Spinning yarn with Saori weaving in mind

The RAVELRY group WEAVING IN THE SAORI WAY our ravelry group had a challenge and a spin- a -long Saori style for the TDF. What is the TDF you ask? It is a group that  was started about 5 years ago on RAVELRY that challenged every one to spinn yarn durning the actual Tour De France. ONLY TDF is the take off on  the race's name  and  stands for " TOUR DE FLEECE" instead. The commitment is to weave every day , except for the days the of rest in the tour. On the hill climb days you are supposed to spinn somthing  challenging or difficult . The weaving in the Saori way group had our own TDF team headed by one of  my fantastic moderator SUSAN (aka rosieandsuz) this was her idea.
We had amazing spinners in our group that I never new! Please check it out here  ravelry TDF   if you are not member of RAVELRY please think of joining, it is not like face book ,it is a fantastic socal net work for fiber lovers, knitters, weavers, spinners, felters etc.
The idea for this challange was to spinn so that in the month of August we will SAORI weave with our own hand spun yarns and post photos in the RAVELRY group!
To prepare I started the week before the tour and  started  dyeing fibers and drum carding  for the   "tour" challange.

The silk cocoons being dyed the first color.

STEAMING THE  HAND PAINTED  FIBES IN PLASTIC WRAP DYE PACKETS.

DRUM CARDING THE FIBERS FOR SPINNING

SOME THE THE CARDED BATTS


  But The first day, much to my regret,  my wheel would not cooperate with the kind of art yarn I wanted to spin, So 3 hours latter, I gave up in disgust, and sold  that wheel  by the next day! Well I had other wheels but all my motivation and momentium  went south. I ordered another wheel but it took a week to arrive and a day to assemble, sigh. Fortunately this wheel ALMOST did what I needed  it to and was more geared to spinning art yarn.!

 sewing cut silk fabric bows on the sewing machine  to ply  along with my yarn.

 I called this yarn blue jays on the blackberries

 The next yarn is some romney cross I spun on another wheel.

some logwood grey( light lavender) natural dye( alum mordant) singles I  have yet  to ply with some other, not yet spun, but naturally dyed fiber  with  cochineal .

  Art yarn  I  dyed  carded  and spun with sari shredded silk and mohair locks

 Here are silk cocoons I dyed that I strung with heavy sewing thread for  my " dragon eggs"  yarn.

 First  I core spun the fiber into yarn.

 Then I took my bulky flyer wheel up to my rio grande spindle wheel to auto wrap the " dragon eggs" on to the yarn.

 This was the only way I  could auto ply the yarns, I had never tried plying from a flyer wheel to a spindle wheel , actually I never heard of this either, but it worked!
You can see the empty spool of thread , I had to  stop and thread more cocoons on the a new thread spool and continue.

My finished dragon egg yarn.

 All of my spinning for TDF!

  Fortunately I  rallied a few days here and there  durning the tdf and I had a STRONG finish push today the last day. The dragon egg yarn was by far the most challanging as the silk cocoons would not fit through the orfice of the art yarn  flyer wheel, but I  devised a method to try to auto wrap it on my  spindle great wheel and it worked! I have been dreaming of the dragon egg yarn for years, so this is a real VICTORY for me. I will be riding along in the laps in Paris at  the Champs-Elysees  too.....  but from my studio..... with a different kind of wheel.

All hand made items that are listed for sale and items already sold, images, designs , descriptions and content are original and ⓒ of jill nickolene sanders 2009 - 2015 either resistered or unregistered All rights reverved . 
(Note: I retain copyrights to all designs and images of my work)


peaceful weaving ( and spinning)
Jill Nickolene Sanders
www.saorisantacruz.com
MY ETSY SHOP