Tour de Fleece... day 4 and 5

Now that we're in the middle of the work week the best I can manage is spindle spinning while waiting for the buses and trains. I'm spinning on the platform at 23rd & Broadway while waiting for the N or R after work, and I'm getting some twist in at Bedford & N. 7th while waiting for the B62. I'm also spinning when I get home at night. It's a good way to unwind.

Yesterday and today's progress is shown below. Although it doesn't look it there really is more singles on the spindle than the pic I took over the weekend. The picture also shows the finished 2-ply yarn. This stuff will weave or knit up into a fabric with beautiful drape.

I will continue with the spindle for the rest of the week and this weekend I'll be able to treadle the wheel again.

I've now made it one of my goals to finish this ball of merino top during TDF 2011.

Tour de Fleece... day 3

I finished the white Shetland today--got one small hank out of the remainder. Hopped right into the grey Shetland, picture follows. I also did more Merino on the spindle.

Tomorrow is a work day, the first for me since TDF started and I don't know how much I'm going to get done. I suspect that during the week the bulk of my TDF spinning will be spindle spun. I can spin while waiting for the bus.

I have a wonderful story about waiting for the B62 on Bedford & 7th around 10:30 pm one night last year. I was spinning some beautiful multi-shade green and multi-shade yellow top on my spindle in front of the pizza place at the bus stop and a young Irish man came up to me and inquired about my spinning. He fell in love with the yarn. He said he'd very much love to have the yarn I was spinning but understood that it wasn't finished yet. We had a really nice chat and then he kissed me on both cheeks European style. How romantic. Swoon. I got all warm and fuzzy over it. He was cute as a button! :)

Today's grey and white Shetland:

Soap...

I took them out of their wrap today and they look good. Now they'll sit on a shelf for 3 weeks to cure. Basically I think that means the excess water evaporates out of them.

The results of the different size molds: the small size was very hard to unmold. It was a bit of a struggle on a few of them. The medium size was pretty easy to unmold this being partly due to their shallow depth. The large size was easy to unmold. I did put them in the freezer for half an hour before unmolding.

I'm really happy about this and can't wait to make more. Enfleurage, I'm coming to visit!

Tour de Fleece 2011...

I'll be posting daily pictures of my Tour de Fleece spinning. Yesterday (day 1) was the Shetland. Today I spun more of the Merino that I had set aside a while back. Very thin single will be 2 plyed. Tomorrow (if the weather is nice) I plan to dye the wool-silk blend which will be my main TDF project.

This merino is very beautiful. Spinning it so thin comes with a few challenges... it's almost inevitable that I'll drop the spindle once or twice in a session. Sometimes the fibers slide past each other so fast... swoosh... and it's on the floor! :)

The merino:

The wool/silk batts that will be my main TDF projects before dying:

Soap...

Ooooh.... I'm excited! Really excited!

Today is the day that I set out to whip up a batch of soap. My very first batch. It's a holiday weekend so I'm not feeling rushed at all, and the weather was lovely. A tad humid but not too bad. I experienced a little anxiety to start--as usual when tackling something new sans an instructor being present. Instructions like 'stir until trace' isn't quite as precise as, say, 'heat to 98 degrees'. The latter doesn't faze me a bit, the former? Eh... apprehension that comes with the unknown. Gotta go with it though, what's the worst that could happen? A failed batch of soap? But I wanted it to come out well!

I am happy to report that everything seems to be going well so far. I won't know for sure until Monday afternoon--theoretically, but I'm 95% confident at the moment. I managed to recognize trace when it happened and I had plenty of time to be on the lookout for it. It took somewhere between 40 minutes to an hour of stirring to reach it. (I don't know for sure because I left my watch at my cello teacher's place last Tuesday!) It most certainly was trace and it was very exciting when I realized that it would happen!

After pouring the soap into molds they have to be wrapped in a towel and left alone for 48 hours after which time they can be unmolded and left out to cure for 3 weeks. However :) I just went out to the back yard to ply the Shetland I spun this afternoon and could not resist peeking at the soap. Happy, happy! It is firm. I don't really think I need to wait until Monday (but I will) because this was a small batch--only 1 pound. The instructions said the small amount could be poured directly into final molds and because of that I think it is setting up quicker.

From what I've read it seems molds are usually used for milled soap, but since the instructions mentioned pouring directly into molds I was happy to oblige. I bought 3 molds--a large, medium and small. I want to see how the soap will come out in the three different sizes. The large has a fleur-de-lis decoartion, the medium a floral, and the small are quaint little ribbed mounds.

So what is trace? It's when the soap starts to leave a raised trail when you lift the spoon out of it and dribble a bit across the surface.

The soap I decided to make is oatmeal and I added a little bit of cinnamon essential oil. Here's is everything at the start. Going clockwise from the bottom left: my digital scale, a pyrex cup to mix the lye & water, palm oil, coconut oil, lye, .25 cup of oatmeal blended with 2 oz. olive oil, the big red bag that carried everything to the backyard, coffee (not for the soap), red pan to melt the oils in, plastic gloves for handling lye, pan to measure the lye in, paper towel, stirring spatula and spoon, face mask for when lye is mixed with the water:

When the lye is mixed with the water it heats way up and needs to be set aside to cool down to around 100-110 degrees. In the meantime the oil and fat has to be melted and heated to around the same temperature. I had no idea oils heated up so fast and I ended up having to stick the pan in the quick freeze for about 10 minutes to get it cooled down. When the temps are right the lye/water is added to the oils and is then stirred "until trace". This is what it looked like right after the 2 mixes were combined:

And this is what it looked like at trace just before I added the oatmeal and olive oil. It is much lighter in color and much thicker:

And here is the soap poured into the molds just before I covered them up with another towel:

And the Shetland spun this afternoon and plyed this evening? ... :)

Cello... a video progress report

Well then! Time for a little humble pie. My teacher recorded one of the exercises I learned last week. He will be doing this periodically, mostly for my benefit so I can look back and (hopefully) see my progress.

This is me after 8 months of lessons. Yes, I think it's bearable to listen to. Warning: There are a few notes to winch on. :)

I was a little uptight about being recorded but I think I'll settle into that quickly enough. There's one whole line that I bowed backwards! You'll notice my teacher says "down bow" at one point and you'll see my smile as I had already realized I was bowing in the wrong direction. Ha!

So, progress is being made. I don't yet feel that I have full use and control of my bow but it'll come I'm sure. My teacher makes it look so easy...

Cello after 8 months of lessons (Youtube)

The latest spin... spindle spun, n-ply

Just finished a bunch of Spinner's Hill top that I purchased at last fall's NY Sheep and Wool festival. It's a very nice preparation and I look forward to obtaining some more. I spindle spun this lot and did ply-on-the-fly which I love for achieving runs of color from these gorgeously colored tops.

I was filling up pretty well on my last spindle but still had about 2.5 feet of top to spin up and ply. I really didn't want to break off and end up with a very small skein left over but it was getting pretty difficult to spin with such a heavy load. So I broke off leaving a tail of 3" or so and spun the rest as an un-plied single on a separate spindle. When I got to the end of that bit I grafted the two spindles together (the twist is all going in the same direction) and finished by n-plying the single from the 2nd spindle onto the 1st and ended with a nice big hank!

Here's the 1st spindle with probably the biggest cop I've ever had on it:

And here are the finished hanks from the lot. I do love the colors: