Glaciart

Artblog of glacia-main. My livingroom is over here. Be assured that you have all my love if you like 💗 or reblog 🔁 something!

[glaciart]

Tour de Fleece - Day 22

And this concludes this years tour de fleece! I celebrated with spinning for a bit at a local café:

So, let's wrap it up. I've spun..

124m/100g 9 WPI Bergschaf 129m/100g 9 WPI South german merino 162m/100g 11 WPI "Brazilian Wool" 129m/100g 9 WPI black dyed stone sheep 167m/111g 10 WPI "The brown one" 131m/79g 10 WPI stone sheep-x Some small amount of fiber for practicing spinning with a supported spindle

All of them are 3-ply. This makes a total of 842m/590g wool spun in 22 days!

And now I should get up and regain my physical health and social life..

[glaciart]

Tour de Fleece - Day 19 - 21

We're nearing the finish line!

The "brown one" has been finished:

167m/111g (that was more than I ordered!), 10 WPI. It's fluffy and probably not very durable!

Next up is Marlow, a stonesheep mix. The wool itself is really dark for a natural colour. It's rather coarse and I got it as three batts. The batts were not in a shape where I think spinning them would be fun. So I'm running them over my combs.. just to put them in the drum carder again, because I don't like having all the short hairs at the end of my top!

Ready to spin batt from combed tops

Two singles finished so far. Downside from combing is of course that I lose material, this will rather be 75g instead of 100 in the end. Up side is, that it isn't too similar to the dyed stonesheep I also spun recently!

This will probably the last thing I will finish for this years tour de fleece. I will make another wrap-up post once I'm finished and that's about it!

[glaciart]

Tour de Fleece - Day 16-18

Brazilian Wool has been washed and put into the stash:

I really *like* it. I managed to spin this one really evenly for my skill level. Too bad it's not for the coat.

I've been spinning "the brown one" for the last few days. It's a 100g batt from a mystery breed brown coated sheep (sadly, I do not have a picture). It's not the softest, but it's also not extremely coarse. The wool itself it's a mixture of dark brown and white hairs, much like the forest sheep I've spun. It has a decent staple length and some crimp.

It spins up easily enough, but I do have to pick out VM and some lumpy bits which slows the spinning progress down a lot.

If I had to compare it to other breeds I've spun it somewhat seems to spin like Texel.

I'm about 80% done with the singles and I'll stop for today. I'm also continuing supported spindle practice at work, but it's coming along slowly.

[glaciart]

Tour de Fleece - Day 13-15

I admit, I barely spun anything on day 13. Instead I had a friend over to work on our all-stars run on Mario 64 we started after the last surgery I had. I spun about 10g maybe? on downtime.

For the weekend I went to the next bigger town and visited two dear friends of mine. I threw some wool into my drum carder beforehand so I wouldn't go there empty handed. I didn't get around much to spinning, but I did some more supported spinning practice! Somehow I got a feeling like there is no progress :(

Today I finally finished blondie here:

162m and I finally nailed the 11 WPI (unless it does some fluffing up when washing). Too bad I won't be using this in my coat after all. I learned it's actually not sorted for colour but bleached. Checks out. It feels bleached. But also quite soft for that..

[glaciart]

Tour de Fleece - Day 12

66/100g of 'brazlian wool' done! New spindle aquired! You can totally see which bobbin I spun peacefully at home and which I spun distracted at the spinning group.

Also: 9 WPI, 129m/100g Steinschaf:

This makes a total of 382m spun during tdf!

[glaciart]

Tour de Fleece - Day 9 - 11

Sorry for the delay, life has been busy!

On day 9 of this tour I have finished plying the black stonesheep. It's still out and drying since I only got around to soak it today. Meterage and WPI will be defined tomorrow, for today it's only this picture where it lookes way more blue than it actually is:

Day 10 had to be a proper rest day. Aside from traveling through the outermost northwestern part of the town from work and then to the outermost southeastern part of the town by bike while the sun lasered down on me I did meet up with friends to learn to operate my sewing machine! I can sew now!! NEW HOBBY UNLOCKED.

But practicing more on that has been postponed until after moving into my new flat.

I did not do any spinning on day 10 but I DID buy the rest of the fiber for my big coat project:

It's 100g of Texel, Bentheimer Landschaf, Rhönschaf and one mystery crossed breed!

On day 11 (that's today!) I've started spinning the package of "brazilian wool". It's very golden colored for undyed wool. I did ask in the shop if this was some special breed. They told me that in fact it's a blend of wools, sorted by colour in brazil.

Also on this pictures: Other thing that currently keeps my mind occupied.

The fiber is a little bit felted, but it spins up nicely. It's not coarse by any means but it's also certainly no merino. Sometimes I can pick out really thick hairs that feel like synthetic wire. I've spun 33g of this today and certainly will do 33g more tomorrow since it's spinning group meetup day!

[glaciart]

Tour de Fleece - Day 7 & 8

I took a little break from my daily goals yesterday but did spin some anyway - I finished bobbin #1 of the stonesheep and practiced some more supported spinning. Also the south german merino has been soaked and dried:

Looks like the bergschaf, doesn't it? It's extremely bouncy and fluffed up considerably! I missed my WPI goal again, by far v_v

Today on day 8 I spun stonesheep bobbin #2.. or so I thought. Turns out my new scale isn't the best to use with spinning fiber, I have to add 3-5g on each of the "done" bobbins. But that will be done tomorrow.

I've been significantly distraced from spinning by taking a deep dive into ao3. It feels like the pairing I'm reading currently might distract me for a while. It doesn't come at the best of times but it also feels like liquid life running through my veins after not being able to truly latch on to anything fandom-wise for a while.

[glaciart]

Tour de Fleece - Day 6

Aaaand the Merino is done! It's currently taking a bath and will be all finished tomorrow. Quite a pleasant spin!

It's 129m/100g and probably 9 WPI (once again, not as much as I had hoped).

Next up is:

Black dyed stone sheep.

Since it's dyed it probably won't end up in the coat, but I got it so I have to spin it up. The batt feels suuuuper pleasant. I love the structure of it. It's also rather soft. It's not an easy spin, but as far as the filzrausch batts I bought go, this is the best one. I'm not done with one bobbin and all in all this might take an additional day to finish

[glaciart]

Tour de Fleece - Day 4 & 5

After soaking and drying my Bergschaf yarn:

It was time for the next package: 100g South German Merino.

It was a nice feeling spinning the fiber. Soft but not too short. I did get too much twist into it at first and then changed the drive. I hope it helped. Also my scale ran out of battery so my bobbins are probably filled very unevenly :s

I didn't post anything on day 4 because it just looked exactly the same as the Bergschaf 😅 I finished spinning it on day 5 and will ply today!

[glaciart]

Tour de Fleece - Day 3

I'm making this short - I finished the Bergschaf (124m/100g) and did some more practice on a supported spindle which resulted in 18m/7g of yarn of all weights!

[glaciart]

Tour de Fleece - Day 2

Nothing too special today. I had plenty of time to spin but also played some Heroes of Might and Magic 3, too..

I got the second spool for the Bergschaf done, practiced some supported spinning (ruining pretty fiber) and even combed and spun a bit of my human-hair fiber!

(human hair project not depicted)

The Bergschaf will be finished and piled tomorrow!

[glaciart]

Tour de Fleece 2026 - Day 1

I began my first day of tdf with.. going to a wool festival! Of course I took my spindle on the ride to there, but my time on the train was very brief.

First thing I'm spinning this year is Bergschaf, sold to me as a combed top by Filzrausch.

This was the fiber I've learned spinning with (although dyed). I never had it again after finishing 200g of it for learning in total. I don't remember it being this pleasant and soft! It does have a nice and long staple length, meaning I also tend a bit towards getting too much twist into it.

I had the honour of meeting @leiyahime when I arrived at the festival and we browsed through the stalls together. Much fun has been had!

This is what I've bought:

A 200g rainbow-gradient BFL-Mix with black streaks of alpaca and some soy silk from Stefis Wolle

52g hand dyed Merino from "Dreads by Magdalena", the colour really spoke to me

A biiiig plying spindle from friendly sheep, which also can spin lower WPIs (I like!)

A pretty supported spindle with a small jellyfish in a bead, also from friendly sheep. Now I just need to learn how to spin on it..

A board to attach my already bought "supported" spindle I might show here one day

Two packages of mystery fiber that came with the spindles

A little tool for measuring WPI

Later that day, despite being rather tired, I did manage to spin one spool more of my Bergschaf and reached my days goal!

[glaciart]

Tour de Fleece 2026

In short: yes, I will participate! But I won't do anything super fancy. Mostly, I need to get yarn done for my big coat. I'm currently at 89,21%! 4224,8m/4700m!

So what I want to spin is:

Bergschaf combed top

South german merino combed top

"The brown one" (wool from an unknown mixed breed) batt

"Spanish wool" combed top

"Brazilian wool" combed top

Black dyed Steinschaf batt

As well as five more batts I will probably obtain on the 15th:

7. Texel 8. Bentheimer Landschaf 9. Rhönschaf 10. Steinschaf mixed breed

All of them come at an amount of 100g. I highly doubt that I will spin a whole kg in a single month, so the wools that are defineable breeds have priority. I will be really happy if I reach the 4700m at the end of the tour!

[glaciart]

It's the worst weather here right now, and what do we do in the worst weather? We spin!!

This was made as a drum carding practice. I obtained a bag full of super soft merino wool commercial top roving pieces in all colours of the rainbow. Carded 5 batts using different techniques. The yarn has a slight gradient.

This is 170m/70g. 330g remain in my merino rainbow bag.

I learned:

Ink blue is a VERY DOMINANT colour in optical blending

Horizontal aligning of differences does fuck all in a batt since I tear off horizontal pieces for spinning...

Rather do some more blending for a gradient than less

Highlights get eaten by the spinning process. The resulting yarn always looks more dull than the batt

Splotchy highlights done with a contrast colour can preserve though!

I will eventually knit this into some sort of landscape beanie one day :) stay tuned!

[glaciart]

This only took 7 month to finish

As well as several trips to the yarn store - "I just need ONE more skein! This certainly will be the last!

[glaciart]

I fully intend to crochet the Elf Coat by Regina Weiss out of handspun yarn. This should be about 4400m of yarn for the large size. To make it more fun I'll try to get 4400m (11WPI) out of a different breed every 100g of wool. I'm currently at 2780m, so it's a bit past halftime!

Isn't it beautiful? This is 24 different breeds.

[glaciart]

It is done! My first handspun lace shawl is finished. I still got about 200m of purple left.

This looks far more even than I anticipated. I feel proud!