Part of July and sometimes August of most years in this house is dedicated to the Tour de Fleece.  It’s a 23 day annual event where we spinners sort of mirror the Tour de France.  We spin the same days, take the same rest days and have challenge days.  It’s a great chance to dedicate some time to spinning and other related crafting.  This year, there was the regular race and the women’s race so we spun from July 1 to the 31st. It’s a great opportunity to try to clear a few UFOs.

I also thought I’d post a few of my new “spinning hacks” and my new favourite tool off the lathe in this post.

Here’s what I committed to working on for this year’s TdF.

From the top:

• A cotton sweater with yarn I over-dyed last year.  The original colorway was “Desert” and I added a Jeans blue to get this much more comfortable for me colour.  It changes a lot in various lights.  This is outside and relatively true to colour here.  It was an unofficial goal but I’d had it on the needles for a year. It was time.
• Some Merino/Tencel rolags in white/green/purple. I began calling this one “Grape Vines” somewhere along the way.  These are the only rolags I’ve ever bought – usually I make my own but this was a few years ago and a great experience in spinning other people’s preparations.
• Then the last fibre is cotton. The intention was to make punis (a lot like the rolags above them but smaller and more compact.) then use those to get to know the charkha beside it.

Challenge days were to try to take on flax/hemp again. (That’s the red and natural coloured fibres in the photo below. ) I tried this a few years ago with very little success.  There was water everywhere and I kept making these tumbleweed sort of things with the fibre.  This year went a lot better!  I far preferred the line flax to the roving and preferred the flax to the hemp.  Now to figure out where to get more of the line flax, since the local shop I got this from is long gone.

The cooler coloured fibres were ones I dyed back in May and were my backups in case I decided I was needing something different to spin from the plan.  The locks are Finn/Gotland and the roving is Merino.

Most of the tour, I ended up spinning the rolags.  One of the things I needed was a way to wind off the spindle so I could use it for the next rolag.  That’s where the TP tubes came in.  Once the yarn is wound onto them, they can be put on a lazy Kate and plied from. Earlier this year, I sold a Leclerc spinning wheel and with that went the lazy Kate I’d adapted to be my spindle Kate.  (Spinning hack #1) Here’s a shot of it from February:

It went on my list to make a new kate but I hadn’t decided on how I wanted it to look or function yet.  I needed something temporary.  This “Kate” is from Ikea but lots of other places sell them as spoon holders too – including a 2 spoon version that may have plying potential.  The bowl in the spoon holder also makes a great spindle bowl that doesn’t break when you drop it on the floor in the middle of your spin night. (Spinning hack #2a and 2b?)

I worked diligently on the “grape vines” spin until almost the end of the main tour and then I derailed.  One night, I was working late finishing up some customer sewing machines and Ryan came into the studio to say he’d found water in the laundry room after his shower.  It turned out a line was backed up and we needed to get that dealt with the next day.  That of course meant the studio torn up (it has one of the clean outs in it). With the water shut off for the night and the next day, I went about my modified day.  Ryan came home a couple of hours early with the rented “snake”.    A couple of hours later, all that was left to do was put everything back together.  That waited until the next day, so the studio was torn up for about 48 hours.  It was a good opportunity to pull up the area rug I’d been meaning to pull and to vacuum and otherwise oust the dust bunnies.

About the only thing I did over those 2 days was make some rolags because – having just finished the Grape Vines spin, I needed something colourful to work on and knew I had a couple of appointments to attend the same day the water was off.  The locks weren’t that portable and I didn’t know yet how I wanted to spin the Merino but I was leaning toward a wheel spin for it.  The charkha needs a table or I have to sit on the floor.  Not very practical at the doctor’s office. The sweater was at the assembly stage by now.  Not that portable either.  These rolags got blended up on the blending board the same night we discovered the water.  I took the small one at the top to my appointments the next day.

Once I saw the singles, I instantly had a plan for this yarn.  I would ply it with a mulberry silk single I’d been spinning on my Lendrum Saxony and had let languish because I just couldn’t see spinning a whole 100g of silk lace weight yarn.  That meant this 47g (1.66oz?) set of rolags would become somewhere close to 90g of lace weight yarn.  As a test, I wound the 2 singles together and got ready to ply them Orenburg style to see if I liked them.  This is the 2 singles side by side before plying.  I love the subtle colour shifts in it.

In fact, I loved it so much, I declared the new spin as part of my goals for the women’s portion of the tour.  With the basement drama out of the way, I was free to spin again. Goals this time were this new spin that reminds me again of Aurora Borealis that we see quite often this year out here in Central Alberta.  Those rolags would be spun and plied with the blue on the wood bobbin.  I would continue my flax/hemp challenge and keep the locks in reserve for a hand off if I needed a break.

