Final haul for La Vuelta, L-R:
Blue/yellow 2ply fractal spin, heavy lace/light sockweight, 642m;
White warping wool, chain-ply, Aranweight, 602.3m;
WoW Galaxy Melange in Andromeda, 2ply, Sportweight, 80m;
Black & white thick and thin – to be core-spun;
Brown/pink/blue/grey, 2ply fractal spin, laceweight, 703.6m;
Yellow/purple, 2ply fractal spin, Aranweight, 156.1m.
Finished length: 2,184m (not including black/white)
Total spun: 6,552m (ditto).
Whoa! Might do a bit of knitting now…
Blue-yellow 2 ply fractal spin from a space-dyed braid (Unresolved School Uniform Trauma), 642m (roughly 2/12Nm, lace/sock);
Yellow-purple 2 ply fractal spin from a gradient-dyed braid (Golden Sunset), Aran-weight, 156m (abt 2/3Nm);
2 skeins of chain-plyed warping yarn from a cone (World Of Wool), over-spun for strength, Aran weight, for weaving with the orange centre-pull ball which I spun from a batt during TdF23 – procrastination much?
Still to come – more space-dyed braids from stephscraftybits! I’ve just started the sugared-almond Jean Harlow one, which is also coming up rather fine. And if you’ve been paying attention, I did say “more braidS”, plural.
Yes, I went off and bought another 3 braids and a batt from stephscraftybits. A bottle-green/wine combo on Bergschaf, which I have named The Parting Glass – I’ll definitely at least start this.
Then, this cheerful 100% Lonk braid, described as green/red/pink. The green is barely there, and a bit browny. I might take it out when I unwind the braid, depending on whether it looks okay.
The third, God forgive Steph for inflicting her irresistible colour choices on me, is BLUE, green and grey, on Charollais fleece. Charollais is a fibre I’ve wanted to try for a while, that’s not why I bought it. I… just… liked it??
The batt is a mystery blend of black, white and grey fibres – probably merino. They’re laid one on top of the other, so it’ll probably spin up as grey. It’ll be a relief from all this blue…
Allez-oop!
Which probably makes no sense whatsoever…
This lovely yellow-purple gradient (craftwithcolour on Etsy) has lots of tweedy nepps and wanted to be thick-and-thin, which is very much not me, but you gotta work with what you have. I have no idea what to do with it when it’s done – it’s not the kind of yarn I usually knit with… This is the first half completed.
Speaking of not me, the blue/yellow Corriedale is spinning up fine and taking forever. I’m about halfway through the first bobbin’s worth of flooff. I have decided to name it Unresolved School Uniform Trauma.
Tally-ho!
Naturally, La Vuelta a Lana does too!
I have only fun stuff to spin this time. The sparkly Golden Sunset braid from craftwithcolour is first up. I didn’t get around to it on TdF or TdFF, partly because it arrived late, having to travel with my niece when she came home from uni, but mostly because I loaded up on extra spins.
Then, because I enjoyed spinning the rose/olive Merino Tencel braid from stephscraftybits, I bought some more of her braids! One is a Merino Tencel braid in sugared-almond colours that remind me of Jean Harlow’s evening dresses, rose, brown, grey and powder blue.
The second is 100% Bergschaf in bottle-green and wine. I’ve never spun Bergschaf before – no idea what to expect there. Some people say it’s soft, others that it’s coarse. The braid itself doesn’t feel particularly soft to me, but not so bad that I’d put it in the to-be-socks box.
And the third… is blue. Royal & Prior uniform blue. And yellow, obviously. But the blue is nonetheless precisely the colour of the R&P gymslip that I had to wear 5 days a week for 5 years of my life, and which I hated with a passion that is unmatched to this day. But I kept coming back to this braid. It talked to me. It whispered that it wasn’t really that bad – just misunderstood – and wouldn’t it make a beautiful plaid shawl if I wove it on a continuous bias tri-loom…
So yah, I have that to look forward to…
The Golden Sunset and blue/yellow are divvied up into 1/2, 1/4 and 2 x 1/8 parts for fractal spinning. This time, I actually weighed everything to ensure they all worked out to be the appropriate weights when divided. Fiddly, and my scale isn’t cooperative with low-density volumes, but I got there. It’ll be interesting to see if it helps!
