Spin, Span, Spun: Tour de Fleece 2018

It's been a wonderful and productive three weeks and now I find myself on the final day of the Tour de Fleece. I look forward to this event every year because it's such a wonderful motivator to get my spinning projects done. I have probably spun more in other years (like years before I had a small person taking up a good deal of my time), but I'm extremely pleased with what I accomplished this year. Here is a shot of all the finished spinning from the past three weeks:

Three of these skeins have been completed in the past two days. I finished plying up the second chocolate Bond skein yesterday, for another 277.5 yards. When that plying was done, I decided to start spinning some mini batts I'd made with some of the leftover Buoy fiber from my Boxy spin and a bit of silk. I ended up spinning up all the singles last night (yes, I stayed up a little late), and then this morning, I wound off all the singles on my ball winder, so that I could ply from both ends. Here's the resulting skein, prewashing:

It's in the bath now, so I won't know final yardage until it's dry, but I'm thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 yards. I also Andean plied the leftover singles of the Bond for the mini skein you can see in the above photo.

I'm not sure what I'm going to spin next -- frankly, there are several projects I'd like to start and I'm having a hard time deciding -- so I pulled out my bobbin of leftovers and some fiber samples, and I guess I'll try to fill it up before deciding on the next spin.

When I can't get any more singles on this bobbin, I'll chain ply everything. I've been accumulating little bits of singles so long that I have no recollection what's underneath what you see here (nor, for that matter, do I really remember the content of what I can see).

In looking at all the spinning I got done over the past three weeks, I think what's most notable is that with the exception of the one skein of sock yarn, all my TdF spinning this year was done woolen. It's something I am not so good at, so it was really helpful for me to have all that practice. I've definitely gotten better and certainly more confident at it, and boy does it ever go quickly! The skein I spun yesterday and plied today was 99 g/3.5 oz. of fiber, and it all got done in just a few hours. I have a feeling there is a lot more woolen spinning in my future!