Open crochet

If cycling means spinning then golf must mean crochet, yes? After a slowish start when I couldn't quite recall how to make a half treble crochet decrease and a couple of shaky places where I ran out of chains before I'd made enough stitches I've been zipping along on the Marakoopa scarf whilst watching the golfer's battle the elements at Royal Birkdale. It's one of those annoying secret projects so there'll be no bloggage but it's Ravelled here.

I've felt somewhat shamefaced when reading everyone else's Tour de Fleece posts since I've really not been recording my progress. Still I have continued trundling along towards the back of the peloton and yesterday I wound just under 100g of alpaca singles onto the bobbin (getting halfway through the fibre at the two-thirds stage is not perhaps a great sign). It was going to be a round 100 but when the yarn broke for the fourth time I took it as a sign and quit.





Having an empty spindle meant that I could have a quick go at spinning up the samples of Shetland humbug and camel from the Handweavers' Studio. The Shetland spun up beautifully. I split the top into cream and brown and spun it into a single with all the cream first, then all the brown. Then I Andean plied it, one ply of cream, one of brown. I was really chuffed that I only ended up with 1 foot of all cream yarn at the end.



The camel was much more tricky. It's very soft and fine and an absolute arse to draft without getting lumps. Still, at least it doesn't spit at you whilst you're doing it and like everything it looks much more impressive when plied.



I've now tried spinning eight types of fibre (silk, mohair, camel, alpaca, merino, shetland, suffolk and blue faced leicester) and I have to say that for ease of spinning and sheer loveliness the biffle is still my favourite. I can't wait to order some more from Wingham and get started on my giant blanket. I've just got to get through that other 100g of alpaca first.