In solidarity with the cyclists I started today with 10 minutes on the exercise bike, followed by a lie down in front of the fan! The exercise bike is a new addition to the household and is really Paul’s toy so this was only the second time I had had a play on it. I found even 10 mins pathetically difficult.

Today I have been spinning along to Wimbledon, rather than the Tour de France. I watched the men’s singles finals (epic match!) and the mixed doubles final.

One of my goals for the tour is to spin as much as I can of my first two fleeces. One is half a grey Dorset cross fleece. I am not quite sure what the cross is with, but we think it might be Black Welsh Mountain. The other full fleece is a white Poll Dorset. I have washed all the fleece and it is in a pair of bin bags ready to go. I am combing each lock as I go so it is a bit time consuming and I am very slow.

This is how much I had done before the tour started:

And this is how the bobbin looks now:

I am making progress! Although rather slowly. I am coming close to having to make a difficult decision with this. I had been thinking that there would be less than 1 bobbin of grey, and probably about 2 of white. So the plan was to spin one grey, two white, then ply all three together and knit socks. I might dye it teal after plying depending on how the colour comes out and whether I like the grey and white barber pole. However it is looking like there is going to be more grey than will fit on one bobbin. So I think I will go onto a second bobbin of grey. The only difficulty is that I only have 4 bobbins. However I think I might do the plying on the Suzie which has bigger bobbins anyway. I didn’t want to swap wheels half way through the singles because the ratios are different and that might much things up, but hopefully plying on a different wheel wont make too much difference.

Here finally is the finished spindle spun skein from yesterday.

It may be a bit wobbly, but I am still proud 🙂