I couldn’t have imagined this three years ago, when, as a very new spinner, I joined my first TdF, but I have blown all my expectations out of the water!
My TdF25 aim was to work through a 400g 75% Hebridean/25% bio-nylon blend, with a couple of fractal spins as palate cleansers. I thought this would take me all of TdF and maybe Tour des Femmes too. However, I blasted through all the Hebridean blend midway though the second week.
So I added another 400g blend of 75% Herdwick/25% bio-nylon to my task list. And last night – or possibly early this morning – I plied the last two bobbins of that!
I only finished one of the fractal spins. I intended to continue through Tour des Femmes anyway, so I’ll work on the second braid, plus a third that showed up in the mail last week.
What has stunned me is the sheer quantity I’ve spun, without pushing myself hard. On my first TdF, I learned that some people’s goal was to spin as many yards or metres as the cyclists covered in miles or kilometres, calculated in either completed yarn, or as individual singles+plying. “Huh”, thought I. “I’ll never get anywhere near that!” So here are my data for TdF25:
Hebridean/bio-nylon: Completed yarn = 1091.2m; 2 singles+ply = 3273.6m
3-ply Fractal “Mulberry”: Completed yarn = 200.6m; 3 singles+ply = 802.4m
I haven’t had time yet to measure the Herdwick blend, but it must be at least as long as the Shetland blend, as it wanted to spin up finer. So a guess-timate of my totals is 2331.8m in completed yarns, and 7156m as separate singles + the plying.
This year’s Tour de France covers 3,338.8 km. Ahahaha!
Also, a pic of Sir Lasair in full winter plumage as penance for blowing my own trumpet here!
I did indeed race through my Hebridean/bionylon blend which I thought would take up the whole of TdF! By Monday I had 6 skeins plied, then washed and thwacked on Tuesday, and drying since. I suppose I could have measure the length, but I want to put them all on a single cone using my Royal cone winder – and the cone-hats have yet to arrive.
So, that stalled, I hoked out another 400g sock blend, Herdwick/bionylon. I wanted thick welly socks, but the Herdy isn’t cooperating, as I believe is normal for the breed. Instead of a Sport-cum-DK weight, it is stubbornly coming in as Fingering when 2-plied. It’s a bit like spinning Brillo pads, so hopefully they’ll be sturdy even if thin. In the background are a couple of blackcurrant liqueurs, vodka and whisky, which I started the same day! I just have one dwarf blackcurrant bush. This year it produced over 2kg of fruit!
I finished the first fractal spin yesterday! The bobbins are waiting to be plied, and Sir Lasair Lothbrok the Loud approves 🙂
I’ve plied and skeined the first 2 bobbins of Hebridean/bio-nylon!
They still need to be washed and thwacked, after which I’ll measure the length.
I mentioned that I’m drafting the fibre in a crippled Long Draw, so I’m expecting a fluffier yarn. As result, I expect the plied yarn to be thicker than normal sock yarn. This is fine because I’m envisioning Sport or DK-weight welly socks, not dress-shoe socks. These socks are going to be warm.
The blend is a custom blend that I ordered from World of Wool – 80% natural Hebridean, 20% black bio-nylon. It’s quite soft, but has a sturdy feel too it. I’m hoping the bio-nylon adds more strength. I am producing fairly consistent singles, after a wobbly start. I think once washed and thwacked, any inconsistency will disappear…
Yesterday I filled roughly half an EEW 6 bobbin with my Hebridean blend top! I was using a mongrel long draw: partly English, partly supported (mainly to coax more fibre into the thread when it was getting too fine), and not all that long due to my osteoarthritis. I call it my Cripple Crutch Drag Til It Hurts Draw…
These bobbins are BIG. They can hold 200g (8oz for the colonials) of singles. That means there’s close to 100g on it already. I bought 500g of this blend originally, and spun a sample to see what it was like. The sample is somewhere in my completed-spins bin. The bag of fibre now weighs around 300g, minus the sample and what’s on the bobbin. I thought it would take all of TdF, including the Tour Des Femmes, to slog through this fibre, but I’ve spun about 20% of it in a few hours, and have a (presumably) 100g sample already done??? This does not compute… I’m going to have to re-jig my TdF goals if this keeps up.
