Tour De Fleece 2026 – The Final Wrap-up

Another year of Tour de Fleece has whizzed by and I’m taking stock of what I’ve managed to achieve this time round. After feeling quite leisurely during week one, weeks two and three have felt much more hectic, partly due to having to adapt my schedule around unexpected life goings-on in the background. I began week three frustrated; I’d only just started on the second box of zwartbles and felt like there was no way I would get through the rest of it by the end of the challenge. The heat slowed me down and restricted my fibre prep to when my wool picking ‘station’ was in the shade, but I kept chipping away at zwartbles mountain and somehow got through it all by the end of the week. I also had some time away from my wheel, so experimented with combing the angora goat so I could take my spindle along with me.

Final Reflections

My total length spun this year was 5.38km (including the length x3 for plied yarns and a guestimate of 75m of angora goat since it’s still on my spindle and I didn’t want to unwind it mid-spin), which is only 300m down from last year when I had a lot more plying going on. It’s definitely the most fleece I’ve spun during a TDF challenge, but I’m still surprised that I managed to nearly meet last years yardage since the chunky skeins weren’t plied and aren’t as long. In spite of some slight hiccups throughout the challenge I kept up with my photos and video editing each day, and discovered some new features on my video editing software which was a bonus.

Taking a look back to my initial to-do list, let’s see how I did:

• Zwartbles Rug Yarn – This was the biggest part of my challenge and definitely the most daunting. Despite a slow start as I realised my jumbo flyer wasn’t up to the task, my country spinner and I have become very well aqcuainted and I finished spinning this fleece by day 22. This means I can get to work throughout the rest of the year turning the yarn into rugs (and the boxes of fleece won’t be in the way).
• Baby Alpaca – This was such a gorgeous fleece and a delight to spin. Most of this was spun during week 1, with the last skeins completed in week 2 and I’m very excited to present the yarn to the owner – it’s such a special moment when someone sees their fleece turned into a finished project.
• Angora Goat – I didn’t have much opportunity for spindle spinning this year, and since the above two projects were my priority, not much of this got processed. When I put this on my list I never expected to make my way through all of it, so I’m happy to have ascertained that combing will definitely work to remove the sawdust and is much easier on the wrists with the combs mounted on the stand. Since the fleece is out, I’m hoping I’ll now have time to comb through it all in the coming months between my other projects (and maybe I’ll do a dedicated blog post on dealing with fleeces with lots of VM/tangles).
• Challenges – I had to change my initial plans round a bit for these often resorting to plan B (or C!) when I didn’t have access to the resources for my intial challenge. My three challenges this year tested my skill and control over the fibre, from loooooong draw in windy conditions, trying a new fibre and testing my ability to spin while balancing. Despite my TDF challenges often being a little silly, I always learn something from them; this year I’ve discovered that I have much more control over my spinning that I thought – from my second attempt onwards balancing, I realised that I was more focused on my footing than I was on the spindle, which was encouraging should I ever need to spin on adverse terrain!

In all, I’m pleased with my spins this year – I’ve dealt with some of my stash and now have the equipment to revisit some older fleeces in my stash which is exciting! Thank you for following along with my challenge this year – I hope you’ve enjoyed the posts and videos. If you’ve also completed TDF, do let me know how your ‘wrap-up’ has gone in the comments below!

Happy Spinning!