Getting Started in the Tour de Fleece

Note from the SpaceCadet:  My friend Natalie (npeace on Ravelry) is a prolific spinner who creates her wonderful yarns almost exclusively on spindles.  With the Tour de Fleece coming up, it felt natural to ask her to share her thoughts on the best way to get started…

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By Natalie

July 3rd marks the start of one of the biggest events of the spinning year – the Tour de Fleece.   For 3 weeks, spinners everywhere will spin along as the cyclists in the Tour de France work their way across France.  During this time, gorgeous handspun yarns will be popping up all over the internet as spinners show off their tour projects on their blogs and on Ravelry.

It was actually all this frenetic tour-based posting of handspun that got me interested in spinning a few years ago.  If you find yourself drooling over yet another absolutely stunning barber-poled yarn or wondering how it would feel to play in a big pile of cloud-like merino… well, that’s a pretty common side effect of the Tour de Fleece.

Natalie spinning SpaceCadet Creations BFL combed top in Garden in Spring, on a Butterfly Girl spindle

It used to be that people felt they had to invest hundreds of dollars in a wheel in order to do “real” spinning.  This often seems like too daunting an investment to make just to give something a try.  Fortunately, with the current resurgence in popularity of the humble spindle, spinning is becoming ever more accessible.  If you get all fired up by the Tour de Fleece and want to give this spindle thing a try for yourself, here’s a list of resources to get you started:

Books:

Respect the Spindle by Abby Franquemont – If you’re only going to buy one spindle resource, this is the one to get.  It starts with the basics but will continue to be useful as you gain competence and experience.  There is also an accompanying video available as a DVD or as a video download from the Interweave online store.

Productive Spindling by Amelia Garripoli, also known as the Bellwether.  This book covers a lot of the same material as Respect the Spindle, but the approach is different, and it is an equally valuable resource.

Internet Resources:

Both authors above have informative blogs.  Abby Franquemont’s is http://abbysyarns.com/ and Amelia Garripoli can be found at http://askthebellwether.blogspot.com/.  Both have extensive archives of general spinning and spindle-specific information.  Abby Franquemont has also posted a number of fabulous instructional videos to you tube, which you can find here.

Also invaluable to the new spindle spinner is the Spindlers group on Ravelry.  The “Stupid Questions” thread is full of answers to every beginner question imaginable, and if you can’t find what you’re looking for there you can post a new question.  Many experienced spinners generously spend their time monitoring that forum and answering all manner of questions for the new and confused.

There are many, many more resources out there, but starting with the list above will have you up and spinning very quickly.  Have fun!

Shiny, Green Treasure

I get so stinkin’ excited when one of my items in featured in an Etsy Treasury!  And so I was squealing quite loudly when I read the email yesterday telling me that the fiber I had listed only a few hours before is now included in RonitGolan‘s “Natural” Treasury.   My silk combed top in Freshly Cut Grass is in the lower left-hand corner.  Take a look….

Dyeing Disasters and Silver Linings: Take Two

I dyed some fiber in the Sailor’s Warning colourway, but I wasn’t happy with the way it came out.  Don’t get me wrong — it was beautiful — but it just wasn’t quite Sailor’s Warning to me.   It wasn’t different enough to be its own new colourway, but I wasn’t happy putting it in the shop when it didn’t look exactly as I’d intended.

…But how can I waste 4oz of beautiful, soft-as-clouds merino fiber?!?  I can’t!  And besides, I know that, even though it wasn’t exactly perfect as fiber, the colours will blend and soften when it’s spun and it will look gorgeous.

So I am spinning it up, and it will go in the shop as hand-spun.  Keep your eyes open for it!

How Much Yardage to Expect with Handspun Yarns

A customer recently wrote to ask me how much handspun yarn she could expect get from a braid of my hand-dyed fiber and, to be honest, I was at a bit of a loss.  How much yarn you’ll get varies from spinning style to spinning style  …and from spinner to spinner.  The thicker the yarn, the less yardage; the thinner it’s spun, the more yardage.  Beyond that, it’s a very hard question to answer.

