We had a great barbecue today where my hubby and dad made beercan chicken. It was really interesting to watch and the chicken was literally falling off the bone when they brought it in and cut it up. My second favorite part? The tiny purple, rose & yellow potatoes dad brought over. I cut them up into halves and quarters, put them into a bowl with garlic pieces, onion powder, oregano, rosemary, and a little bit of sea salt. Once they were lightly coated I wrapped them up in tin foil. Dad put them on the barbecue for about 1/2 hour and they were super tasty and very pretty to look at.
I’m putting up my first 3 days of Tour De Fleece notes into one post because they can be rather short so I figured I’ll just post every few days. My pre-TDF goal was to spin an hour or more every day the tour rides. I have some rovings and a Jacob fleece that I would like to make a dent in but will be happy if I manage to stick to the hour or more a day goal to see what I can accomplish in that time.
Day 1, 7/2/11: To see my cumulative page on Ravelry to keep up with daily progress and pictures go here: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/addknitter00/tour-de-fleece-2011 I will also be updating individual projects as I complete them.
First up will be to finish my Lincoln roving. I already did 2/4 ounces. I need to finish the other 2 ounces and clear the singles off the bobbin. I have 8 ounces of Corriedale roving, that I dyed in the same pan with this one, I plan to ply this with but am not sure where it is at the moment so if I find that soon it will be the second project for TDF (I hid it from the cats and apparently from myself). Then plying them together of course. I will 3 ply these rovings together and see how the color comes out. I also have a teeny tiny sample of merino to spin up for the shop but that shouldn’t take any time at all.
Ok, so was totally frustrated with the Lincoln (not a good start on the first day). Why did I ever like spinning this wool years ago?! Especially when I weighed the leftover roving after an hour and I had only spun .4 ounces out of the 2 I had left to do. So, I decided to power through it or else I may have decided not to come back to TDF on the 2nd day. Between that and spinning up a small sample for my shop I ended up spinning 2.25 ounces and 3 hours 35 minutes. Now the next question is do I spin the other (not so frustrating) roving that I plan to ply this Lincoln with?
Also for today’s wooly accomplishments I scoured 8 oz of Mohair, dried & braided 3 4 oz bumps of fiber, dyed 4 4 oz bumps of fiber and finished washing and drying a Jacob fleece. Not a bad days work!
Day 2, 7/3/11: The first thing I did was to ply the sample for my shop. It was 15 yards and makes me want to do an entire roving in that colorway because it is really pretty with it’s light blue, tans and orange/salmon colors. It came out very balanced as well which makes me happy.
Next I decided to be a good girl and continue with the project from yesterday which is the circus roving. I will do two bumps of fiber to go along with the Lincoln. After an hour I decided to go for an ounce instead of just an hour. The end total is 2 hours 45 minutes. I think I average just under 100 yards per ounce so that’s not too bad. When I’m not paying too much attention to the movie I’m watching I can speed up to 1/2 ounce per hour on average but today was way under that. I am really learning a lot about my spinning by timing myself and weighing the roving before and after I start.
7/04/11, Day 3: definitely had me sticking with the pack. Because of the heat, us having a barbecue and my body being sore from the past two days of longer periods of spinning, I decided to just stick with my original goal of 1 hour. So, after everyone left and the food was put away I did one hour. Amazingly I actually spun more in 1 hour today than it took me to do in 2 1/2 hours with the same roving yesterday. Maybe it’s spinning every day that is making me faster, or the fact that I knew I had less time to work so I was going faster or who knows. In any case I spun 1.4 ounces today in 1 hour. Go me!!
6catsknittingaround 
Comments on: "Tour De Fleece & Happy July 4th!!!" (3)
You’re are busy, busy and the yarn looks so pretty. Btw, your bbq description made my mouth water. What is beer can chicken?
It’s a really interesting way to barbecue chicken and make it tender to the point you don’t need a knife to carve it. Basically you take a whole chicken and put a half full beer can up the backside of the chicken. It is barbecued standing up and we have a smoker box on the side of our barbecue so Dad added smoke to it which made the skin a golden brown like you would see in a magazine. It was really tasty and super easy for the guys to make. The comical part was that we don’t usually have beer around so they had to go to the store to buy a can of beer. I guess you can’t buy just one can so they got a 6 pack of super cheap beer. The rest of it is still in the fridge and will probably stay there until we barbecue chicken again.
Sounds like us. I’d have to go out and buy a 6 pack too! Will have to put that on our next shopping list because it really does sound very yummy.