Tour de France and Tour de Fleece 2024

 Tour de France was started in 1903 to help sell newspapers. (Look it up on Google for more information.) Tour de Fleece was started in 2006.  You can look that up, too!  I heard about Tour de Fleece a year or two ago but did not participate until this year.

The Tour de Fleece is a handspinning event that coincides with the Tour de France bicycling race.  Some people join teams.  Other people race as individuals.  Every day that Tour de France runs, hand spinners spin on their spinning wheels or spindles.  

My own Tour de Fleece history began about three months ago when I learned that the Copious Fibers yarn store had a Sit and Spin on Thursday mornings.  I resolved to go to see if I could learn to be a better spinner..  And I did go on one Thursday.  The nicest ladies were in the store, including one spinner who helped me with my spinning. 

Myself, I am really a novice.  My actual spinning history began  in about 2005 when I was shopping locally at Wings' Market and a lady at the dairy case saw my sweater and said it looked like a 'No Sweat Sweatshirt'.  I had made the sweater and it did look like that pattern which was by Medrith Glover. (I just tried to locate that pattern to share, but failed.)  Anyway, Elsie, the nice lady, told me she had a knitting group in her home every Thursday afternoon from 3;00-5:00 PM and I was welcome.  I started attending later that week and was there most weeks until Elsie died in 2013...  It was so wonderful to knit together and learn new things...such as the Norwegian Purl!  I also learned to spin because Elsie gave me her Ashford Traveler single treadle spinning wheel.  I started spinning as soon as I acquired some beautiful combed top fiber from Hello Yarn.  It turned out I was not a natural-born spinner and I gave it up when life had me going for a while.

Now I am spinning again and participating in the Tour de Fleece 2024.  Here is the yarn I produced in the first week of the TdF:

This yarn is a bulky weight yarn (though I have not actually measured the wraps per inch yet) and was spun with a strand of what I call the Thetford Roving and a strand of fiber I found at Hobby Lobby and which I struggled with a ton until I saw a YouTube on how to "spin from the fold" which is good for slippery yarns.  If you zoom in you will see it is not glorious yarn, but I am very happy with it.  Since I am in a pinch time-wise, that is it for today.  More on TdF another day.  Happy Day to you all.