Well time has flown by and it is time for BritSpin 2019.

An annual event where spinners join teams and they compete for a number of different spinning trials.  Like last year, I have joined the team ‘More Enthusiasm Than Skill‘.

BritSpin runs from 9pm on Wednesday 9th to 9pm Sunday 13th October (both times British Summer Time).  You are allowed to prepare fibre beforehand, but you have to start with empty spindles and bobbins and must have everything off your bobbins and measured before the deadline.

There are 3 Marathon events that you can enter:-

• Team Marathon
• Individual Marathon
• Individual Marathon – spindle only

Plus Extra Events:

• Learn a new skill
• Breedathon
• Bakewell Bingo
• BritSpin Sprint

Plus there are photo thread entries – a photo of you spinning in public or with friends and photos of your BritSpin experience.

For more accurate description of the events please check the BritSpin website.  Or the Ravelry page.

This year our team have some Perendale wool top from our sponsor Wool Tops.  This isn’t a breed that I have spun before, so I’m interested to see how it spins and what the finished yarn is like.  The Sponsor has described it as “The Perendale fibre (bloodline Romney/Cheviot) is from a farm half an hour away from Stanley (Falkland Island).  The wool is white and bouncy with a good 4/5inches. The wool feels much softer than the 30/32microns tested due to the lustre from the Romney character. The farmers are amazing people with big hearts and have a large amount of penguins on their farm!”

I had lots of thoughts about what I may or may not spin, but as we have a breed I’ve not heard of before I thought I would concentrate on the Breedathon challenge.  This is spinning as many different breeds of wool (min. 50g per breed).

This seemed like a good opportunity to use some of the smaller batches of fibre that I received when I was in the World of Wool Fibre Club.  My plan is to spin as many of the 50g batches as I can over the few days and then will dye them up and make some more Smitten Mittens with them.

The breeds (types) I have short listed from my stash are:

1. Perendale – from Wool Tops
2. Rambouillet – from World of Wool (WoW)
3. Whitefaced Woodland – from WoW
4. Cheviot – from WoW
5. Portland – from Bunloit Woolery
6. Jacob – from Bunloit Woolery
7. North Ronaldsay – bought in Orkney
8. Herdwick – from WoW

You aren’t allowed to use blended fibres, as part of the Breedathon.

You can spin blended fibres or other animal fibres as part of the Marathon events, but what I spin as part of the breedathon will be going towards my Individual and Team Marathon events anyway.  I will be spinning one of these fibres on my supported spindle, and therefore will be able to double count this as ‘Learning a new skill’ as well, and will be able to count that for the spindle only event. 🙂

I am considering doing the Sprint, which is spinning AND plying as long a length of fibre as you can in an hour.  We will see if that happens.

So today I am going to make up some rolags for spinning on my supported spindle and will be making sure all bobbins are empty, my spinning wheel is oiled and my knitting is tucked away.

Teams are allowed 10 members and there may be some teams still looking for members.  At the time of writing our team only has 9 members.  The deadline for creating new teams has already passed, but if you are interested you may still sneak in an existing team.