Tour de Fleece

I’m sure most of you have heard of the Tour de France.  The cycling race in July each year through towns and mountains and across many countries ending in France.  Well for us fibre focused people there is a Tour de Fleece.  So I teamed up with a bunch of like-minded spinners via the Crazy Sheep Ladies (Spinfoolish) 

I’m sure there were many other groups to join for TdF fun but hey, my kids call me the Crazy Sheep Lady (when they aren’t calling me the Crazy Cat Lady!!) so you can see what I mean by like-minded!!. ;-)  Different groups have different rules, but just like the comment in my plying post, they are more like 'guidelines'.

As a TdF participant we are asked to,

• Challenge yourself.
• Spin.
• Have fun.

So we are now well underway for our Tour de Fleece.  Among other things, we are asked to challenge ourselves.  Some do a challenge on certain days, others like myself have decided on a challenge for the whole Tour.  I am trying to spindle spin 4oz of MissBabs Hand Dyed.  80% BFL & 20% Tussah silk.  I bought this in the USA while on holidays a couple of years ago. 

It is my first Turkish spindle.  Just a beginner one, not fancy, but I do love it and am really pleased with how fine I have been able to spin on it.  Everyone has a spindle preference (well those who spindle spin do I guess!) and mine is bottom whorl.  The Turkish is just that bit more convenient as you end up with a ball ready to ply.

So a bit more on the TdF.  According to my new friends at Spinfoolish, the Tour de Fleece was started on a blog by Star Athena in 2006 as a way of connecting with other spinners, and by the sounds of it, to incorporate her other passion of cycling.  (Check out Ready to get on your bike for the full story.) The relationship is definitely there.  Just type ‘spinning’ into your favourite search engine and you will get plenty of cycling hits.  You usually need to add ‘wool’ to focus your search on fibre things.

From 4 July to 26 July.  We spin, or try to, everyday except the two rest days just like in the actual tour.

So happy spinning peoples and if you hadn’t heard of the Tour de Fleece before then perhaps you can join us in 2016 for a fun ride ;-)

Now back to that spindle.