I recently discovered Kathy’s Fibres, and let me tell you, I considered keeping the finding to myself.

I managed to score four gorgeous braids of her hand-dyed 24 micron merino. YUM.

They’ve been draped on the spinning wheels, waiting to be spun.

Thanks Kathy!

This is the second EGMTK yarn in the pile, a BFL top in purples and maroon. Not my colours at all, but they’ve grown on me as I’ve been spinning (and spinning, and spinning) on this project.

So far, just the singles done, at about 25 wpi, they’re resting for the moment until I get a chance to sit down and Andean ply them. Man, I’m pretty sure I’m making an enormous mistake by choosing to Andean ply 150 g of fairly finely spun fibre, there’s a very good chance I’m going to end up tied to the couch.

Singles spun z on the Roberta.

Frankly, I’m not terribly interested in bicycle racing. Not interested at all, actually, the Moto GP is more my speed, but I’m enjoying competing in the tour de fleece for this year and am VERY glad it’s such a long race.

I’ve spun and plied the first of my skeins, 100g of Polwarth / Bamboo top from EGMTK. Let’s just say that this was NOT an enjoyable experience. I’ve never seen such poorly blended fibre, it was horrible.

I understand that the polwarth and the bamboo have different properties, and different staple lengths, but this was ridiculous, all of the bamboo was contained in two distinct stripes down the length of the fibre. It needed at least another two passes through the carders. Not really good enough, given the price of the fibre.

Anyway, the finished project, a three ply weighing in at about 12 wpi. Singles spun z on the Little Peggy and plied s on the Mitzy.

Slightly late, I’ve decided to join the TdF for 2009.

I’m in two teams, team Aussie and team Rookie, because I’ve not joined before.

Illness and time constraints have me chosing a fairly small (hopefully) challenge, to spin up the EGMTK club fibres from earlier this year:

The plan is tentatively to spin the back one into a three ply, about sport weight, the centre into a two ply, hopefuly about sock weight, and the front into a thicker two ply, probably around worsted. Maybe bigger.

More details about each fibre as they’re spun.

I’ll give all of the details for these yarns once I finish the month, but this one is part of a kilo of merino and alpaca I picked up in Victoria last year.

See that speedo up there? That’s my baby Vespa. See the numbers around the outside? They’re kilometres. The numbers on the inside? Miles.

Yep.

Even though I knew that a km was shorter than a mile, that I could ride 80kph on the road between here and my parents and that that was about 50mph, I still thought I would have less spinning to do if I chose to spin a mile and not a kilometre.

Oh my.

All isn’t lost, though, I’ve managed to do a bit of spinning, and am intending to take the peggy with me when we go dirtbiking next weekend.

I like to set myself challenges. I don’t always complete them, and don’t beat myself up over it, but I do find that they motivate me, which is nice.

Last month, I saw a bunch of bloggers aiming to spin a mile and while ‘Spin a Mile in March’ sounds better than ‘Spin a Mile in April,’ I was abroad for most of the month, so there wasn’t much spinning going on.

I did manage to complete my other challenge (a lace item, an upper body garment and something for the feet), with a wee bit of cheating and will post photos as soon as it stops raining.

This month, I’ll still be working on that challenge while I try to spin, spin, spin. My default spin is laceweight, so I think I’m going to have to practice making thicker yarns if I want to spin a mile.