June

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Not half bad :-).

The Right Words

I'd been thinking about my Tour de Fleece for several weeks and was not getting super excited about any of my possible plans.  I knew Pinto was going to be the captain, but had a ton of trouble coming up with his graphic.  The weather is miserable.  There will be no peaceful porch spinning around here this year.  Honestly, I was feeling a bit of dread thinking about putting it all together.

Tim and I like to play a few of the currently popular word games each morning.  I play Wordle, both Word Hurdle games and the Quordle, which is trying to guess four words at one time.  It took a good while to talk me into trying them, but now I'm hooked.  I sit on the Wool House porch with a big cup of coffee and start guessing. 

The Wordle for July 1, the first day of the Tour de Fleece was...

Can you even believe it? :-o

It gets better.

The TdF plan I was most leaning towards was doing a deep dive into some of my most treasured fleeces.  I'd just finished spinning a bit of PPPP and was feeling sentimental.  I have Woody's lamb fleece, Daniel's lamb fleece, some special Ford, Henri, Petunia and for a really deep dive, some young(ish) Miss Ewenice.  

I was still not completely convinced...but I couldn't come up with any better ideas.  I really needed to find some inspiration or it was going to be hard to cheer lead the other members of my team when I couldn't even cheer myself along.  

I started working on the day's Quordle.  

As you can see from the PINTO graphic above, as you guess words, you almost always get some correct letters and sometimes even get them in the right locations.  Yellow means the letter is in the mix, but in the wrong position.  Green means it's the right letter in the correct location.

Three of the four words in the Quordle game behaved accordingly and I ended up figuring out each of those three words.  The fourth word...

The first guess yielded me no correct letters.  Neither did the second guess.  I did finally get one letter, but in the wrong position on the third and fourth guesses, but back to zero correct on the fifth.  In case you are wondering about my word choices, remember I'm trying to guess three other words at the same time.  STAID, BASTE and RAMEN were the correct words in the other quadrants.

You get nine chances to guess the four words.  I'd used up eight chances and only had two letters and both in the wrong positions.  I had one chance left, but I knew it was hopeless.  Still, a game is a game and I decided to make a wild guess and see how close I could get.

With only one vowel possibility, the O, I knew there might be a chance they were going to use it twice.  Y hadn't been used, so I tossed that in there as well.  Two Os and D and a Y...I had to go with WOODY.

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And I won!

How's that for some inspiration :-D.

It was pretty crazy just to get PINTO, but also WOODY on the same day?!?

 So I started my Tour spinning some Woody :-).

Time To Air Up Your Tires

While it seems like summer lasts forever (at least to me), it's almost time for the 2022 Tour de Fleece! We are a week away.  It's time to pick out your challenge, tune up your wheel, pack some snack bags, download a good audiobook (or three) and get ready for three weeks of fiber fun :-).

Pinto is going to be our team captain this year.  He was the obvious choice not only because he's the newest sheep on the block, but also because there has been so much interest in what breed(s) of sheep he is and what his wool is like.

I know what his wool is like, having processed a sample amount, spun some yarn and knit a swatch...but apparently I never posted that over here...fer cryin' out loud :-/.  I'll go find some pictures.  In the meantime, I'm going to process another small amount and offer it as one of the team prizes.

I'm pretty sure Pinto would be that interested in a spinning wheel if he had access to one.  He's a pretty smart sheep ;-).  For a fun Tour kick off I'm going to set up a zoom with him out in the barn.  I'll most likely start it off with an Instagram Live and then switch over to zoom so more people can access it.  Details to come.

The Tour de Fleece (and Tour de France) starts July 1st.  Here is a link to the main group.  Here is a link to the Punkin's Patch group.  You do not have to participate online, but the Punkin's Patch group is a fun small group of  kind and encouraging spinners and we have a good time :-).

Since Pinto is having to learn a lot about his new life as a wool sheep on a fiber farm, I would like to encourage everyone to add something to their challenge this year that will help us all learn something new.  While I haven't picked out my spinning challenge for sure yet, my "learning something new" challenge is going to be washing an entire fleece in locks.  

Who's in?

Porch Days

We've had some crazy hot weather lately, but I have to give the Wool House porch credit for being pretty tolerable.  Possum agrees.  

I've been trying to get a big batch of fleeces washed for a roving run.  I'm experimenting with a new/new to me technique that so far seems to be working out.  I have half of Rocky in the wash right now and if there are no issues in the final rinse, I'll share what I've learned.  

It's hard to hurt a Texel or Jacob fleece, but those more sensitive Cotswold crosses can be a bit trickier, especially the finer fleeces like Rocky.  If this works, I think we're good to go!

While we wait, here's a new puzzle :-).

  

Still Watching Out

I mentioned a "fun, surprise gift" in the post describing the yarn and ornament gift boxes. 

Wait.  This is a spoiler alert for the people who haven't received their boxes yet (and there are also two boxes left if anyone is interested - yarn or ornament) so I've blocked out the surprise part and will trust anyone to look away if they will be disappointed to not be surprised.  

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It's just something silly and small, but I love fun surprises and would totally wait to read this if I thought I had one coming.  However, the story is so good and I've been dying to share it so I'm going to go ahead. 

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Tucked in each gift box, yarn or ornament, is a mini pack of the sheep's (and dogs and chickens) favorite cookies, Vanilla Wafers.  In the conclusion of the booklet it mentions that the sheep are mostly okay with sharing their cookies, but would really prefer that you just bring them back to the farm for them (aka an invitation to come visit the farm :-).

I initially only bought three cartons of mini wafers because I thought that would be a good start.  When I ran out of cookies I headed back to the store to buy more and the shelves were bare.  Tim checked in Lexington and Georgetown and Auntie Reg checked Winchester.  We looked online.  No. Cookies.

I sent one yarn box out with a sad apology and no cookies and  and continued to look.  Tim continued to look.  Reg continued to watch for them.  I needed one more carton to complete all the orders.

Then came the call I was hoping for.  "I found a box of mini wafers!"  Reg had found one box of cookies on the bottom shelf of the snack pack aisle.  

"It was tucked in behind a box of dog biscuits!  I have no idea what dog biscuits were doing in the snack aisle."  

Dog biscuits are sold on the complete opposite side of the huge store.

I knew immediately. 

Hank had guarded those cookies for us.  

{{{heart}}}