I did the Tour de Fleece for the fist time this year. For those who don't know, it's a spinning event concurrent with the Tour de France. Handspinners challenge themselves to spin every day that the Tour rides, and we join various teams and set our own goals and it's just fun.
I kept thinking I'd blog about it, but as the days went by, it was all I could do to keep up with the Tour and my goals. I spun each day while watching the live stream of the Tour on a laptop. We're close enough to the French time zone to watch it live, which added to the excitement and motivation.
Watching the cyclists go all out certainly helped me push myself, when I got tired of the difficulties of unfamiliar spindles. My goal was to spin up and ply some yarn for weaving on traditional Bolivian and Peruvian low-whorl spindles. I also did some wheel spinning, finishing up a motley sock yarn, and even had a couple of art yarn bursts - wild sprints that broke up the monotony of the plain yarns.
Since I'm leaving town like, now, I've just uploaded a bunch of my Tour photos and put myself at the mercy of Blogger. No messing with order or size or anything, just adding some text.
It's nice to have some finished yarn out of this deal.
Oh, and yesterday I plied some cotton. From now on, my Tour spinning is going mobile, and will be mostly cotton, silk, and some fiber I've ordered in Oz.
And here are the guys when they were in Doha back in February. There's a Tour of Qatar every year, and some of the big teams and riders show up. No crowds and flat terrain - it must be a very different experience for them.
Is that Cavendish?? I didn't even know them before this month - I've learned a lot about the Tour de France, and about spinning and my own abilities.
Now, off to Australia, and I don't know if I'll post again until September.
