A Final Spin for the Tour

The Tour de Fleece (and, naturally, the Tour de France) wrapped up today, and thanks to several hours at my wheel yesterday, I finished one more skein of yarn for the year -- well, technically two, if you count the wee mini skein that came with it.

This skein used 11 of the mini batts that came in my giant bag 'o fluff from HipStrings. The tag that came in the bag said simply "TdF 2022 Bits n Bobs," so I have no idea of the content. Obviously there's wool, but what kind, I could not tell you. Similarly, I could identify bits of silk of different colors and some sparkle here and there, but really what I was spinning was a mystery. And I think that's what made it so fun. I picked out the more neutral batts from the bag -- four that were cream with some black silk and a hint of a pale pink, four that were a medium gray, and three that were a dark gray with tons of colorful add-ins -- and split them so that I spun them in that order onto three bobbins. Then I plied them together, and because the batts weren't all the same weight and I split some up, there were obviously some areas of overlap in the transitions. When the first bobbin ran out, I wound of the singles from the fullest remaining bobbin and made a plying bracelet; the mini skein is a two ply created from just those singles when the second bobbin ran out (there were more, but they got all tangled and I decided I didn't want to fight with them).

The finished yarn is roughly sport weight -- I couldn't make my singles as consistent as I do with combed top just due to the nature of the carded prep, so it's a bit thicker in some places and thinner in others -- and very nearly 440 yards. The skein was still a bit damp when I photographed it, but once I'm sure it's dry, I'll weigh it to get a sense of how much fiber I used. The mini skein is about 10 yards of heavy lace weight, and I'm just going to add it to a little baggie I have of small skeins like this that are really not enough to do anything with but are too cute to throw away.

Something I really love about this skein is how it reads as neutral colors from far away, but when you look closely, there are really a ton of bright colors in it. Spinning batts with a lot of textured elements is also a bit outside my comfort zone, so it's good for me to do to stretch my spinning skills. I still have about a dozen batts in the bag, so I'll be spinning more of them soon!

It wasn't my most productive Tour ever, but I very much enjoyed it, and really I think that's what counts. I plan to spin some more this week as well, because the organizers of the Ravelry event have announced that spinning will continue to coincide with the Tour de France Femmes. I didn't even know this event was happening until a couple of days ago, but I really could not have picked a better week to take a vacation!