Tour de Fleece - Weeks 1 and 2 (July 1-14)

I got off to a really good start with the Tour de Fleece.  I spent a couple of days playing with my drop spindle before I got down to my more major spinning projects - spinning my two braids of Merino in the "Pansy" colorway and about 1 1/2 lbs of "purple encased" Coopworth wool.  (The purple is "gently" encasing the natural colored Coopworth.) I started with the Merino...

July 4th, I really got down to spinning on my wheel and became a spinning fool!   I had two braids of this gorgeous Merino in a Pansy colorway.   My favorite pansies are the purple ones with the bright yellow eye in the middle.   Just looking at this colorway makes me smile.   It's such a happy color....and truly makes me think of pansies..

 I spun the first braid during the first week of Tour de Fleece.   I treated each braid differently - I'm thinking that if I make a scarf or shawl with the singles I create plied together, the long color pattern will repeat about every 1/4 length of the finished yarn.   Then in each of those fourths, there will be about 5 shorter repeats of the colors.  Of course, that's only if I split each just right.

I split it into about 16-20 strips down the entire length of the braid.  I found it very easy to spin nice and thin, and the spinning itself went rather fast.  I couldn't wait to start on the second braid.

Week 2, I spun the second braid.  I decided to split that braid into 4 strips that ran the entire length of the braid - much thicker strips than the ones I created from the first braid.   The thicker strips weren't quite as easy to spin as I had to be conscious of the amount of fiber I fed in, else it would be too thick.  The previous braid was soooo easy to spin by comparison! 

I was a bit surprised when I was done spinning - it looked like the two singles were wildly different on the bobbin.   Both braids weighed the same, and I believed that my spinning was just as thin....or at least close.  However, as you can see, the two bobbins are clearly different in size. 

Of course, I wrote off the HUGE difference in the two bobbins as being almost 100% caused by the yarn that was on the bobbin when I started.   I had quite a bit of orange singles on the bobbin that I didn't wind off before starting to spin.   I assumed (and you all know you should NEVER assume.....) that was the reason that my second bobbin looked so "empty" - it had been spun on an empty bobbin, so there was no previous yarn to "plump up" the results.