Today is the Grand Depart, otherwise known as the beginning of the Tour de France. It also marks the start of the Tour de Fleece, a spinning event the mirrors the Tour. For those who are not familiar, spinners spin every day the Tour rides and some even do special challenges on the climbing days. It is great fun, even for someone like me who does not watch bike racing.
As I mention in my last post, I am especially excited about this year’s Tour. This will be the first real Tour de Fleece in which I will be using my spinning wheel, Spinderella. She is a Schact Ladybug I got lightly used as an early birthday present last summer. Thanks to her, I have some lofty spinning goals this tour.
Goals for the Tour
Goal Number One is to spin this fiber from one of my all-time favorite dyers, Inglenook Fibers. I can barely ever resist buying from them but I always pay particular attention to their special Tour de Fleece colorways. (And of course their 12 Days of Christmas colors) This year they did two fade-like sets: Lavender Fields of Provence and Mont St Michel. I’ll only be spinning
Goal Number Two is to actually begin spinning some of my Shave Em to Save Em fiber. SE2SE is a program run by the Livestock Conservancy that seeks to bolster threatened sheep breeds and help shepherds raising them by promoting interest amongst crafters. I joined this program as soon as I heard about it in 2018 or 2019 and began collecting fleeces or parts of fleeces. And then I never spun them. My first one is this 8 ounces of Karakul fiber from Woolhalla fibers. I confess I am rather nervous about spinning this as it is rather outside my comfort zone. Karakul can be rather coarse as it is a long-haired breed and it has been used for hard wearing products like rugs. I purchased this particular fiber as it was from a lamb, hoping it would maybe be closer to BFL. The color is also gorgeous.
Goal Number Three is a current spindle SIP (Spin In Progress). You may remember this fiber from my post on carding my first batt, way back in 2019. This is that very batt, made for a special study in my goddess spindle group. This will be my travel project that I will take back and forth with me to my significant other’s house or wherever I need a project on the go. While my wheel may be faster than my spindles, it is not more portable.
Posts During the Tour
During the Tour, I’d like to focus as much as I can on spinning, to no surprise. I do want to share my progress, however, and have some measure of accountability. So my plan is to post here, on the blog, every Saturday with a recap of what I did during the week. Throughout the week, I’ll try to post short updates on Instagram every day, in case you are interested in the day to day progress.
Join In!
I hope to see lots of spinning this Tour de Fleece and would love to see your projects! Join in no matter where you are in your spinning journey.