I also made a start on my 3-ply fractal spin on Blaise, my Herring wheel. That was not as epic as the Shetland. The fibre, which is sumptuous, is a bit compacted from being in the braid, so it’s fighting me all the way so far – snapping, not coming out easily despite pre-drafting, and of course I’m not used to the side-to-side drafting necessary to maintain colour separation – I’ve only done one fractal spin before. Blaise can be a little temperamental, too. Sometimes she sings along producing invisible gossamer strands fit for an emperor, then suddenly it’s DK singles or nothing and don’t even think about plying – this lady is not for turning (anti-clockwise).
I should add something about the decision to do a 3-ply fractal spin. There are basically 2 reasons:
So obviously, it was a thoroughly-researched, analytically considered, and deliberative choice, as is usual for me.
Stop laughing, there at the back!
I did consider dividing the 2nd length into 2, and the 3rd into 4, before wising up. Instead, Bobbin 2 will consist of 3 x 1/6ths, and Bobbin 3 will have 3 x 1/9ths, as is tradition.
*: This is often the case with commercial combed top. The mills have 3, umm, extruders where the final top is spat out. These are positioned close together in a triangular shape, so the top comes out as one length, even though it’s really 3. IYSWIM.
This is a long whinge. I wouldn’t bother reading it, if I were you. There’s some Tour de Fleece stuff at the bottom, if you must.
How time flies when you aren’t having any fun at all in any way, shape or form…
I came here to talk about my 3rd Tour de Fleece and 1st John Arbon Textiles Virtual Open Mill Weekend, which both start today, only to discover that my last post was from my 1st TdF and its aftermath. And I am no further forward with my plans…
I do have more wheels! A chair wheel in need of TLC, a brand-new Kromski Fantasia, and an EEW Fold which hasn’t arrived yet – it’s shipping in March 2026, all proceeding to plan. I’ve also acquired an Ashford Loom at WonderWool, which is still in its box. I’ll probably do individual posts on these. Something to spur me on to write here.
The Cat Distribution System initially tried to overwhelm me, then decided I was an unfit cat-mom. As of my last post, I had two cats – my little old lady tabby Deasa, and new kitten Blimey. Later, they were joined by Lasair, a vicious feral who I think must be Blimey’s dad, and NosferCatu, a tuxedo kitten with 2 thin white stripes under his nose which looked like Nosferatu the vampire’s teeth. Truly, I was blessed.
Then, Blimey did not return for his evening feed one day. I went looking for him, and found him curled up in a barn, dead. No sign of injury or illness. He just went for a catnap and never woke up.
