A Wild Librarian Appears

TdF Day 3: Mystery Brown Wool Spun Thin

TdF Day 3: Andean Ply

Yeah, you can tell my spindle roots when I stop to ply things on my wheel. Despite the pictures, it still takes two hands to manage the singles even when they're literally attached to my arm, but it's honestly worth the extra effort of winding to then have the finished two-ply end perfectly with no extra bits left.

The wool/bast fiber mix on top left is from the Camaj mystery bag. It's such a fascinating texture. I'm excited to see how it looks after it's washed since bast fibers usually take significantly different finishing methods than wool.

The silk hanky and leftover white floof of the other two-ply was from leftover guild events and workshops. We had an art yarn workshop recently with Dirty Girl Yarns that left me with an abundance of dyed locks, silk hankies, and odds and ends of fiber. I dumped it all in with the mystery grab bag and have been just kind of screwing around ever since.

TdF Day 3: Thick Floof

Found a lovely floofy white roving in my grab bag and tried a combo long/short draw from Abby Franquemont's Drafting DVD (thank you local guild library) that made everything go SUPER quick. It was a little unnerving holding my hands next to each other and basically having a super-wide drafting zone, but I did enjoy it once I got going.

FDF 2026: Worsted vs Woolen

This year at our local Agricultural Fair (aka Field Days, thus the FD Fleece) we've decided to use a local fleece rather than anything harvested at the 4-H tent. It's just way easier to pre-wash and bring the clean fleece for processing than it is to try scouring in the middle of a fairgrounds.

I have been washing small handfuls of this lovely East-Friesan-Romney fleece and spinning it up for display at Field Days.

Since I've been studying different kinds of draw I decided to give my best shot at a true worsted and true woolen. The worsted got hand-combed and spun short backward draw on my regular Lendrum flyer head. The woolen got my best attempt at hand carding before it was long drawn onto my Lendrum quill. I am not experienced at carding, but I think it still demos the difference pretty effectively?

The woolen is the fuzzy one, the worsted the sleek one. It's so cool how the same fleece can make such different yarn! I'm looking forward to showing it off to our tent visitors.

So I borrowed this Spinner's Book of Yarn Designs book from my local library's ILL and holy crap it's so good. I never set out to do art yarn, but after a couple years of trying for fine, even work it's so nice to screw around with different techniques that very much stray outside the norm.

Wool is mystery brown and mystery orange from the stash. Orange is s-spun single thick-and-thin, brown is s-spun as fine as I could on this particular flyer. They're plied with the brown tensioned and orange spiraled around it.

I had plenty of leftover brown, so I proceeded to do the same a zillion more times with various sample floofs I had kicking around.

None of this is from TdF, but I realize I keep mentioning this book and its techniques so figured I should go back to the start of my obsession with it.

Short interlude from TdF to show off some fun crochet I've been playing around with. I recently read through Crochet Master Class and was fully blown away by the work of Ferosa Harold. I decided to try applying her painted crochet method to my regular doily making and, low-and-behold, I kind of love it?

Still working out the kinks of picking the right colors/figuring out the most effective number of rows to work up before stepping up the gradient, but it's got me working lace for the first time in AGES.

TdF Day 2: Silk Hankie and Teeswater-Cotswald Core-less Core-spun

That's a mouthful.

After finishing the weird wool/flax mix (right hand bobbin) I found some mostly-combed floof from a previous 4-H/Field Days Fleece. It's from a Teeswater Cotswald sheep named Finn. I had been playing with sink hankies for the first time so I figured, why not wing it with something. I held it up to the leader along with the floof and basically just did a core-less core-spun with the floof as the core, wrapped to varying degrees of success with the hanky silk.

TdF Day 2: Wool Flax Mix

TdF Day 2: Teal Pink

Yeah, there's no plan with this one beyond being sick of all the pink. I had some un-combed/carded dyed fleece in a bag of leftovers from an art yarn workshop, it looked good with pink, so it got spun up with minimal processing and given the same double ply treatment as the lock-spun. I actually like this one better? I dunno. Maybe it's the color combo.

TdF Day 2: Lock Spun and Pink Singles

I've had my eye on lock-spinning (aka Wolfspun for older-school folk) for a while now, but have been a bit too intimidated to try it. Enter TdF, where I'm literally throwing texture at the wall.

I fluffed the cut ends of two different colors of dyed locks I found in the stash and spun them roughly together. It was... fine. Some looked a little loose, though, so I plied it one way with leftover pink S singles, then the other way with leftover Z singles. It made this cool chaining effect in places where the plies neatly landed on either side of the original lock-spun, but overall the effect is pretty meh. I think I probably should have stuck with the simpler lock-spun.

TdF Day 2: ALL the Reds

TdF Day 2: Snuggles and FDF Floof

This was a nice recovery day for us after the general chaos of the Day 1 holiday. My dog had ambitions for cuddling and, luckily, I have a single treadle that allows that sort of thing.

This is part of our Field Days Fleece (FDF 2026) that I've been playing with for the last few months in anticipation for our local agricultural fair week of showing off our skills. It's from one of my friend's East-Friesan-Romney Mix sheep that got sheared this spring.

This has been scoured in dawn and hand combed. (Finished hand combing it on Day 1, but forgot to get photos. My bad.)

TdF Day 1: Baby's First Boucle Attempt

I also went and added a Z-ply locking strand back on my first attempt at boucle. I won't really know how close it is to boucle until it's been washed but... it could have been worse?

All wool (with some silk mixed into the thinner pink/white variegeted strands) from the Camaj grab bag. One S-ply single of grey/pink wrapped around an S-ply pink-n-white single in a counter-clockwise ply. Then I went back and added a Z-ply single while spinning clockwise. Consistency was NOT my friend, but it was still a decent learning experience.

Tour de Fleece Day 1: Orange Wool, Blue Silk Nepps

At last, the start of the actual TdF! Since so much of it was outside I grabbed a drop spindle from the Heneke estate (same as where my Great Wheel came from) and a couple samples from the Camaj grab bag I've been working through. This orange with bits of blue and white silk came out so dang pretty! (Don't mind the random bit of yarn--just a leftover from my project bin that temporarily hitched a ride.)

TdF Day 0: aka, we have zero chill, day two. This was still deep into a heat wave, thus the flash in our dark, miserable little cave of sweat.

Used the pink singles and this variegated pink/grey to try my hand at boucle. The humidity probably wasn't helping, but still--it's not boring yarn, that's for sure. Shown on the bobbin BEFORE it got locked down, since I didn't get to it until the marathon of TdF Day 1.

TdF Day -1: Pink/White Singles Happy Tour de Fleece! I had zero chill so here's my TdF Day -1 entry for some pink roving I had kicking around.

I went for one super fine single (spun Z) and one slightly thicker single (spun s). I've spent too much time staring at Sarah Anderson's Spinner's Book of Yarn Designs and got it in my head that I wanted to try a boucle so... yeah. Expect a lot of little textured samples this first week of tdf.