I've spun 4 different yarns totaling 843 yards and 425g over the 23 days of the cycle race. Like the riders, I've had a couple of rest days - I couldn't spin when I visited my parents, and I didn't have time to spin when I went out with the girls one evening.
My first spin was this lovely Alchemy Fibre Arts Blue Faced Leicester, 125g of lovely fluffiness!
I split it pretty much in half, though not measuring or weighing it at all; then I spun it onto two bobbins and then 2-plied it.
A lot of the blue ran when I washed the yarn - it took three soaks to get it running clear, and still the drips were a bit blue when I drip dried it! This yarn was whacked to finish before hanging dry unweighted.
Then I moved on to a Spin City batt which I've been looking forwards to spinning. I've previously spun a batt from Spin City and I loved the resulting yarn, in fact I turned it into a scarf.
So I was excited to spin this one too, and it lived up to my hopes! I found the vegan "silk" a bit slippery, as you'd expect, but it is beautiful and pink and sparkly. I actually let the singles rest for this one, and I spun the gradient yarn in between.
My third fluff was a pack from Nunoco. I'm pretty sure I picked it up from Etsy when I was ordering a gift for a friend (as you do) and it was simply 5 lots of 20g of merino. So simple that I forgot to photograph it before I spun it.
I split each 20g strip into four, then I spun two of each in order onto two bobbins. This meant I had tow similar singles. There was a slight difference in the lengths of the colour repeats (a combination of uneven splitting of the fibre, and uneven spinning)
The beauty of this is that the colour changes blend really well.
I was left with a longish section of just the darker colour, which I wound onto my Andean plying tool and finished off that way. I'm pleased with the resulting yarn.
It's shown here on the niddy noddy because this is a better representation of the colours than the skeined picture.
I finished plying the Spin City batt, and the gradient on the 18th - 5 days remained of the Tour de France. I could have stopped, but I thought I'd give it a go and see if I could get something else spun before the end. I grabbed the nearest fibre from my box in the garage, and it turned out to be...
Some My Heart Exposed (I'm sorry, she doesn't trade anymore) hand-dyed Shetland. The colourway is called "Opposites Attract". I'm pleased that this was what my hand fell upon, it has spun up nicely. It's not colours I'd usually choose, but it's very pretty.
In order to keep the colours pure, I decided to n-ply this one.
This yarn is so far out of my usual colour palette, I'm not sure what I'll do with it. It's very pretty though.
So, that's it. I finished plying the final skein on the same day that the tour concluded (though I washed it on the Monday!) and while four skeins isn't breaking any records, I'm really proud of both the amount and quality of the spinning I did this year.
Here's my final photo for the event:
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