I was barely over that when Nos disappeared. I advertised on the usual Facebook community sites, to no avail. Then, almost 3 months later, a local animal sanctuary posted a photo of “Mack”, who was about to go to his “furever home”. It was Nos, almost full-grown. I contacted them immediately, with photos of Nos, asking if it was possible that their local cat-catcher (my neighbour) had brought him in. They replied quickly, saying that he had been captured in different town nearly 30 miles away. I was crushed. I wouldn’t have demanded him back or interfered with his adoption, but it would have been a comfort to know he was safe and loved. Then, my sister pointed out how friendly Nos was, how adventurous, curious, and utterly without fear of strangers he was: was it possible that he’d jumped into one of the many delivery vans that came to the house, and only escaped in the other town? Or could he have approached and been taken by a stranger, only to escape or be abandoned by them? I’m now convinced that Mack is Nos, and hope he’s happy in his new home. But I miss him so much…
They say that troubles come in 3s. One day, Deasa came home from checking on the neighbour’s sheep, crying to be let in. She normally jumps through an open window, so this was strange. When I picked her up, she screamed. Both her back feet were bloody, and looked like they were missing chunks. The vet – a girl I was at school with – said several of her toes were gone, and it looked like she might have gnawed through some of them. She thought Deasa might have been caught in a mink trap, and had freed herself to come back to me. She would have had to have both paws amputated, followed by months of physiotherapy, with no guarantee she’d ever walk again. So I said goodbye to my little old lady, howling like a baby. It was the first time in 20 years that I shed tears – I actually thought I’d lost the ability, possibly because of some of the meds I take (it’s a side effect of several). I had her cremated, and plan to sprinkle her ashes near the sheep that so fascinated her. When I can let her go…
So now, I only have the grouchy feral, Lasair. He comes and goes, but is far from the bundle of growls and claws that accidentally got stuck in the Mighty Offspring’s bedroom. He is now a big soft puss who tangles my feet, and pretends to be a widdle kitty who just wants scritches and noms, complete with a fake little squeaky miaow that he can’t quite manage with his natural basso profundo voicebox. He even rolls over for belly scratches, but when I oblige he reverts to the Mighty Hunter and tries to murder my hand. He’ll never sleep next to me like Deasa, sit on my shoulder like Blimey, or pat my face to wake me like Nos, but he does sit in my lap to be brushed, and he allows me to knit or spin without attacking my wool, so there’s that…
Somewhere in the middle of all that, family shit happened. The Mighty Offspring had made the decision to do his A Levels in Belfast, switching the custody from weeks with me, weekends with his dad to weeks with his dad and weekends with me. I was not happy with this, for several reasons.
First and foremost, his school had all his supports in place – a personal Teaching Assistant, a laptop to do his school work on, accommodations for his examinations, etc., etc. The Further Education college he planned to do his A Levels at would have none of these, and probably would only have them in place just in time for his his A2 finals (as it happens, I was right – the only thing they managed was to arrange for him to do his exams on a laptop). But he particularly wanted to go there because they offered a psychology A Level, which he couldn’t do at school. Unfortunately, not enough people signed up for psych to run the course, so he ended up taking 3 courses that he could have done here…
Secondly, I was uneasy about him living the bulk of his time with his father. His father is basically a “kept man”: he lives with – and off – his girlfriend, who is fairly well off. However, I’ve often had the impression that she … was not entirely happy to have the MO as part of the package. This impression increased when he was trapped in Belfast during the first lockdown, before the government allowed children in shared custody arrangements to travel between parents. From what MO told me, she basically ignored him, apart from when he did something “wrong” in her eyes, like put dishes away in the wrong cupboard, when she screamed at him. Tensions continued to rise when he was studying up in Belfast – not helped by a long period of hospitalisation for his dad, when they were on their own in the house. MO was also gaining friends in Belfast, and going out with them at weekends instead of coming to me, which probably didn’t help.
Well, his AS Level results were awful – of course, with no support. So he repeated the year, switching from Economics to Business Studies. Then, 5 weeks before his AS exams, his dad, just out of hospital and at his girlfriend’s instigation, told him to move out in 4 weeks. Then, kicked him out, despite him not having found anywhere to live.
Yes, my former husband made his only (acknowledged) child – autistic, learning disabled and VERY young for his age – homeless.
I cannot express how this makes me feel. I grew up in a household and family that included foster children – both my grandmother’s and my father’s. Previously fostered children, now adults, were regular visitors. And when the state began taking more responsibility for orphans and there was no longer any great need for foster carers, our home became the go-to place for local children who were on the outs with their own parents. My sister-in-law was one of those kids, along with her brother. We never turned anyone away. And no matter how much I or my siblings argued with our parents, or how much we disappointed them, even hated them at times, we always knew that we would NEVER be one of those kids.
And that cunt threw my baby on the streets.
