Exploring the world of fiber, one draft at a time

My posting can be as frequent or infrequent as my spinning, so be as patient as that fiber, sitting in my stash.

Thursday, July 01, 2010

Tour de Fleece 2010 the starting line

I know everyone knows about the Tour de France, but maybe you have to be a spinner to have heard of the Tour de Fleece. This is a big challenge time on Ravelry for spinners, who decide to spin with goals in mind, while the bikes are spinning their wheels in France.

So I decided to join the fun this year, and have set my goal to spin everyday during the July 3rd to 26th event. Given my current busy life, I have not set any other goal, just to 'get some yarn made' everyday.

To help motivate me to sit and spin, I decided it was time to dip into the prime stuff in the stash. This is stash I have held onto, because it was just so wonderful to me. Well, it is wonderful and so will be wonderful yarn, and later, wonderful knitwear. It's just plain time to spin it.

First: a Rovings polworth dyed roving called Spice Island:
The colors are more vibrant in person, my camera just didn't pick that up in the daylight. I will spin all of the dyed roving into a single, and then spin a single out of a natural colored polworth roving, shown here:
Again the camera and daylight washed it out some, the natural brown roving is a deeper brown that it looks in the photo above.

As a second project I will spin this cashmere roving:

I plan to spin it as thin as possible and see something lacy in it's future.

Now my biggest problem with spinning everyday is my nightshift work schedule. I work two nights back to back, and so the day in between is spent almost entirely in sleep before going right back to work. I decided the solution was a drop spindle project that I could keep in my car or even my locker at work. Then I know I will find at least 15 mintes to spin on a break at work. I had experimented awhile ago with handcarding a cashmere and silk blend and spinning it on a drop spindle, and thought it be good to revive that project. So here is my portable spinning kit:
I carded a few rolags to show the blend. That's my regular sized Bosworth spindle with them, to give a sense of their size. See the shine of the silk?
And so here's the bag, all packed and ready to go (I have to work the first two days of the Tour de Fleece so it will definately be needed).
Yes, that is a Laurel Burch bag. It was a very welcomed gift from a coworker several years ago, and I still smile whenever I use it.

If anyone wants to join me for this challenge on Ravelry (and probably see more progress photos there) check out the Tour de Fleece group and look for the wild card group for Yarnspinnerstales Spin in. Or just come to the group for Yarnspinnerstales spin in and check out the thread on the TdF there.

Onwards

I had to go look in the archives because I truly could not remember, but I started this blog Nov 2002. For many years I used it to record my fiber pursuits. It was not easy those first few years. There was the learning curve of uploading photos, the hassle of dialup and all of those internet nusiances that have finally been smoothed away.

Now I should have no excuse for this last six month absence. My camera takes wonderful digital photos, adobe puts them in nice small jpegs for the internet, DSL uploads them almost in seconds.

I didn't even stop working on fiber pursuits in those six months.

No, but I did go through some major life changing events, first hubby's serious illness and hospitalization, then the need for me to return to work full time. And not just full time but _night shift_ work. It's taken me months to adjust.

Now I need to overcome some other internet issues, to make blogging super speedy again. Blogger insists to keep this blog on a very old google account of mine, so I have to log into that before signing on to blogger. I haven't found a way to keep the free account and change that email log in, so that hassle remains. I now find I need a new camera, and am very tempted by one that will wifi your photos straight to the internet. Will they still be speedily uploaded when there's no photoshop to make them nice small bitsize? I don't know. Where I use to have the time and patience to photoshop all my pics and then upload them, I find I don't have the time now.

I fear that my blogging may come to a screeching halt, because of these time devouring issues. I have found one small starting point again, the Tour de Fleece that begins July 4th. I wanted to blog about my plans for that, so for now, that's a good starting, or I should say restarting line. Hence the onwards title.

CW