Saturday, June 29, 2013

Tour de Fleece 2013, Stage 1

The Tour de Fleece is one of my favourite events of the year.  For three grueling weeks, myself and many others, spin yarn in honour of the brave cyclists of the Tour de France.

The Tour de Fleece is an opportunity to challenge ourselves to spin every day while the cyclists ride, and to try something a little more daunting that every day fibre arts.

Day 1 is something of a warm up (with a small amount of spinning not pictured here).  My focus was setting up the washing and carding area.


 What a view!


The two fleeces I am planning to spin are both from our farm.  The first is from that lamb that was shorn a few days back.



The second is from Tyrone, our newest rescue alpaca.  He has lovely dark fibre, very soft and very long.



Both fleeces need to be carded, but the lambswool needs to be washed first.

A tempting idea would be to spin only on spindles instead of on my wheel... but then I look again at how large a pile of fibre there is in my house and I feel I should at least spin the alpaca on the wheel.  But, possibly, just maybe, I might spin the lambswool spindle only.

I don't know what teams I'll be spinning for this year.  My main focus is spinning something every day to get back in the habit of spinning and blogging.


And here's a photo of Harris.  He was supervising us set up the outdoor work area.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It looks like Harris has something to tell you. Was it "pot, pot, pot..."?!
To be in that beautiful garden is a very good idea. I hope you have a good weather to work.

Jani