In which I acquire an alpaca (sort of), and dye some Florida wool

You wouldn't think an alpaca would fit in someone's luggage, right? Well, this little guy did:


He was a gift from the first mate's parents; they picked him up in Colorado. Of course I've already misplaced Ha-HA! I found the card that came with him, from which I gather he comes to me by way of Alpaca Exotic Imports. Thanks, O parents of the first mate, for the pettable furry thing that requires no feeding. ;)

(That "mountain" he's climbing is the handspun I finished/made during this year's Tour de Fleece, by the way.)

I also recently kettle-dyed a sample of Gulf Coast fleece that came from my very own home state, Florida, but which went for a visit to Laura of Dew Dance Farm before it came to me. I dyed it an appropriately oceany color (it's almost like I don't know there are other colors ;)) and am now pondering what to spin it into. Voila, le Gulf Coast!


Hope you've all been up to some summery fun — I've been working on a few surprises, myself. ;D

Tour de Fleece 2011, Day 1

Yep, it's time again for the Tour de Fleece, that annual spinalong so many of us do during the Tour de France. So far I'm off to a better start than I've made for the past two years, and while I'm not in any way reassured that this means the rest of the Tour will go better than it has previously, making a decent start is an accomplishment in itself. ;D Here's what I've spun so far — it's an ounce of Louet wool/mohair/bamboo rayon:


This year I'm trying to track my progress more, so I updated my super-primitive tracker spreadsheet from last year to be a little bit less primitive ... though it's still no NaNoWriMo word count tracker. ;) This is part of it, though there's a lot more to it than just this (including "yards spun" and "skeins completed" columns that are just not in this snippet of screenshot):

There's also a place where you can list your goals and check them off, and an area at the end of the spreadsheet that sums up your progress so far in total time spent, number of ounces spun, yards spun, goals met, etc. I like it a lot better than last year's tracker (which was boring and unpretty enough that I didn't share it with anyone), though I still have visions of charts and per-day summaries and such. (I just need to decide how to balance cool stats capabilities with keeping the daily tracker fairly simple to use...)

Anyway, if you're doing the Tour de Fleece and you want a copy of my progress tracker spreadsheet, the quickest way to get in touch is to drop me a line on Ravelry (I'm Silver) with your e-mail address, or you can leave me a comment here with your e-mail address if you don't mind other people seeing it. I'm planning on adding a download link for it to the Star & Crossbones Web site but I haven't done it yet, and I'd rather have the offer out there right now than delay it till I get around to poking the Web site's freebies page. ;)

FYI, the spreadsheet was created in Excel 2008 for Mac and I haven't tested it on any computer but mine. If you end up with a copy and you find some incompatibility issue, definitely let me know, and I'd be happy to poke at it and try to fix it. :D

Happy spinning of wheels, whichever kind(s) you do!