Summer has officially started, and so has the Tour de Fleece. For those of you who do not know, the Tour de Fleece is an annual event that runs during the Tour de France, this year from June 29 - July 21. According to the Tour de Fleece page on ravelry, it was started in 2006 by Star Athena who is a knitter, spinner, designer, etc. Since then it has grown immensely. I've heard about it for the last couple of years, but this is the first year that I am participating (since I just got my wheel in August of last year).
The idea is to spin every day that the cyclists are riding, if possible. Many spinners will set a specific goal for themselves that they wish to achieve during the Tour. For example, to spin a certain amount of yardage, a certain weight of fibre, or a specific type of yarn.
I do not have a goal that is set in stone, and I'm not one to post on the ravelry forums or join one of the (many) teams that people have formed. My goal is basically just to spin as many days that I can, to spin at least two of the braids of fibre I have in my stash, and to update the blog six times during the tour. Achievable, but it will still be a challenge (for me). I don't want to go crazy with the spinning, because I have heard about people going so overboard with the spinning during the tour that they have given themselves serious injuries. I have a desk job where I sit at a computer for 8 hours a day, so I don't need any help in giving myself injuries. I certainly don't want something I enjoy to be the cause of an injury!
Since I hadn't spun in awhile, I thought it might be wise to warm up a bit before the actual Tour started. I had a bobbin of sweet georgia panda fibre in the tumbled stone colourway that I had spun a couple of months ago, so I decided that was the place to start.
I spun up the second bobbin over a few days this last week.
After both were done, I plied them together and wound it into a skein.
I'm pretty happy with it. It's not quite as much yardage as I was hoping for, but it's still pretty good. It's about 325 m of fingering/sport weight merino/bamboo/nylon. It's super soft and shiny, and it was lovely to spin! I will definitely be getting more of this fibre in the future.
So, with the warm up complete, I had to choose my Tour fibres. First I decided to spin some more sweet georgia, this time merino+silk in the spruce colourway. I felt it was an appropriate choice since I was taking the wheel along with me to my friend's cabin where we spent most of the long weekend.
I spun half a bobbin and then had to stop since my arm was starting to get a little bit sore. I will do some more today, but probably not a lot. Good thing I've built up my knitting muscles, so if my arm starts hurting again I can just switch to knitting!
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