Tour de Fleece 2013 - Week 1

Wow, what a week it has been! I'm having so much fun at my first Tour de Fleece, look at all the spinning I did! :)

6 days of spinning :)

Day 1: 1.5 bobbins of 100% alpaca, spun woollen.
Day 2: finished my first skein of 2ply alpaca, 110g / 153m approx.
Day 3: finished 1st bobbin of BFL/silk.
Day 4: finished 2nd bobbin of BFL/silk.
Day 5: plied the 2 bobbins and I have my second skein of the tour. 100g / 400m approx.
Day 6: started on a new braid, a blend of Shetland/BFL/silk.

Unfortunately you won't see such productivity next week as I have to be away for 4 days (working, nothing exotic). I'm going to bring my spindle with me, not sure how much I'll get done but it would be a good opportunity to practice on the spindle, it's been much neglected.

Have a good weekend everyone! Happy spinning/knitting/crocheting/crafting... :)

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

p.s. Team Wonder rocks!! :D

Getting ready for my first TdF :-)

I am very excited to be participating in my first Tour de Fleece, for those of you who are not familiar with TdF this is an annual spinning event on Ravelry during the cycling event Tour de France. The idea is to spin for each day of the cycling event, they spin we spin, they rest we rest. Each spinner sets their own challenges and you can join different teams for fun and encouragement, there are also chances to win prizes :)

My challenges for the TdF are:

• spin 100% alpaca (I only spun alpaca in a blend before)
• intentionally spin sock yarn
• perfecting the woollen long draw technique
• spin from stash

To help me achieve these goals I joined four teams: Rookies, Peloton (everyone's in it at one time or another), Team Wonder Why Alpaca Farm (yay!) and Team Spin Your Stash.

This week I've been getting ready for the event, I washed the alpaca fleece from my stash and carded it into rolags, well some of it anyway - enough to get me started :) ... unfortunately I didn't have time to dye it first but I can do that later. I also pulled out some other fibre ready to spin:

From top left clockwise: BFL/shetland/silk blend, alpaca, BFL/silk blend, southdown. That should be more than enough to keep me busy for the next two weeks, in fact I'm not sure I can finish all these as I will be out of town for 4 days during the second week. On the plus side the kids are off so I won't be working so much (apart from the days I have to be away), looks like we won't be going out much this school hols!

Let's get started :)

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!