Tour de Fleece

Oh man oh man, do I have blog backlog to take care of! That's one of the big problems with working freelance; all the interesting things happen at once. It's either feast or famine! So this week, I will attempt to wrap up:
a--the Tour de Fleece
b--my amazing and wonderful week teaching at the Medomak Fiber Arts Retreat
and c--the privilege and honor of my men's vest design, Delius, appearing in the Fall Twist Collective
(and maybe d--, where there's a chance I have another design coming out this week. Who knows!)

To keep things chronological and preserve my sanity, I'll start with the Tour de Fleece. My plan was to get through three separate projects, but for some reason the first project ended up taking 19 of the 20 days of the Tour. I guess spinning cobweb-weight 100% tussah silk will do that. . .

This isn't even the halfway point. Sigh.

This project was a real test in perseverance for me--I knew I wanted the final product, but goodness, getting to that point was a slog! The sense of accomplishment when it was finally plied and off the bobbin, though, was pretty amazing.

the finished product!

When I finally got it off the bobbin and counted, the realization started to hit me as to why it was taking so long. The final estimate is around 2,000 yds/6 ounces of silk. Whew.

The best part? I get to knit it now! Here's the very squishy, very ripply, very weird-looking beginning of Herbert Niebling's Lyra (rav link).

Wish me luck for the remaining 150 rows. . .