Last year was the first year I had access to a spinning wheel during the Tour, so it was also the first time I participated. I had some fiber that I acquired at MDSW along with my wheel, so I set out to spin that. Two identical braids, one purchased by me, the other a gift from my friend Holly.
I didn't get very far with it, though. Of course, I did travel for a large amount of the Tour, driving from Tennessee to Rhode Island for Handweavers Guild of America's biennial Convergence conference and taking a workshop there. I also spun up some angora given to me by a lovely man named David, so my spinning attentions were divided. (Also: HOW WONDERFUL IS ANGORA?!) The point is that I only got about halfway through the first braid of fiber during the tour.
I took time off from spinning for pleasure to finish my BFA, since that involved a lot of purposeful spinning, and finished up that braid from Tour de Fleece in May. This year, I decided to spin the matching braid so that I could ply them together and have a finished yarn. I finished the second braid in a week, thanks largely to the fact that I acquired a fast flyer for my wheel while spinning for my thesis show.
After that, I started working on the spinning project I had put away just before Tour de Fleece, not expecting to finish the first project so quickly.
If (or, being realistic, when) I finish the rainbow, I'll have to make a decision on what to spin next, but I'll still have some plying to do, so I'll probably do that first. For my challenge day I'm going to break out my drop spindle and see if I can wrangle some yarn out of that, since I've never gotten the hang of it. As for today, though, it's a rest day, so I'm going to go rewatch some more X-Files episodes and do some knitting.
