Tour de Fleece 2012: Day 6-20 "The Second Leg"

For the second leg of the tour I decided to work on 100g of beautiful fibre I bought from Texere in Bradford, UK. It was maybe the first stuff I bought in an actual shop rather than online. It's a beautiful mix and not something which tends to be available on their website. The fibre is merino 64's with white Tussah Silk. The merino is a lovely blend of different olive greens.


I really wanted to be able to spin this as thing as possible. Previous attempts have been more a 3 ply weight. My targets for TDF were to spin 15g per aday and if that wasn't possible for me to spin that among on top on the 15g of another day. This really didn't happen in this second stage! I was away from day 13 to day day 17, and there was no way I could catch up that much! Here is a wee collage with pics from different states and notes of the amount spun on what days.


Now, you may wonder why there is such a massive gap in the project! Especially with my targets for the tour. When I agreed to it I had kinda forgotten I would be away back home for a long weekend for Chris' birthday. It was his big 3-0 and there was lots arranged for it. I went down home on Thursday the 12th. On Friday his birthday his sister had organised a lovely surprise birthday meal for him at Meze in Brighouse (West Yorkshire) there were 18 of us. He figured out that a few of his extended family were going to be there, but had no idea that any of my family would be! So it was really nice surprise for him. The food was beautiful aswell, the only problem was was that they had two tables for us! This essentially meant that the two families were split up. But other than that it was a lovely evening.

The following day we had a meal with friends in Leeds at Las Iguanas, a mexican restaurant, again nice food and a good fathering of people, then we went for some drinks at a few local pubs. We had planned a lunch thing because we were planning to go on a hot air balloon ride for his birthday, my present to him. I bought the flights from Goballooning.com, but although the weather had been rubbish all week, Sunday looked promising, actual sunshine! However, it was really windy, so that was cancelled. The company did inform us on the Friday though so at least we had fair warning. So I'm going to look into rebooking for August/September when I'm back home.

So yeah anyway, sorry for rambling, but that's why there's a big gap!

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Tour de Fleece 2012 Day 1-6

So for those of you not on Ravelry, or not in the fibre game, the Tour de Fleece is a spinning event which runs alongside the Tour de Fleece. Not literly mind you until we can get spinning wheels to work in conjunction with bikes.....ooooooo now there's an idea...! Anyway, no, spinners set themselves targets for their spinning and aim to spin ever day during the Tour.

My aims are....
-To spin every day, or on days when I can't, for what ever reason, make up for it by doing double my target on the following day.
-to spin consistently and try to aim for 2/3ply weight.
-spin at least 15g a day.

So here is my progress so far!
Day 1: eeeeeer I miss behaved and was at a BBQ, and eating and drinking in combination with no wheel meant I couldn't very much do anything.
Day 2: I started spinning up a beautiful plait of "Floop" by a local indie dyer, friend and fellow knit nighter Helen, who sells currently solely to The Yarn Cake. The yarn is 100% falkland, meaning this was my first non merino experience! I made up for day 1 and spun about 40g (48g on each bobbin aimed for)


Day 3: I spun 25g, well over my 15g target!


Day 4: I finished spinning the rest of fibre (97g total) and plied it, well I got 3/4 done before my bleeding brake band snapped


Day 5: Finished plying. Lazy day, really should have done more!
But I took a reet pretty pic to make up for it!


Day 6: I skeined it up, soaked it, and dried it. Here's a finished pic


Day 6 continued: I then had to decide what I wanted to spin next. I went for some beautiful olive green merino 64's & tussah silk which I bought from http://www.texere-yarns.co.uk.


And spun 15g of that, it spins up sooooo thin :D


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