It’s that time of year again, when crafters spin every day of the Tour de France. This year the dates are 1st – 23rd July.
In previous years I have used the TDF challenge to experiment with different fibres and work through some of my stash. This has been somewhat successful, particularly with smaller amounts of fibre, but means I’ve often dipped in and out of lots of projects thinking I’ll have more time than I do to get them finished. So this year, rather than leaving myself with several partially processed fleeces at the end of the month, I’m going to focus my efforts on getting half finished projects completed.
As per usual, I’m going to aim to spend at least 1 hour per day on my challenge, but won’t be too strict about it, some days I may spend more time, some days less. I’m also including fibre prep (carding/combing) within my challenge. I will use the following ‘to-do’ list of projects to keep me on track.
- Hampshire Down – finish carding, spinning & plying the rest of the fleece
- Gotland prepared roving – Finish spinning and plying on my Turkish spindle – this will be my ‘travelling’ project for days when I’m away from my wheel.
- Lincoln Longwool – Continue coreless core-spinning on my jumbo flyer
- Luxury Fibre Samples – Spin these so they can be used as embroidery thread
My hope is that these projects should give me enough variety to both keep daily updates on instagram and weekly updates on the blog interesting, while also freeing up my carders and wheels for other fleeces when the challenge is finished (my first weekly wrap up will be Sunday 9th July). Having finished yarn also means that I can start a final project later on. If I get through the list before the challenge is over then I have plenty of other fleeces I can make a start on.
If you are also joining in with Tour de Fleece (whether part of a group or going it alone like me) I’d love to hear how you get on – feel free to share your progress/goals in the comments section and if you want to find out what I got up to last year I’ve included links to my posts below.
Happy Spinning!
Loose Ends 