The Tour de Fleece

Today is the first day of the Tour de Fleece.  What is it, you ask?   It is the spinners way to support the great athletes who are riding in the Tour de France by doing the thing we do best... spinning!

Here are the guidelines and you'll notice they mimic the rules of the Tour de France.

1.  Set a goal.  It can be anything from reducing your stash to trying out a new technique like boucle or core spinning to clearing off all those partially filled bobbins or spinning enough yarn for a large project.

2.  Try to spin every day of the race.  The Tour de France race starts July 2nd and concludes on July 24rd.  There are two rest days (July 11th and July 19th) but feel free to spin on those days also.  No one will be watching but its fun to be able to say you spun the entire race. 

3.  Spin something more challenging on the most challenging days of the race.  There are a total of 9 climbing days but the four days that end on mountain peaks are the most challenging.  That would be July 10th and 14th in the Pyrenees and July 20th and 22nd in the Alps.  Try a new technique or doing something you aren't an expert at.

4.  The yellow jersey is presented to the winner of each leg of this race and at the finish so wear or spin something yellow on the final day.  Or on any day you feel like a winner!  There are other colors that have meaning for this race too.  Green is for the fastest sprinter.  Polka dots go to the best climber.  White is for rookies - either inexperienced or young.  Show your colors!

5.  Join a team or don't.  There are lots of teams on Ravelry and there is at least one on Facebook.  It can be a lot of fun to spin with a team posting your results at the end of each day.

For me, my goal is both to reduce my stash of wonderful art batts and fiber as well as spinning up some more core spun yarn.  Our inventory of that type of yarn is decreasing and I love doing it.  I also want to spin up some more flax.  My little flax wheel has been calling me for months now but I've been weaving more than spinning of late.  I think I'm going to focus on spinning boucle for the challenge days.  I did it in a great class with Jacey Boggs Faulkner a few years back and would love to revisit it.  Yellow really isn't my color but I think I have some art batts with gold in them so I'll save that for the last day.

Neither Peggy nor I have joined a team this year but we will still be spinning away.  I don't think I have ever managed to spin on all the days of the race but I will try again this year.  I just added a couple dozen new skeins of hand spun yarn to the website this week and you can bet we will have lots more by the end of July.

Ready.  Set.  Go! 

Happy Spinning!