Tour De Fleece, Day 4

Day 4, and I'm already plying my for my first skein of the event.  So how do I ply, and what is plying anyways?  Take a look at a piece yarn or thread.  You can see that it is twisted, but try to untwist it.  Is there one strand, or more than one?  Many yarns and threads are made up of two or more strands of fiber.  With this wheel, it is easy to ply all onto one bobbin, but only after I change not only bobbins, but the entire bobbin holder.  Here is the part that comes off my wheel, even to change bobbons.

This is what the new bobbin looks like.  It is called a Jumbo Flyer.

Once I setup my wheel and got started, I got two pictures.  The left one is my wheel, that would be in from of me.  The right picture is my bobbin holders, which sat behind me.  I guided the stands from behind me, and kept some tension as it fed into the jumbo bobbin.

Here is a comparison of my jumbo flyer, which can hold up to 10 oz or so, vs the regular bobbin that holds 4 oz.

 I joked with another spinner that I had my fiber in a box. She thought "All" my fiber was in the box.  Nope, this is just some mixed fiber.  Much of this will be spun during the tour.

Of course Tara.  She was wandering more today, but here she is resting under my vehicle, as it is shady.

Update

The Jumbo bobbin is now empty.  I sat in the shade and unwound the bobbin onto my Knitty Knotty.   A Knitty Knotty is a tool used to wind yarn into a skein of yarn.  I'll show off a skein, once I take the yarn off the KK, tomorrow.  I rotated the KK, to try and show off some of the colors in the skein.

Tour De Fleece, Day 3

The weather is cooler today.  Around 102 yesterday, 85 today.  There was a problem due to the wind yesterday.  These are pictures from yesterday evening.

 It is in the Mount Charleston/Lee Canyon area, and is called the Mahogany Fire.  The smoke is going north of the city, so we are not smelling it.  I was not bothered by it, and was outside for quite a few hours.

After two hours of early morning spinning. here is my bobbin.

After my walk, I say for about two and a half hours,  along with trying to find the squeakin my wheel, the second braid is finished.  Tomorrow will be plying the two bobbins together.

Tara heard something near the shed, and had to go find out what is was.  After my walk, she decided to lay on my hat, while I spun.

Tour De Fleece, Day 2

A little windy to start off, but calmer than it was by mid morning.  Finished the hank of Nerdy Girl, and got to take the bobbin off the wheel.  Here is the full bobbin vs. the empty one.  The full one was 3D printed, while the other came with the wheel.

The next hank is from Greenwood Fiberworks, called American Diner.  It is a Polwarth Wool (A breed of sheep)

Tara my supervisor wandered about today.  Checked put the new hank, later came an laid next to the wheel.

I got a straight two hours of spinning this morning.   Here is what the new bobbin looks like, just before I left for the gym.

Suppose to be a little cooler outside tomorrow.  Might get me some extra time outside.

Tour De Fleece, Day 1

I know what the first question is.  The Tour of What?  I know most of you are familiar with the Tour De France.  This is an endurance bicycle race in France.  For many years, people who spin fiber on a spinning wheel, use the race to spin fiber each day of the race.  I participated in the tour many years ago, but it was difficult, as I was out of town the first week of the race.  It is time to take the dust off one of my wheels, and get spinning.  Due to Covid-19, I do have time to spin, at least for a bit of time before I gets hot outside.

Here is my wheel, in a nice shady spot.

I promise more pictures as I go.  So where do I start? Let's look at the bobbin on my wheel.

There's a bunch of fiber already on it.  Last time I was spinning, this is what I was spinning previously.  A good starting point it, finish the bobbin, so I can use it for yarn later.  So far today, I've gotten in two, one hour sessions in.  The first, first thing in the morning, before I went to the gym (because it is too hot to walk, as it was already almost 90 degrees at 8:30 a.m.).  The second was after the gym, as I was planning to watch the NASCAR Truck Race, on TV but it got rained out (I'm losing track how many rainouts we've had so far).

I did have a supervisor today.  She was a little tired this morning.

Blog restart

Time to restart the blog for an activity I'm working on.  Sorry for so many pictures missing from the old blog posts.  PhotoBucket decided to charge free accounts to use space.  It wasn't worth the cost, and that I can store pictures on Google.

Today starts the Tour De Fleece, and I want to show some of my spinning friends my progress.