Fibre Week Wraps Up, Tour de Fleece Begins

Fibre Week wrapped up yesterday for those doing the Master Level classes, though I was home on Tuesday. As always, it was a great week!

The class on Spinning as Meditation was much more work than I expected – though as the instructor said, meditation is not relaxation spelled differently, so I suppose I should’ve been able to foresee that it’d take some effort to remain focused and mindful for a whole day!

Sunday evening was the spin-in, hosted by the Alpaca People, and I managed to fill one spindle with lovely purple singles that evening and a second the next night. Those got wound onto a storage bobbin after I came home, and then I spun up the fawn coloured rovings and plyed the two together to make a ball of lovely squishy heathery softness.

Oh yes, that’s Anne, the Norwegian wheel I acquired in trade for fibre (!) from a Fibre Week Friend (the young spinner who brought all the spindles for our Spindle Party). The wheel spins so nicely, and is happy to ply (which most of my antiques are not particularly thrilled to do). She’s a vintage wheel of some kind … I hope to do some sleuthing into her history soon, but right now I’m just enjoying her beauty and how well she spins!

Monday evening was the silent auction and the fashion show. We were so busy having fun that I have no pictures, but there’ll be some on the Fibre Week website soon, I’m sure. I entered all the shawls from Just Keep Knitting in the fashion show, though I ended up not modelling any of my own work myself … I did get to wear all kinds of gorgeous things made by other people, so that was fun! One of the truly amazing things I got to model was a red felted jacket made by Karen Workman – this jacket hung in an art gallery for several months, and *I got to wear it!*

Tuesday I meandered home, stopping at a roadside turnout for a power nap along the way (power naps are very comfortable when you are travelling in a motor home), and then spent the next few days enjoying the chance to sleep in a very dark room (note to self: must make dark curtains for the motorhome windows, since Fibre Week happens right around solstice and it is light at 4 am).

I’ve also managed to take inventory of all the yarn for Flannelberry Fibre, sort out some paperwork, send out several orders, and visit with some friends. I haven’t yet got all the fibre inventory complete, but that’ll happen soon.

Today is the start of the Tour de Fleece – which is an event for spinners that coincides with the Tour de France.

Spin every day the Tour rides, if possible, from Saturday June 30th through Sunday July 22nd. Days of rest: Tuesday July 10th and Tuesday July 17th. (Just like the actual tour.)

Spin something challenging on the challenge day (usually the toughest high mountain stage: Challenge Day will be announced before the Tour starts).

It’s a fun way to focus on your spinning: for me, I’m going to work on spinning as much as possible of the alpaca fleece that I’ve been slowly working on for the past several months … it’s time to get this turned into yarn!

Here’s where I’ll be spending some of my time:

The big bucket contains the fleece that hasn’t been combed yet. The gray Ikea bag has combed stuff, the blue bucket is combing waste (which will eventually be carded and either felted or spun, it’s good enough for spinning, I just need to ask my customer what she’d like). The apron is there because combing makes a mess – on the table you can see the spray bottle of conditioner and water that helps keep the static down when I’m combing, as well as the corner of the new set of combs I acquired while at Fibre Week (yippee! Now I can return the ones I’ve had on loan from another generous fibre friend for way too long.) One of my spindles is on the chair, and the others are in those round containers or assorted other places around the house. And of course, hawk Bait the cat is there to supervise. I’ll be spinning singles on the spindles and plying on the wheel, but my focus is to get singles spun – I don’t think I have enough storage bobbins to just spin singles and not ply at all during the Tour, though I’ve emptied as many as I could. 3 ply yarn takes a lot of spinning.

Speaking of which … time to get going!

And they’re off!