Hand-dyed BFL Combed Top, in Garden in Spring

And especially for me, because I hardly ever calculate the yardage on my handspun.  I have no idea why — I just never do!

So I turned to my friend Natalie who is a more experienced (and excellent) handspinner and posed my customer’s question to her.  She replied, “It’s usually 20 – 30 % less yardage than you’d get from the same amount (grams/ounces) of commercially spun yarn of the same weight (worsted, dk, fingering etc) because handspun tends to be denser. From 4oz, I’d expect 300-400 yards fingering; probably 200-300 of a dk/worsted range.” A much more technical and useful answer than mine!

The yarn spun by my friend from the Garden In Spring BFL

And then she added, “Hard to judge though… It’s all very variable.” Which made me feel a bit better!

A Quick Peek at the Prizes

I posted the prizes off to the winners of the Giveaway today and, before I slipped them into the envelopes, I just couldn’t resist taking a few pictures just so I could share them with you.

The two runners-up got 2oz each of this BFL fiber.

When I dyed this, I was going for a fiber version of Plumberry, the colourway of the newest yarn in the shop*.  But, although I mixed the dyes up correctly, I did the dyeing in slightly the wrong order and the blue took on an amazing silver-grey tint.  It doesn’t look like Plumberry to me but, let me tell you, it is really quite stunning!  I might dye more like this, but I am undecided as to whether it deserves its own name, because dyeing is a dynamic process — even if I gave it a new name and tried to dye it this way again, it might come out of the dyepot with more blue and looking more like the original Plumberry…   Hmmmm…   Maybe the nature of Plumberry will be that it’s sometimes got this grey, sometimes got more blue.  We’ll have to see.

Anyway, I do hope the runners up enjoy the lovely colours of their new fiber!

*You never saw the Plumberry yarn?  That’s because both skeins sold in two hours!  But I’ve dyed some more that will go in later this week.

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And for our winner, I’ve chosen a skein of Garden In Spring sock yarn.  This is the first colourway I ever dyed for the shop and it is absolutely one of my favourites.  It’s so bright and cheerful and just so darned happy, and I think that’s the very essence of how winning a giveaway ought to make a person feel!

Congratulations again to the winners, and I hope you enjoy using your yarn and fiber!  And to everyone else, there will be more giveaways in the future, so keep your eyes open for those.

Tallying Up…

The May Giveaway has come to a close and I am just overjoyed at the response — so many people subscribing, tweeting, friending, and commenting about my yarn and fiber.  It’s such a help to me to hear everyone’s thoughts and feedback.  Thank you all so much!   I now have to tie up all the extra entries with the subscriptions and I am presently fighting off a very nasty cold and fever, so it will take me a few days.  You can expect the winners to be announced near the end of the week.

In the meantime, let me share with you what I pulled out of the dyepot yesterday.  The colours are so rich and delicious that I just want to fall into it headfirst.  I simply could not get the camera to really capture the tones of this yarn but, here, have a look…

Fingering Weight Yarn in Superwash Merino, in Vineyard Stain

When the grapes have been harvested and gathered into great piles at the end of each row, and the piles have been collected and taken to the winery, what is left in their place is a ruby-red mark where the sheer weight of the bounty crushed the succulent grapes and the dark juice escaped and ran down, leaving that beautiful, telltale stain — deep as burgundy in some places, soft as a rose in others — against the yellow-brown of the dry, sun-baked earth.

Each skein is over 100g of Superwash Merino in a wonderfully soft 3-ply, fingering weight yarn. Two skeins available, sold separately.

Fiber Content: 100% Superwash Merino
Weight: Approximately 3.7oz / 105g (approximately 490 yards per 100g)
Colourway: Vineyard Stain, 100530-001
Care Instructions for the final item: Hand or Machine wash, Lay flat to dry.

Each item is individually hand-dyed by the SpaceCadet, using professional grade acid dyes, using professional grade acid dyes which are mixed by hand from primaries. Please be sure to buy enough for your project as the colours may not be able to be reproduced exactly.
SpaceCadet Creations is a smoke-free, pet-free environment.
Please remember that the colours in pictures may vary depending on your computer monitor. The colours in the photos are as accurate as possible.