entirely. I didn't knit for weeks, I was just too busy and distracted to pick it up again. But eventually I did pick it up and started new projects. I am still really busy on weekends taking care of his estate and winding things up. It has been hard.

I love spinning as much as I do knitting. Maybe I should spin a while and it could help settle things down, but I say to myself wait till after Christmas knitting is taken care of. Spin after the first of the year. I thought about taking a spindle with me to Christmas Pageant practices, but they have changed the way we do that, there is not much sitting idle time anymore so I really would not get any spinning done, just for the first few minutes while we are waiting for everyone to show up and get started, so that did not happen this year.

Rickreall Christmas Pageant had it's 72nd run this year. It is over for this year, last night was the final show. When I moved back to this area I looked them up and joined the group again. I have been in this off and on over the years doing different parts and jobs. It is a community project and I got started in grade school, the 6 grade girls of Rickreall Elementary get to be the little angels in the Shepard scene. When I hit 6th grade I did not get to be one of the angels because I had pneumonia and the doctor did not want me exposed to the cold night air and possible wet feet, so I sat out. Then as the girls become seniors in high school they get to play the part of the water girl in the neighbor scene. Well my senior year came and there were more girls than nights of the pageant so my best friend and I sat out but in the Choir. Two years later my sister was a high school senior and there was just her and one other girl to play the water girl, trouble is the girls were also on the basketball team and there was one night that they could not be the water girl. I was volunteered for the part and got to do it two years late.  Then I was away from it for a few years, I got married and moved away. When we moved back my Mom, the pageant director, asked if I would be interested in helping put makeup on people, I said yes that sounds like fun, so I did that for a couple of years. Then more children came along and I was not free in the evenings to run out there and do makeup anymore, now 20 years later I live in Rickreall again and have joined the cast. It is fun and I recommend it to anyone, if there is a community Christmas activity in your area look into it I bet they need volunteers of some kind. It is a good way to connect or re-connect with your neighbors, friends and community. Enjoy yourself.

I like Ravelry.com

http://badges.ravelry.com/rectangle_32.png I am a member of an online group called Ravelry. It is all about knitting and spinning and crochet a little. There are thousands of people in the group that all love fiber related projects. I find it a great resource and compliment to my addiction to knitting and spinning. You will find patters galore and lots of them are free, my favorite kind. when you pick a pattern you will find pictures of other people's project made from that pattern and yarn suggestions and technique help and so many people to answer your questions. It is a wonderful place and.... the best thing is it is free. Go check it out and join.

OK, I may have some new people coming in to see my blog; so I thought I would share some photos of what I do. Such as spinning fiber into yarn with a spinning wheel. I also use drop spindles to make yarn.

I then knit the yarn I make or purchase into items for myself or family.

I have been known to crochet, but haven't done any lately. In this blog I also talk about fiber festivals and State and County fairs, and I also talk about my family. I am married for 37 years, I have 3 Kids and 4 Grand Kids. We currently have 2 roosters, some cats and a dog. We used to have sheep and chickens. I was raised on a Dairy Farm so having animals around is normal for me. Animals need care but they make great companions and are good listeners. 

Well if some one new does show up, Welcome, if not, that is a short summary of me.

Wow! I did not realize how long it has been since my last post. So many things have happened. The biggest change in my life is the death of my Dad on Aug 22nd. I have been caring for him since January, staying with him for a few weeks after he had heart surgery and then once he was able to live by himself again, I was his wheels and we had lots of Dr appts and trips to the pharmacy. My sisters took care of his grocery shopping and visiting him on Sundays, helping him with things around the house on weekends. So he has been having health problems but he was getting better. Then that Wednesday night one of the firemen called us to say Dad did not show up for the fire meeting and they wanted us to come to his house with a key so we could check on him. Well, he had fallen asleep in his chair watching his favorite western channel on the tv and never woke up. He is with Mom again and I am sure they are very happy to be back together. I miss them so much.

I did a lot of knitting while staying with my Dad both in and out of the hospital. I haven't been doing much knitting since Dad died but I am getting back into it. I need to finish my Bigger on the inside shawl, I only have 6 rows at most to finish the tardis bank and then will do the ribbing band and it will be done. I have started some of my Christmas knitting. An infinity scarf for an Aunt and I have plans to make new mittens for the Grand Babies, older grandson some fingerless gloves and older grand daughter maybe a new hat or fingerless gloves just so all the Grand kids get similar things.

The last time I did any spinning was in July for the Tour de Fleece. I made at least 3 different kinds of yarn. A merino/silk blend, one that is 100% silk and another that is romney and BFL blend. I entered the romney blend or a skein of it in the Polk County fair and got a blue ribbon on it.  I also entered a poncho for Lucy and a shawl for me in the fair and got red ribbons on them. I got a white ribbon on a pair of fingerless mitts I had knitted. If I had looked at them really well before I entered them I would not have entered them as the thumb gusset was kind of messed up a little. It still got third place though.

Things are still kind of weighting on me, but it is getting better. My sisters and I will get Dad's estate settled soon and then I will be moving into Dad's house. Moving is never fun, but this should be the last time ever or for a long time at least. So some time next year I may find my new normal. In the mean time knitting, spinning and family will keep me going.

Till next time, you all need to stay well.

Genealogy, TDF and knitting

http://gallery.mailchimp.com/6a13a38a955e01499f3215f48/images/TrophyBadgeNEW_en.png" width="200px" alt=""/ I am one of the volunteers who are indexing the 1940 census records into a database at www.FamilySearch.org. We reached the half way point last week and they set a goal to see if we could do 5000 records in 24 hours. Well when you challenge a group of volunteers ...the game is on. We entered and verified over 10,000 records in 24 hours. So above is my trophy for participating in this event. I only did 100 records in the 24 hours, but I did help. There are lots of other records to enter into the databases, so if anyone has any desire to help it's never too late to join. In case you don't know what the databases are for, it is so people can research on their family history. I use the site myself for family research and need to get on there and search again, new information is being added daily so if you don't find someone today, try again in a month or so. Tour De Fleece is started, so far I have finished spinning some merino/silk roving I bought a year or two ago so I will soon be able to knit a shawl with it. It is on my to do list of knitting. :) Next I have started spinning silk hankies on my wheel. It is an adventure, fun and interesting I am getting it thicker in most places than what I spun on my spindle. I have another hankie to spin when this one is finished and then I want to ply the three of them together. I will still end up with lace to light fingering weight yarn and the yardage of the finished product will determine what I knit with it. If the TDF is still going when I finish that I have some natural grey roving to work on, I have about 9 oz of that so should be a shawls worth out of it. On my needles, I finished Lucy's poncho and need to get back to Bigger on the Inside shawl. It is my KAL for July with Salem Area Ravelers as a Dr Who project. I am over half done with the knitting of it but this stage is slower as it rows are over 300 stitches long. Well thats all the news here, take care and enjoy this picture of Lucy's poncho on my stuffed penguin.