Tour de Fleece

I'm taking part in the Tour de Fleece!

This Tour de Fleece was started by Star Athena in 2006 on her blog, Keep on Knitting in the Free World.

Guidelines (NOT RULES):

• Spin every day the Tour rides, if possible. Saturday June 29th through Sunday July 21st. Days of rest: Monday July 8th and Monday July 15th. (Just like the actual tour.)
• Spin something challenging on the challenge day (usually the toughest high mountain stage: this year, it’s Stage 18, on Thursday, July 18th, when they climb Alpe d’Huez twice).
• Wear yellow on Sunday July 21st to announce victory. Why not wear yellow on any day you feel particularly successful? (Yellow is the color of the race leader in the Tour - but here we are all ‘race leaders’)
• Other colors if desired: Green (sprinter - think FAST), Polka-dot (climber - as in uphill), and white (rookie).

On the 29th June I'm demonstrating spinning at the Open Studio event in my village. I hope to get at least the singles spun as this is an all day event (at least 5 hours of spinning) I hope to spin this fibre in roughly this order:

	BFL from Grace & Jacob in York. Aiming for a 4ply/sport weight yarn. I’ll split it in half by weight to make a 2ply yarn which I can hopefully turn into a shawl or shrug. Done!
	This is some un-carded Alpaca fibre from Toft Alpacas. I don’t think I’ll try to spin the whole lot, probably one or two hundred grams would be fine (there’s a kilo here). I’d like to go for a sport/DK here. This is my “challenge” spin, because it’s pure alpaca and it’s not carded – I’m hoping to spin from the “cloud”
	Willo Alpaca’s hand-dyed top is lovely colours! I bought this at the Harrogate British Wool Weekend show last September/October. More alpaca, but this is only 50g. I’m going to let the fibre choose how thick it’s going to be, and as it’s only short I’ll probably n-ply it.
	Alchemy Fibre Arts Merino/Silk. More beautiful colours. I haven’t spun Merino/Silk before so this will be a challenge for me. I’m hoping to make a nice fine yarn from this too.
	Felt Studio UK Jacob hand-dyed fibre. I fell in love with this at Woolfest 2 years ago, and it’s been waiting for me to spin it since then. I don’t know how this is going to look out of the braid, so I’ll decide at that point what kind of yarn it will be.
	Freyalyn BFL Silk. This is amazing colours and has an amazing hand! I can’t decide whether to try to keep the colours separate or to let them blend. I might have to play with it a little to decide. Ideally I’d like this to be enough for a nice top – possibly a sleeveless cardigan or something like that. I might pair it with some plain shop-bought yarn if I do this.

If I spin all of those, then I’ll move on to these:






Not to mention anything I pick up from Woolfest this year!

Update: Woolfest purchases