Tour de Fleece - Results of Day 1

I spent the afternoon at The Black Lamb in Port Hope using Laurie's electric drum carder. I wanted to get all the dog and cat fibre carded so I could start right in on spinning it. It took three hours but I got it all done.

To feed it into the carder, I needed to pull apart any matts. This took about half of my time, especially the cat fur, some of which was so matted I couldn't even pull it apart so I only got about 1/2 oz of it done.

Laurie and I chatted about our upcoming UK knitting tour from Aug. 30 - Sept. 10, 2011. She's going with 3 friends and I'm going with my friend, Marion. There will be 23 in our group altogether. We discussed how cold we think it might be in Glasgow at the beginning of September (where our tour starts) and what layers of clothes we're going to take. We also talked about what knitting we're going to take with us and agreed on a couple of sock projects and possibly a lace project of some kind. All of which will squish up nicely in a Zip-loc bag for storage.

After supper I sat down to spin the cat fur. Here is the necessary equipment (other than my Ashford Joy wheel) I amassed for the task.
Knowing how fluffy and annoying the cat fur would be to work with (it matts if you look at it the wrong way) I got it all done - all 17g of it. Not a lot to show for all that effort.
However, I know the dog fur will be a lot easier and way more fun to spin. The fibres are MUCH longer. One dog is a golden-doodle and I've spun some of its fur before. Another dog is an Old English Sheepdog. I think the third dog is a Golden Retriever. I hope to get all the dog fur spun by the end of this week. Then I can devote myself to my own lovely fibre.

There was one mishap, however. One of my hand carders flipped off the table and landed on my foot, puncturing the skin and drawing one drop of blood. This is the photo after I wiped the blood away. It was 'merely a flesh wound' and hardly slowed me down at all. (Please excuse my unsightly bunion).
I should probably cut back on the wine consumption during future rides. Silly me, I thought it would help keep my electrolyte balance.

In summary... (I had to post the collage photo so I could post it on Ravelry)