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Sunday 24 July 2016

TdF Challenges

During the Tour de France, there are usually two days which are particularly challenging for the riders - usually when they have arduous climbs through the mountains.  On those days, we spinners like to challenge ourselves as well.  Karen, our intrepid Team DIY and Dye leader, usually comes up with a task for us (sometimes suggested by one of our team members) to challenge our skills and endurance!

Here's the first for this year : spin as much as you can for 10 minutes, then measure your yardage.  I was pretty certain I was going to totally suck be bottom of the class in this one because I think I'm a pretty slow spinner.  Sure enough, my suspicions started to be confirmed when the first team member posted her results - 71 yards.  I was pretty sure I couldn't get anywhere near that.  Anyway, here's my attempt :-


No idea what this fleece is - it came from a World of Wool botany lap waste bag.  I pre-drafted it ready for spinning (not sure if this was cheating or not!), and here's what I managed to spin in the allotted 10 minutes :-


34 yards.  By this time I was feeling pretty useless as you can imagine.  Then other team members started posting their results and I didn't feel so bad after all.  It seems I'm average - most of them were about the 30-40 yard range.  I don't mind average, average is better than useless!

The second challenge we were given was to spin 10g fibre as finely as possible and then measure your yardage (no time limit with this one).  I picked out some raspberry acid dyed Falkland from my stash for this and flicked the individual locks into a soft cloud of fluffiness.  I thought Falkland would be good because it's quite a long staple and it's easy to draft it out finely.


This took quite a while and I was surprised how much fibre there was in 10g.  Here's the finished article :-


I think this is the finest I've ever spun - and the grand total?  159 yards!  I was quite pleased with that.

Both of these yarns have been left as singles for now because there's more of each fibre to spin.  After the TdF finishes (that's today folks!) I'll put them back on the bobbin and spin the rest.  Then they can be plied and finished.

2 comments:

  1. Well done! Love that raspberry colour!
    Whenever I read your blog I itch to get my wheel out :) x

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    1. The raspberry dye was actually my neighbour's. She wanted me to dye a child's jacket for her and when I'd finished there was still lots of colour in the pot. It just kept on giving colour!

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