Tour de Fleece: First Completed Bobbin

 Here is the first bobbin of 2-ply yarn I spun for this year's Tour de Fleece.  I am taking things a little easier this year.  Last year I was stressed to the max trying to spin spin spin.  This year I am committed to fifteen minutes a day or at least five yards of Thetford Roving spun by the end of the day.

This yarn was the result of the blending board rolags I made at the first Tour de Fleece event this year.  I have now used up much of this thick and thin yarn on a project which I will unveil next week when it is completed!

The singles were spun on the Ashford Traveler that my angel friend Elsie gave me twenty years ago.  When it was time to ply I used the Ashford eSpinner 3.  That worked so well!  Of course, I only have two bobbins for that eSpinner so I had to first unwind the singles  on the full bobbin.  I am hoping to order another two bobbins from WooLee Winder for this eSpinner.  Then I will be set.  Famous last words, of course!

Tour De Fleece Started on 5 July

 The Columbia Spinning Ladies who took me in last year and have helped me tremendously in improving my spinning have a wonderful plan for Tour de Fleece this year.  Every Saturday in July will have an event/workshop to improve our skills.

On Saturday just past we learned how to create our own self striping yarn!  TJ, our leader, had a big pile of fiber and instructed each of us to take three colors that appealed to us to make the yarn.  I chose red, yellow, and blue.  Not very creative but...that is what I chose.

These are the rolags I made on the Ashford Blending Board I purchased earlier this year.  I had only tried blending on it once or twice before.  This was what I made on Saturday.  The next thing we did was to spin up the rolags into singles.  I did that.  When I came home I spent about ten minutes spinning some white singles to ply with the colorful striped yarn to tone it down a little.  I have not plied yet as there was more red, yellow, and blue to turn into rolags and spin into singles.

Today I finished blending up the remaining red, yellow, and blue fiber into rolags and now have six more rolags to spin plus a big fat "rolag" or maybe better call it a sort of batt.  I will spin that last.  If all goes well I will get this done tomorrow.  The spinning of these rolags, I mean.  I expect that the following day I will get to plying. Hopefully.  I will show the yarn off  after that.  One of the Columbia Spinners has already finished her spin and has knitted it up into a swatch.  It looks so good.  In my heart of hearts I hope to complete my spinning, plying, wet-finishing, skeining up, rolling into a ball, then knitting a swatch by next Saturday.  I will let you know how it goes.  At this point...not too sure that is a reasonable expectation, but I will try.  Will let you know!

The Ashford eSpinner 3 which is upstairs is where I am spinning the white Thetford Roving to use for plying.  Last night I spun up 5 grams of roving.  Today I spun 10 grams of roving.

More Spinning Today

 Just a quick note on today's Tour de Fleece progress:  Since I had finished the last bag of roving, I went to the walk-in closet in our bedroom and pulled out a bag of Thetford Roving and took it downstairs where the wheel is currently located.

When I had done a little cleaning of a downstairs closet, the kitchen, and the dining room table, I rewarded myself with a while at the spinning wheel. (And you will notice I said, "A LITTLE cleaning...!). For the first time I thought I would measure out and weigh the roving before spinning so I could get an idea on how it would go.

Today's spin was 107 grams of the roving.  I did get it all spun.

This is the resulting spin:

This bobbin was almost half filled before I started spinning today.  I finished it.  There is probably a hundred grams of today's fiber on the bobbin in addition to probably that much more.  I will have to weigh an empty bobbin so I will know for sure how much singles I spun.

This bobbin was partially filled before I finished up the 107 grams--probably about 7 grams added to this bobbin.  There was just a small amount of roving still in the fiber basket so I decided to keep spinning even though I had really had just about enough spinning, and everything else,  for today.

One new thing today--instead of removing my shoe and spinning stocking footed, I decided to see if I could spin with my clodhoppers still on my feet.  I could!  I was so pleased.  It is all due to the kind instruction of one of the Columbia Spinners at the Tour de Fleece group meeting last Saturday.  I also learned how to chain ply last week.  I need to get another bobbin together so I can practice the chain plying before I forget.

This Saturday the spinners will be at the Revolutionary War Park spinning but also instructing on how to spin cotton and flax.  You can be sure I will be there to learn that.  There are many many cotton fields within a few miles of our home.  Every fall when the cotton harvest happens I drive along the roads by the fields and see many cotton fluff balls lying beside the road.  Two years ago I stopped and picked some of it up.  It was pretty grimy and since I did not know anything about preparing to spin cotton, I just left it alone.  If I learn to spin cotton, I will have to take the bull by the horns and ask some farmer if I can glean his fields after the harvest.  It is a nice thought anyway!

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.