F is for Fleece

 A to Z(ed) blogging challenge - (my) Life in the time of CoVid-19

F is for Fleece

I am a member of an online knitting/crocheting/spinning community called Ravelry.  Every summer when the Tour de France starts there is a group that organizes the Tour de Fleece.  The object is to spin every day that the riders are riding and to challenge yourself on the two challenging days of the Tour.  You also can rest on the two days the riders are resting. 

I learned how to spin when our best man gave me his mother's spinning wheel.  I took lessons in the fall of 2014 and have spun on and off since then.  I have spun well enough to knit socks, mitts, cowls, hats, shawls and toys out of my hand-spun.  

This year even though the Tour de France was postponed until September the organizers on Ravelry decided to go ahead, and I decided to join in.  It's not like I was doing much else as camping and travelling were off the table last summer. 

I had a lot of fleece - some I had purchased, but most I had been given by a friend I helped pack for her move, and she didn't want to take her fleece stash since spinning wasn't something she really enjoyed. 

The Tour de Fleece also coincided with another challenge I had made for myself to not buy any fibre in 2020 and to spin and then knit up what I did have. 

modelling my handspun, hand-dyed, hand knit toque

The log book entry at the beginning of this post is my spinning through that Tour.  As it turned out I won a package of ten different sheep breed fibres (for challenging myself by spinning silk), and also some rainbow dyed fibre (for managing to spin everyday of the competition).  It was so exciting to win something - and as it turned out the organizers of Tour de Fleece decided to hold a second contest when the actual Tour got going at the end of August.  

Spinning my winning (s) for Tour de Fleece take two

I know I spun more yardage in the year 2020 then I ever had before.  I made a hat/cowl/mitt set that I wore through the winter on my daily walks, and some beautiful socks for Pride (but that is another story when I get to R is for Rainbow.)

If you are just starting to follow my A to Z(ed) blogging challenge you can read my theme by clicking the link in the top line of this post - (my) Life in the time of CoVid-19.