Tag: TdF Page 5 of 8

Today is the first day of the high mountain rides, and I feel like I’ve achieved that 14.3 km climb up the 6.8% grade.

I finally finished spinning the Targhee/Clun Forest singles. It took 6 days to spin a pound, but it’s finally done. I spun a bit on the Rest Day as well. I can now finally move on to the plying.

I started with the Judith Kate by Will Taylor, but the weight of the bobbins (these jumbo tigerwood bobbins are heavy!) and the angle, it was just too much grab for my softly spun singles. I kept breaking one of the singles. (Okay, it actually was drifting apart.) So I moved them off onto the kate that came with the Schacht. All 3 large bobbins will only fit if they are offset in the kate. It wouldn’t work well if these bobbins were completely full though, because there’s a bit of an overlap.

Hopefully, a couple of days of plying and I can move on to the next fiber!

Still plugging along. Not much to show, although I did change to a new bobbin. Not because the bobbin is full, but I want to spread the pound of fiber across at least 3 bobbins, since the end result will be a 3-ply yarn.

Sorry if your feeds are all messed up. I messed up the Stage numbering and went back to edit.

60/40 Targhee/Clun Forest

The next few posts are going to be slow slogs and likely no pictures. Why? The picture on the right should give you an idea…

A full pound of a 60/40 Targhee/Clun Forest blend that Kathleen brought me in April. And some of you will recognize that it’s been blended and prepared by Morro Fleece Works, my favorite processor.

My plan is to spin this woolen for a 3 ply fingering weight yarn. The final intent is for a California weight sweater. I will augment this with the red Mountain Colors Targhee, purchased at CNCH. The red will be the accent color in another yoked sweater.

Hopefully, the spinning for this won’t take too long since I’m using modified long draw to keep it as lofty as possible. (This should be pretty easy to do with the pin drafted roving.) The singles will be lightly spun with a medium/medium-firm ply. The final yarn (and sweater) should be light and warm with a really soft hand.

Control Card

The single is about 32-36 wpi and the 3-ply will be about fingering weight.