What a week

It's been one heck of a week.

I finished the tour de fleece with a personal record, seven skeins, two pounds, just under five miles of yarn.



When we last met, I had spun two.

This is a polwarth/silk blend, a two ply gradient, 817 yards. About five ounces.



Next was a lovely BFL. The fiber was a peach to pink to blue gradient and I split it to spin "fractal" three ply. One lengthwise third was left as is, one third divided in two lengthwise, and the last third divided by four lengthwise. The fractal color progressions will show up when it's knitted. It's 3 ply, so it's less yardage, 465 yards.



Next was a merino/silk gradient, the pictures do not do this skein justice, it is much prettier than it looks here. 652 yards, two ply.



Next, I did a gradient skein in two equal halves, then chain plied the singles to create a three ply matching sock yarn. This was a merino/bamboo/nylon blend and totaled 470 yards.



And finally, on the very last day, I spun this gorgeous camel/silk blend to a worsted weight 367 yards. I call it Champagne on the Champs, and I am in love with this blend.



The skein was still a little damp when I took the photos, it's shinier and more bouncy now.

We went to Hog Heaven Rescue's open house Saturday, we took my Mom along and it was a nice day. This pig tried to come home with us.



Here's a slideshow of the whole day. Hog Heaven does great work doing large animal rescue and I encourage you to check them out and donate if you can.



Healthwise, I'm not ok. Super stressed. Bob lost his job, which has thrown us into chaos. My face still hurts where I fell and my ear is still tender. I've been swimming and so on but my stomach issues are much worse when I'm stressed and I have not been sleeping well. This too shall pass, at least I hope so. He has quite a few leads and prospects coming up so please keep all applicable body parts crossed and if you have any leads for a help desk/tech writer type job please let me know.

For now at least we'll just keep buzzing along.

I want to ride it where I like

So the Tour de Fleece is underway. That means I am spinning, spinning, and spinning some more. Two skeins down and who knows how many more to go.

For the second year, I am spinning all Corgi Hill fibers, except for my traveling project, which is the Tsock Tsarina kit I got at MDSW.

The first skein was a UFO, I had one and a bit more plies done. I've been doing this a little at a time on my Fibership spindle so I finished it off, then plied it on the wheel. Huge yardage, 760 yards. The fiber is BFL/silk.



I'm pretty happy with it except I still need to add more plying twist even when I think I don't.



Pretty impressive yardage.

The second skein, didn't work so well for me, although the end result is good.



It's a merino/silk/yak blend. Also from Corgi Hill, this is one of the prizes I won for last year's tour. I only got about 300 yards out of it. It was hard to draft, I think the staple was weird for me, I was just glad to see the end of it. I did add adequate plying twist to this one, though.


The next one is a polwarth/silk blend, gradient, from bright teal through yellow into bright grass green. Not as jewel tone subdued as the prior two. Gotta mix it up now and then.

Needless to say all knitting projects are on hold until after the tour. I haven't decided if I'm going to knit in the Ravellenic Games yet.

Things are status quo otherwise, no further fainting spells and I've been careful to stay hydrated especially in this heat we've been having. We renewed our pool membership for another three months and plan to continue that as much as possible. Bob really gets a lot out of it and a day like today, it was wonderful to just get into the pool up to my neck in water, anything else was extra.

We've harvested our first green beans and our first tomatoes. (three wee cherry tomatoes but it counts!) The squash plants are fighting for life in the heat. We shall see if we get anything out of it. The collard greens look ok so far but it's hard to tell, they're small yet. Next year, we need to plant earlier.

We went to the Big Butler Fair last weekend. It was nice. Hot but nice. We saw a lot of horses, sheep, pigs, etc. A nice family day out.





Will update again soon!