“Tour de Fleece? I thought it was Tour de France!” I can hear you asking. Well, yeah, there’s the bike race, but there really is a Tour de Fleece. And guess what? I’m entered in it!

I’ll even tell you what it is, kakaroached from Ravelry:

This year, the Tour de Fleece starts Saturday July 2nd and runs until Sunday July 24th, 2011.

Spin every day the Tour rides, if possible. Saturday July 2nd through Sunday July 24th. Days of rest: Monday July 11th, Monday July 18st. (Just like the actual tour)

Spin something challenging Friday July 22nd. (The Tour’s toughest mountain stage over the Col du Galibier for the second time, and finishing up on Alpe d’Huez.)

July 2nd:

Mokihana, start your engine!

Oh. Try wait. Nomo engine on dis. I am da engine! This is my Joe Jorgensen Myrtlewood spinning wheel. I adore this wheel. I bought it from my spinning teacher because I’d always longed for a myrtlewood wheel and she was selling hers. Nani, yeah? Handmade by a kane from Grants Pass. It’s even numbered.

So, my friend Linda won eight ounces of beautiful Merino spinning fiber at last year’s Sock Summit. Sock Summit, you ask? Ho, u folks so niele! Ask so many questions! Try click on da link, den u can see dat Sock Summit really exists. But I digress.

Linda won dis nani fiber:

Close up:

Only one small kine problem. Linda doesn’t own a spinning wheel. Furthermore, she doesn’t even know how to spin. We’d gone to Sock Summit together, and when she found out what she’d won, I told her I’d spin it up for her.

That was two years ago, and I still hadn’t done anything with it. So when Tour de Fleece rolled around, which I’d never entered before, I decided spinning and plying this lovely roving would be a great challenge for me.

By the end of Day One, I’d spun just a little bit of it and my photo left a lot to be desired.

I saw how creative others were being with their daily photos on Ravelry, so this is the only boring photo you’ll see.

So, from now on, I will post a photo of the day’s spinning. I’m already up to day Seven, but I’ll make a separate post for each day.

Hope you enjoy this change from road trips for a bit. Tour de Fleece is a really big deal to me; it’s very challenging, not only to find the time for spinning every day, but also to try and make as consistent a yarn as possible. I have never spun Merino before. Or superwash. Or roving like this. And since I’m doing this for someone else, I really want it to be well done.

I hope that when both bobbins that I spin become yarn (after plying the singles on each together) it will be pretty yarn. We’ll see. So far it’s not nearly as consistent as I like, but the whole idea is to learn something new and do something challenging. I’m doing both and feel good about that.