Yesterday was the beginning of the Tour de Fleece (TdF) challenge for spinners. While the cyclists race through France, we spin through our stashes in an effort to meet our individual goals. Those goals are personal and can range from just learning to spin, spinning a new fiber, learning the ins and out of a new wheel or spindle, spinning down a certain amount of stash, to spinning a whole fleece. For myself, I've chosen to spin new to me fibers: cotton, alpaca, and maybe some camel down, yak, bamboo or cashmere, depending on how much time the cotton and alpaca take. Unlike last year where it was all about speed and quantity spun, this year is about becoming comfortable with the fiber regardless of how much fiber or how long it takes.
I'm starting with this cotton sliver in cinnamon from The Spinning Loft:
I can't find my tahkli spindle so I'm using my turnip support spindle to start. When I'm satisfied with what I'm producing on the turnip, I will switch to a top whorl drop spindle. For now I'm spinning straight from the sliver. Later I will try hand carding and spinning from that as a rolag, a puni and as a "batt".
Another goal for me this TdF is to post daily blogs which, since the TdF last three weeks, I've extended to the whole month of July. Perhaps this motor mouth will run out of things to say. I don't know, we'll see what happens.
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