Not giving me a heads-up so I could collect him and bring him home, not asking his huge family all over Belfast to take him in in the short term – nothing. He. Put. Him. Out.
I have never wished a long, painful death on anyone in my life, till now. I have never wanted to deliver that long, painful death with my own hands. I have never hated anyone like this. Reader, I fucking married that bastard. LOVED him. Even when he chose alcohol over us, I tried to keep him in my life for our son’s sake, tried to keep things friendly. I thought, bar the alcoholism, that we were on the same page, had the same basic values…
So I did not know when exactly he had to be out, as neither would pick up the phone or respond to messages (I think his dad went on holiday after kicking him out, and MO might have been scared to talk or had no phone credit/power). Finally his dad responded that he was couch-surfing with friends, maybe in Portadown. I tried the police, but they weren’t interested as MO was over 18. An ex-cop friend helped with some contacts. I scoured social media, where I could at least see that he’d logged in every day or so. I contacted his friends, though none knew where he was…
Three months.
Eventually, he responded to say he’d found a room – an over-priced room – not far from where he was living with his dad. Of course, he hadn’t sat his exams – or contacted the college to explain – and had no plans to return to college. He was looking for work, with no success. I wanted to get in the car, drive up and take him home. Try to figure out where he could go from that. But he’s an adult, and he wants his freedom. I messed up at his age, and there’s no way I’d have wanted my parents to step in and try to fix things for me, so… Messing up was one of the best things that happened to me – I got slapped in the face by some Real Life, and learned from it. How could I deny MO the same experience?
And it’s kind-of worked out. He hasn’t found a job, or voluntary work, but he’s getting by. He’s come to the realisation that he should have stayed in school after his GCSEs, and considered moving home. But he has friends, and he’s happy. He is thinking of getting his own place nearer the city centre, which would make finding a job easier, and maybe doing an Access course for university. Or, just working.
But: TdF.
I have filled half a bobbin on my EEW, Icarus, with a Shetland/bio-nylon blend which is destined for sock knitting, while watching the 1st day of the John Arbon Virtual Open Weekend. This is going to be a heads-down, plough-through spin of 500g. Then, for funzies, I have:
Both of those will probably be woven into shawls. More of that, ah, er, sometime.
And I have completely lost my mind and decided to learn NEEDLELACE! Yes, the stuff made with those footery wee sewing needles! At my age, and with my eyesight! A community worker I know asked if I could do lace making, and I mentioned the lace crochet I could do. It turns out she has some contacts with a lacemaking club over the other side of the lough who make Inishmacsaint lace. Now, fromresearching my family tree, I know I have some ancestors from Inishmacsaint parish, and I’d heard of Inishmacsaint lace, but I hadn’t put the two facts together AND added the idea that there would STILL be lacemakers in the area. I know, I know, I’m getting old. But the CW told be there’s only a handful of these ladies, and they’re all well up in their years with no younger person interested in keeping the skill alive. Someone is writing a history of the lace, but not learning how to DO it, so she (the CW) is looking for anyone interested. My full-throated YES interrupted her offer to introduce me! However, this happened only a few weeks ago, and the group doesn’t meet during the summer…
In the meantime, I’ve been tracking down everything I can about Inishmacsaint lace – which is, pretty much nothing. I found some old letters about the lace school in Inishmacsaint, a list of students, and some invoices in the Enniskillen Museum, a blank placeholder web page on a site about Irish laces, and a small guidebook on the history of lacemaking in Ireland with a whole paragraph on the history of Inishmacsaint lace school. A few other books mention Inishmacsaint lace in passing – literally, a sentence acknowledging its existence, and nothing more. There are a few photographs on Pinterest from the now-closed Sheelin Lace Museum, none of which are clear enough to get any idea of what’s involved. There’s nothing on Youtube or in the Antique Pattern Library. It’s like Greek Fire – mentions all over the place, but no details, no recipes, and very little about what it even does.
One of the things I did discover is that it’s based on Venetian Gros Point, so that’s the direction I’m taking until the group starts up again in the autumn. I’ve found a basic how-to book, and I’m doing some practice pieces in hopes it’ll be relevant.
