Fleece P0rn

A lot has been going on but not much to show for. Spinningwise I am still chugging along through the cria-fleece. Delicious result, so soft and so beautiful all the little shades of beige to blonde in that fleece but such a nightmare to spin. I didn't have that many breaks in my yarn not even when i started spinning and i had not clue. But i am past the halfway point.
Plying is something I am dreading since there were so many breaks spinning i dunno if the plying will have breaks too.

Knitting wise I finished the Ishbel but it isn't washed and blocked yet so no photos yet. I hope perhaps after this weekend but I am looking towards and extremely busy weekend. It is race weekend (Formula1) so that is my greatest passion (after my wife)and i will be up early to watch qualification on saturday and race on sunday.

Saturday we are going to a bunch of agricultural places since it is a national open day at agriculture companies/farms etc. We always go and it always ends up to be such a surprise and great fun.

Sunday I am going to pick up some alpaca fleeces, from the people the last 3 came from. These are the show fleeces they used in the dutch international alpaca show last week.

I think there are 4 in total and here are some fleece p0rn pictures to make you all drool.

This is a white fleece of a very good stallion, only came in 4th but it looks deliciously soft and nice long staples. There is a lot of it too since he is a big boy too.


This is the most deepest natural dark black fleece i have seen, gorgeous and it didn't win first price for nothing... oh mine all mine :) This will end up to be something so gorgeous, I cannot wait to see what I can make with it for my wife or kids.


This is beautiful chocolate colored one that also took first price.

Next to these there is also a beige fleece that i think won 4th as well. So all of these are top of the line fleeces and will keep me spinning for the rest of the year. At least the next couple of weeks will be spend washing all the dust out of these fleeces.

Cheap Order and the cria-fleece challenge

Last week when I had finished the drops triangular shawl for my wife Delphine immediately startet haunting me for some more knitted stuff, stuff wiht that fuzzy inside daddy was the request. So I went online since my handspun isnt soft enough to wear next to skin to shop for some yarn.
I found a site which was destashing all their Drops yarns for 50% off. So here is the "haul".


Four skeins of this light orange alpaca, which will turn out to be two pair of socks for her.


Three skeins of this creamy white vivaldi mohair wool which is around 280 meters per skein and i had half a skein left from a previous project, this will turn into a bolero or vest, if people have suggestions for something around 1000 meters of yarn for a 7-8 year old girl, please share because i am desperately searching for something girly and cut to make out of this.


These beads were bought on a sale a while ago but never got around to post them, solid colored green ones and seethrough green ones with a silver core which are gorgeous, i have 100 grams of each in total and one is 5/0 and other 6/0 (which means nothing to me). I was hoping to one day spin yarn thin enough to make an aeolian and use these beads, for now they are stashed.

Then after I spun the last bobbin of the fleece I purchased last year and ended up wiht a perfectly soft white skein of 450 meters of around 25 wpi yarn 2ply, which I am extremely happy with) I have now ventured into the fleeces I bought on my birthday. First I really wanted to try the cria-fleece.
This is so very very hard, the staple length is only 1 to 1.5 inches and it is so slippery. At first I tried spinnig from the fold which is impossible. So I ended up combing it loose as can be seen in the picture. The left is how it looks like washed, on the right I have combed it all and spinning works pretty ok but is a slow and tedious process. The result so far is a very very soft single in a gorgeous color. There are some color differnces in the fleece from a hot chocolate brown to a blonde color. Due to the staple length the singles aren't that uniform in thickness but I am hoping that after plying it works out and turns out to be a useable yarn.

I have only 400 grams of this but that might be about the amount my patience can take. Due to the lack of bobbins I need to finihs this fleece before I can dive into the dark chocolate showfleece to spin (600 grams), but that is a post for another day.

Leaves me to close with a picture of the spun cria-fleece......

First FO of 2010

The new triangular shawl has been knit, blocked and finished off the loose end and then handed over to my wife to wear and make it look good. Which she does fabulously. I love the colour and so adore the whole project coming together. The further along you get with the the more mysterious they become as they get bunged up on your needles.

On to the next one, I did order some more wool to make something for a very jealous 7 year old.