Tour de Fleece 2009

The Tour de Fleece is coming up, from July 4th to July 26th.  It is the spinning analogue to the Tour De France bicycle race. Last year I made valiant efforts to spin every day, but circumstances thought otherwise and I skipped several days.

One Tour De Fleece goal for this year is to spin every weekday.  I think fifteen days of spinning is doable.  Another goal is to improve my plying, and for that I need plenty of singles to practice on.  I put a lot of plying twist in the yarn, probably too much.  Two well-plied skeins would be a good goal to aim for.

Above is my current spinning.  My Kundert spindle has some of a Fuzzarelly batt on it I got from Susan's Spinning Bunny, the fibre is merino, silk, and angora.  Really not liking the neps in the batt but the colour is turning out well.  This will be a two ply yarn and I'll make a plying ball from it (see this article on drop spindle plying from Abby Franquemont).

On the wheel is some suri alpaca roving from an animal called Bevin, who is a fantastic toasted coconut colour.  I didn't meet Bevin at MOPACA but I'm told he's gorgeous.  The roving is amazingly soft and destined to be a three ply light sport-weight yarn, I'm hoping for about 300yds of yarn (which means spinning 900yds/823m of singles, eep!).  I want it to stay this soft, and my Teach Yourself Handspinning book says to spin from the fold.  I've never done that before, it should be an interesting experiment!  It feels like kitten belly-fur on a well-groomed, indoor cat.