Still hate those footery wee needles…
Soz about the long whine. I’m just howling into the void.
It’s been a few months, but I’m still spinning every day! At least a few minutes, for Reasons (TM).
I didn’t gift myself with an Electric Eel Nano for my birthday after all. Instead, Dear Reader, I blew the Offspring’s school shoe money on a full-on EEW 6.1!! Which I have named Icarus, because it’s basically just a flyer… ta-DUM*. I had the idea of making a carrying box for it out of one of the wooden boxes I have, but that will require more mulling.
Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to gather more info on restoring the wheels I have, especially Columba Dubh, the Shiels wheel. On one trawl through YouTube, I came across this video from the old TV series Hands produced by David Shaw-Smith, which shows, in great detail, James Shiels and his son Charley making a wheel:
I think the current Donegal wheelmaker, Johnny Shiels, must be another son of James and brother of Charley, since he calls himself a 3rd generation wheelmaker.
But what interested me most is that the wheel is described as having 2 separate drive bands, one to the flyer and one to the bobbin. I had thought it was a double-drive machine, with a doubled, figure-of-eight drive band connecting to both flyer and bobbin. I haven’t heard of separate drive bands before – though admittedly I’m no expert – but it sounds like it would be a much easier proposition. There shouldn’t be any need to re-string separate drive bands when switching from spinning to plying. Hmm. I’ll have to keep this in mind for Peigín, my Wee Peggy that I’ve decided to use as a dedicated double-drive. It’s obviously not an “authentic” way to set up a (non-Shiels) double-drive machine, but the practicality is hollering at me…
And the Reasons (TM)? I haz a nu kitteh, as I believe the young people say now. The Offspring dragged me out of the house on a cold and rainy Saturday afternoon because he claimed he could hear a cat crying from the hedge across the road. I was unimpressed, as An Caitín Deasa is prone to yodelling from the fields when sighting prey AND other, usually feral cats, of which there are many in the area. But he echolocated it down to a small section and swore he could see a kitten that was “trapped”, and could I go down the other side of the hedge and see if I could free it. Aye, right, sez I – you’re just a big Jessie like your dad, too scared of spiders and worms to go into the hedge yourself, so you make your poor old crippled Mammie go in instead. And lo, on the other side of the hedge there was a massive sheuch where I went to my undertakings in cold slimy mud, and the feckin wee cat wasn’t trapped at all and ran off…
So, a brief clean-up later, and I was back – this time on the road-side of the hedge, the one without a sheuch – leaning in as far as I could get, with a half-sachet of catfood in one hand, trying to tempt the kitten to come close enough to grab with the other hand. Did I mention this hedge is basically whins and briars? It took about an hour, in the rain, and one failed grab, and many many scratches, but I finally got this ungrateful ball of hiss and claws:
and this:
His name is Bladhm, meaning blaze, cos he’s fire-coloured. It’s pronounced /blime/, as in “blimey”. He is immensely fluffy – must have some Maine Coon in him – incredibly affectionate and playful, and thinks he is a parrot:
I assumed he was feral, but he knew how to use the litterbox straightaway. Also, once he got over his fright and got some food into him (not to mention being so easily attracted by Eau de Catfood on my hands), he very quickly became happy around us hoomans. So… is he an unwanted MC cross or “below-standard” pedigree who was just dumped by the breeder? You hear of such things. But no matter. He has a home now where he will be loved.
He also LOVES fiber and wool, and has appropriated some waste fleece for himself. Sometimes he sleeps on it, sometimes he rolls about on it ecstatically, and sometimes he murders it to death. He will also go after any wool – any animal fibre at all, really – that I’m trying to spin or knit.
Reasons (TM) indeed.
*- I noticed there’s an e-spinner brand called Daedalus, and made the same joke on an Insta thread about it, but got only po-faced responses about branding. Not everyone gets my sense of humour! Or classical references, apparently.
thornmaiden.com 