Almost 4 weeks ago I posted about the start of Tour de Fleece, and my plans. (TDF is a spinning challenge arranged and run on Ravelry.)

The event finished on Sunday 19th July and so it’s time for a wrap up post of my results. Did I take a detour? Get lost? Wear a yellow jersey?

This year I was a member of 3 teams, not 2 as I’d mentioned in my initial post.

1. The Corner of Knit and Tea Laura has a podcast on YouTube that I sometimes watch. This is my 3rd year being a member of her team. In my 1st year I was lucky enough to be picked as a prize winner and I won a poppy coloured Corriedale fibre, that was my first fractal spun yarn and knit into a hat for my husband. I’m thrilled to say that this year I have also been selected as a prize winner, so some fabulous fibre and no doubt a flavoured tea sachet will be finding its way to me over the coming weeks.
2. Spinning dog fibre : aka Spinnin’ Chien. This is a group I joined in September 2018, when I was given some Samoyed dog fibre by my neighbour. Her parents owned the dog and wondered if I’d spin it. I’m embarrassed to say that it took me nearly 2 years to get round to doing the spinning and the dog died in February 2020. This was my first time spinning in their team. I also won a prize in this team as well! A chance to select a pattern on Ravelry which will be gifted to me. I have chosen the Havana Afghan CAL pattern, which is on my YOP list and I’ve been thinking of making a mini version as a lap blanket. I’ve also seen one lady use the chart from it as a knitting pattern to make a scarf as well.
3. Highland Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers. This was our Guild’s first year entering a team and I was the team captain. We were just a small team, with our training wheels on, more like tourists cycling alongside the competitors occasionally than serious racers. One of our ladies still hasn’t mastered uploading a photo and only a couple of us had finished lengths to report, but I’m glad we did it. I didn’t offer any prizes and now having won 2 on my other teams I feel a bit guilty. Perhaps next year I will ask the committee if we can offer a prize.

So that’s who I spun for but what did I spin? Well, I did take a detour! I ended up not spinning the wool rolags and ended up having a sheep free TDF! It was all about baby camel and silk and the Samoyed dog fluff!

I needed to spin enough of the pale blue and peach baby camel to finish Reyna, which I did.

I enjoyed spinning the baby camel so much I picked out another combed top and spun it all, this time it’s purples. It was the one on the left, I wish I’d taken a better photo. The colours aren’t quite right on the fibre or the finished yarns.

On the first mountain challenge day I tried to spin the Samoyed dog fibre on my Russian supported spindle, but that ended up just getting fluff everywhere and my wrist was sore from crocheting my minion. So there is still unmeasured yarn on that spindle at the moment.

But once I did a batch on Ashford Traditional spinning wheel it was much easier. I was going to do a 2 ply to make it longer overall, but in the end I also chain plied it. I’m addictive to chain ply!

So in the end my finished yarns are:

– Samoyed 80.1m
– Purple baby camel and silk 225.9m
– Peach and blue baby camel 155.5m
Total = 461.5m.

All 3 ply so counting singles spun plus plying distance (like BritSpin rules) = 1,846m, so 1.8km or 1.1 miles of spinning.