My messy table

my working table
Originally uploaded by snowberrylime

Soooooo.... this is how a table looks like when it is being used! :P

There are some of my Tour de Fleece yarns on there as well as part of a wholesale order.

Right now I have taken out my sewing machine again, so whilst there are less yarns, it doesn't exactly look any better, haha.

Holiday!

I am afraid the regular pictures for the TDF will have to take a backseat as I will be going on a vacation the next 10 days. :D
Of course I will be taking my beautiful Turkish spindle from Jenkins and some stunning milk protein fibre which I recently dyed. There will definitely be daily spinning, but I doubt I will be able to post regularly.

For those who are interested, I will be going to Helsinki (hopefully meeting up with an old friend), Tallinn (which I read is quite a woolshop centre), Riga and Vilnius, so an entirely new area for me. Usually I am not one to squeeze that many places into one week, but this time I am really looking forward to it.
Let's see what kind of fabric/wool souvenirs I can find on the way........ ;)

This also means that I won't be able to ship any yarns bought in my shop during this time, but I will be back to listing lots of new yarns once I am back!

TDF Day 12

On day 12 I finished spinning another relatively simple yarn made up of one ply of organic falkland wool and one ply of Merino/silk, all hand dyed. The yarn rests on a bed of handcarded rolags (14 in total) which will be spun into my next yarn. :)

TDF Day 10 and 11

Day 10 of the Tour is officially a day of rest, but I have to admit I did spin on some singles for plying at a later stage. It's addiction, honey. ;)

I don't know what I spent doing all day today, but it really wasn't an awful lot of spinning. My meagre results for today are a brown organic wool yarn with Mohair locks (for a swap) and a Tussah silk single from fibre I tried to dye with natural dyes (redwood) ages ago. I spent a lot of yesterday picking out the little pieces of wood from this silk. Yes, next time I *will* use some kind of a net to put the plant parts in....

TDF Day 9

Today I got my pirate queen yarn done, 'Anne Bonny'. The other one is a skein of my classic, 'Rokoko', a Merino/silk yarn with real freshwater pearls.

Tour de Fleece Week 1

As promised, but with a slight delay: the yarns of one busy week of spinning for the Tour de Fleece!

TDF Day 8

Today I was mainly carding, but I also spun a few yards at the lake with my Turkish spindle, but alas, no pictures...

The one yarn I properly worked on is my pirate queen:
It will be plied up with beads next.

TDF Day 7

On Friday I worked on these two yarns as well as 100g of Merino/silk (no pictures yet) and a small skein of pure Tussah silk lace yarn. I was only able to take pictures today though. :)
The blue one is called jellyfish and features white bamboo, lots of sequins and beaded trim as well as some more of thos rolags I carded the last few days.

TDF Day 6

Today I finally finished my ocean treasure yarn! The beaded skein is about 200m of a fine 2ply yarn. From the same rolags I also spun a matching corespun yarn. :)

TDF Day 5

On day 5 of the Tour de Fleece I worked a bit more on my ocean treasure yarn, pictured are the two singles. They are both spun from handcarded rolags and the bottom ply has lots of ocean type beads, pearls and shells in it.

TDF Day 4

Well, today was a very long day at work, so I only got very little spun up. I worked more on the ocean treasure yarn, but haven't really got much to show for, so I will leave this post without a picture. I will definitely try to get something finished tomorrow though!

As a lot of the pictures leave lots to be desired, I thought I should post a picture of all of them washed and skeined at the end of each week. :)

TDF Day 3

Today was day 3 of the Tour de Fleece, but sadly for me it was also a work day. That and the fact that I also had to bake some cakes meant that I wasn't as productive as I would have liked.

All I got done are three and a bit skeins of soy silk and a blue/white yarn consisting of one ply of undyed organic cotton and one ply of a hand carded batt in blues. Not the best pictures ever, but it was dark and the yarns hadn't been washed yet to set the twist. :)


I also worked a little bit on my ocean treasure art yarn, but it will take a long time to finish. I am intending on making it a 2ply yarn.

TDF Day 2

The second day of the Tour de Fleece saw some more stash busting. For my first yarn I just randomly spun up leftover fibre (mostle wool and silk) and then plied it with thread. Whilst doing this I added lots of chunky coils - and the good thing is, they don't move at all, they are really well secured. It was sadly already dark when I took a lot of the pictures, but here we go:



































I then went on to work on the rolags I carded the night before. I spun up a single yarn with this Alpaca/wool/silk/linen fibre and added strips of a very sweet dotted cotton fabric. I let a red sparkle thread wrap around the yarn and included many types of gems on the way. Again, the pictures aren't the best, but it is late and I wanted to post this. :)






















































The last thing I did today was to prepare everything for my first nautical themed yarn of the race: Treasure of the seven seas. I carded hand dyed organic Falkland wool with Merino/silk, hand dyed silk noil and throwsters waste silk filament. All natural fibres and the yarn is going to really special. I beaded shell pieces, small shells, freshwater pearls and teal glass crystals onto a sparkle thread and am ready to spin this up with some sequins.

