Tour de Fleece: Days 2 & 3

I hope everyone had a safe and happy 4th of July. Mine was good, though not particularly eventful. I spent part of the day with my family. We watched a parade, some decent fireworks and ate some great home-made food, but most of the day was spent spinning for TdF.

Here is an in-progress group shot of the yarns I've been working on for my Summer spinning project.

These are yarns I'm spinning for the Sweet Sheep booth that will be at Sock Summit in August. I've been working on them for several weeks and I'm almost done. These yarns have been a fun challenge for me. Spinning them on a somewhat relaxed deadline has been nice (and under ordinary circumstances wouldn't have been all that challenging) but with all the work we've been doing to get our home on the market it's been a little bit hectic.

Spinning these fibers has been a special treat. All of them (except for the bright pink one all the way to the right which is "Love Affair" merino/tencel from C*Eye*Ber Fiber) are hand dyed fibers from the Sweet Sheep. This experience has been my first real encounter with merino/tencel. So far, the merino/tencel has been my biggest spinning challenge. I'm used to spinning sock yarns with fibers that have a lot more grab and the merino/tencel is (pardon the expression) slicker than snot. I have one more braid of the slippery stuff left to spin (had to take a break in between with some SW merino and SW bfl) and then this project will be finished.

::one of the sw BFLs in progress::

As soon as the last fiber for this project is off the wheel, the SW merino/alpaca will be on it. Can you tell I'm excited for the change in colors and textures?

Yesterday (day 2 of TdF) I only managed to get in a little bit of spinning time. I spent the majority of my day with my dyepot. I only have one pound of fiber left to dye (which will have to wait a day or so as there's no more room on my drying rack at the moment) and then as soon as I have a good day for taking photos I'll do an update. I've decided not to do a sneak peak this time, but I did make sure to dye up at least 3 braids of Bacchus. There's been so much interest in that colorway lately, I wanted to have more available.

I'm going to get back to it now. I'm finishing up the yarn that's on the wheel and hoping to start the next one if there's time. I've got to get the extra spinning time in today since there probably wont be much spinning time tomorrow -it's my little girls birthday (she's turning 6)!!