The other thing I did around the same time is decide I was tired of the paper tubes in my spinning photos.  What the heck!  Have lathe, will make useless items! This is a piece of found wood (as in a neighbour pruned a tree and put it out for yard waste pickup.  I chose to liberate it before that happened. ) I think is a fruit tree of some sort. My first time turning wet wood and my first time turning anything with bark still on it.  Up until now, it’s been all kiln dried. It was interesting… I can see the attraction though I fear this will crack if dropped.

Here’s what I made.  I’m calling them Bobbi-Pinnes aka spinning hack #3?!?!

First, a nostepinne is a device for manually winding a yarn ball that you can use either the inside or outside strand to knit/crochet with.   Normally, they have a handle portion and a portion you wind the yarn onto.  Most of the ones I’ve seen and held are about 12-14″ long and weigh in the range of 4oz (115g).  Here’s the one I have from Knitter’s Pride:

The problem I often have with them is the ergonomics and weight of holding a miniature baseball bat for the time it takes to wind the ball. With the Bobbi-Pinne, I put a hole through the center and can also put the whole thing on a lazy kate – horizontal or vertical – to ply from once I’ve wound the ball just like the paper tubes.  The other thing I’m playing with is making a base for it and using it as a yarn ball holder. It works as is but is a little light at 43g to stay put – though dropping it in my lap and knitting from it works just fine or I can slide the ball off the BP and use it like that.  It’s just that this yarn is largely silk and silk likes to punish you by tangling if you look at it wrong so I keep the centre supported.  If it’s on a base that turns, it will work just like a regular ball holder.  The hole is already there, I just need the base now. Truthfully, this was a solution looking for a problem.  I just found the TP rolls ugly in my pics and wanted something more attractive and made of wood.  The rest snowballed from there.

This.

This right here is why I don’t sleep.

In fact, I’m so smitten with this spin and the fact that I’ll also be finishing a UFO that’s been on the bobbin since 2020, I even chose a knitting pattern already and am breaking the “spin all the yarn first then cast on” rule.  (This never happens! The picking a pattern part that is.  I break all sorts of rules… )  It’s lace, it likely won’t show that much variation in the grist of the yarn and these support spindles I turn tend to produce a certain yarn when I spin with them.  It won’t vary much.  The pattern is Queen of Heaven from MMario.  You can find it on Ravelry if you’re on it. It’s not found anywhere else but I had it in my downloads from back when I was still on Ravelry.  It’s pretty sparse for information, mostly just charts.  I don’t even know what the yardage is that I can expect to use, or a gauge to work with.  Luckily, that won’t matter much here.  I’m using  US4 (3.5mm) needles.  Yardage will be added as needed. Its code name is: Accidentally Epic.  I’ll put some gratuitous pics of that below.

So let’s recap, for the Tour de Fleece I spun nearly nothing I said I would.  Had one unofficial knit finish.  One spinning finish.  Made a ton of punis but didn’t use them.  Turned something that wasn’t even on the radar when the tour started and started another project.  Oh! And finally had some success with spinning bast (flax/hemp) fibres.  Welcome to my creative world. 😀

If you read this far, here’s bonus spinning hack #4:  With most of the spindles I’ve been spinning with, the only recurrent issue I’ve had with any and all of them is that the cop tends to slide upward eventually.  This leads to yarn barf and less yarn being put on the spindle.  I’ve been combating that by rubbing beeswax on the shafts before I start a spin or before I wind the singles onto the plying spindles and have virtually eliminated the problem.  Yes, future  spindles will have different shapes to their shafts to help the yarn not slide up but in the case of existing spindles, the beeswax is working really well.  All I would say is that where your fingers are, you likely don’t want wax and when you’re winding singles on, you may need to reapply the wax if your fingers are lower while winding than when you’re plying.

Well, that’s July.  It felt like a lot of spinning and such at the time, so I guess this was bound to be a longer than expected post too.  August’s should be shorter.  We had a “staycation”, I got a new toy, went for a couple of rides, turned a thing or two but otherwise, it’s been quieter than July so far. Thankfully.  I’m right worn out from having “fun”.

Today’s post title inspired by Burton Cummings – My Own Way To Rock

(sharp eyed folks will see it came from one of the photo captions this time.)

Burton Cummings/The Guess Who and BTO are all bands I grew up with despite their music being a little bit before my time. I grew up in a musical household – which is a lot of the reason for my post titles – and classic rock was a staple.