TDF Day 1

On my first day of the Tour de Fleece I spun 100g of a bulky, hand dyed Merino/silk single yarn as well as something more arty. The art yarn is called twister and had as a main purpose to get rid of some of my uglier fibres in the stash. These include horrible commercially dyed colours or batts with weird glitz effect... I carded them all together on my hand cards and hoped for the best. As a single yarn I still thought it looked rather awful, but once I used this new twisty technique it looked really adorable!

Spinning for the Tour de Fleece!

Just like last year, there is another Tour de Fleece starting today! What is the Tour de Fleece, you ask? Well, during the time of the Tour de France, lots of spinners are setting themselves challenges or joining together in groups to spin yarns. The time is Saturday July 4th through Sunday July 26th with these days of rest: Monday July 13th, Monday July 20th (Just like the actual tour). On Wednesday July 22nd we are expected to spin something especially challenging, as this is the hardest day of the Tour.
The Tour de Fleece is currently hosted on ravelry and I have joined a few groups (below are ravelry links, you need to register to see them).

This is actually my first Tour de Fleece, as I didn't manage to be at home for any of the past ones.
I have joined a few great teams and am hoping to be able to keep up with all of them!

Breakaways - This is the group for art yarns, so very much my home territory. As my personal challenge I am really trying to concentrate on pushing myself just that little bit further in the art yarn department. It has gotten easy for me to spin simpler single yarns and leave the fancy ingredients out, but in the next few weeks I will try to change that around.

Stash Busters - Yeah, I am almost tempted to say 'no comment'. As I will soon be moving, I really need to decrease my stash. I found loads of undyed Merino deep down in the corner, there is still a fair bit of hand dyed organic falkland wool and gorgeous cashmere, silk, milk protein fibre and more. Also, let's not forget about the huge bags of raw alpaca fleece... yes, yes, I remember them as well.

Tour de Fish, and here - This is rawfish's colourful group! I loved the theme so much that I just had to join. It's all about boats, pirates, mermaids and the seven seas...

Snobby spinners - I'be also joined the snobby spinners, a) because I love luxury fibres and b) because I finally ought to use them, just cuddling is no longer good enough.

Germany - Last but not least I also joined my regional group. At the moment it is very quiet there, but I am sure we can get this going. :)

So yes, that makes 5 teams and I hope I am up for it! Right now I have already spun one yarn and a bit, but I am planning on doing daily updates of what I spun for the Tour, so more about this tonight. :)

Doing some serious destashing

destash beige 1
Originally uploaded by snowberrylime

Well, it is official, I have terminated my flat for end of September and am gettting ready to move back to Wales from Germany.

However, as some of you may guess, I have accumulated a rather large spinning fibre stash in the meantime, and to be honest I also have quite a collection of commercial and handspun yarns I wanted to keep.

To make my life (and the move) a little easier I have therefore set myself the goal of not buying any new fibre until I basically have to, meaning I will try to actually spin away all the fibre I currently have. Phew. That's a goal. A big goal.

So whilst I am busily spinning my little heart away, I have also looked through my yarn stash and found a few things I will probably never have the time to work on, so I also added two lots of handspun destash to the shop, all wound into cute balls and ready to go.
Pictured is a lot of about 100g Wool/silk in a natural oatmeal/beige colour.

The other lot consists of 273g/9.6oz (!) of 2ply Merino wool in a tweedy shade of rainbow.

My goal is already asking for sacrifice: I am entirely out of my favourite fibre blend: Merino wool/Tussah silk. I still got a few braids of hand dyed Merino/silk but then that is it. And these are already mostly reserved for a big custom order. What this basically means is that the skein of 'Pearl' currently listed is my very last normal sized skein available. I have a few more odd skeins which I will probably list as one big very soon, but then that's it until I move.

At the moment I still got quite a bit of undyed Merino, lots of Alpaca and a great variety of more exotic fibres.

I cannot guarantee that prices will remain the same either, as some fibres seem quite a bit more expensive in the UK and I will have to do my best to find some good suppliers.

So basically, snap it up whilst it is here, because a lot of the yarns I am spinning now might not return after my move!