Today was a day of cleaning and tidying. I now have clean bathrooms and kitchen, and a vacuumed house. I also finally got round to putting up shelves in the utility room and emptying another 3 boxes which were packed up when we had our boiler replaced. There is still the computer room which badly needs sorting out, but downstairs is starting to look a bit more reasonable.

I have made a bit of progress on the spinning too. Today I photographed it with a 1 Euro coin, to try and distract from the fact that it looks jolly similar to yesterday.

The tour is quite good for actually making me get a move on with this. I am finding the picking bits out of the fleece before I can spin it a bit tedious, and it interrupts the flow of the spinning. Nearly two little laundry bags spun now, I haven’t counted how many I have left, I think probably around twelve.

Happy Bastille Day!

Back on the wheel again today. I have been making progress honest, it just doesn’t really look like it 🙂

I am hoping to have a more productive day tomorrow.

Another day of only a small amount of progress. I have a good excuse though. Yesterday afternoon we went up to Stratford to see As You Like It with the inlaws and stayed with them over night, coming home in time for tea today. The production was excellent, it was laugh out loud funny, but with a lot of depth too. They also had a lot of excellent music being performed by the actors which is always good 🙂 We had a great time.

It was a bit dark outside by the time I managed to take my progress photo, but I think it is just about do-able.

I have been doing a bit of knitting too, but failed to photograph that. These are some samples for the Patchwork knitting workshop on 22nd August. I am doing demos of some edgings, so have been knitting some strips of mitred squares to edge. Hopefully I might get a picture of them tomorrow in between the predicted rain showers.

Oops. In my excitement yesterday I failed to actually say anything much about the knitting project that the pattern sample was for. This is for my second City and Guilds project, and will be a jumper with set in sleeves and a round neck. I am going to make it slightly A-line to fit me better.

Katya had an excellent idea in the comments yesterday about using stripes to blend the colours better. I will definitely be doing some colouring to try this out and see if I can make it work for this project. Once I have measured my stitch and row tension I will know how many rows I have to play with over the length of the jumper, and so how many rows of each colour.

There has been a very small amount of progress on the spinning. I have started on the white Dorset.

This is surprisingly different to the grey Dorset cross. The white is very crimpy, and the yarn I am making is quite fuzzy but not as hairy as the grey.

Barcelona seem to be having today the weather we had a couple of days ago. It looked nasty cycling weather for the finish of today’s stage. Interesting trivia: today was the furthest south the tour is going this year.

Luckily the weather here has cheered up a bit. I spent some time up the ladder poking at the gutters, and have hopefully solved part of the watery carpet problem. Once the wasps have been removed I might try pouring a bucket of water or two into the gutter to check that the downpipe isn’t blocked too. Oh the joys of home maintenance.

It has been a busy day here so I only got a chance to do about an hour of spinning this evening. Here is how the bobbin looks now,  still not finished, though I am now down to only 2 net bags of grey fibre.

Paul chose today’s coin. It is a Nebraska quarter. I think he chose it because it had a pretty picture 🙂

There are a couple of category 4 climbs in today’s stage. Today I had a little bit of a climb myself as Lisa taught me longdraw at spinning group. I haven’t got the hang of it yet, but I think I understand what I am meant to be doing, it is just a question of actually doing it 🙂

She let me use some of her rolags too. She is also doing the Tour de Fleece and one of her challenges is to spin a mile in one day. Which she has calculated will take 240 rolags. Crikey. I don’t think I have spun a mile altogether since I learned to spin, the idea of doing it all in one day is rather boggling. Go Lisa!

So this is a bit of longdraw:

Lisa spun the good bits, I spun the wonky bits 🙂

Indoor photos again today as the weather is still wet and grotty. The carpet is drying out and we think we have solved the mystery. The gutters didn’t seem to be draining and the rain was so hard that it was flooding the area just outside the back door and welling up through the concrete floor inside. I went out this morning to see if I could sort the gutters, and discovered rather a lot of wasps, so I think the problem is a wasps nest blocking the gutter. I have booked someone in to sort it out on Friday so I am hoping it wont rain too heavily before then!

I have been having a break from the grey Dorset today, and have been spinning a bit more of the black Shetland. It is lovely stuff to spin, very soothing. Paul has a collection of US quarters (25 cents, quarter of a dollar, they are about the same size as a 10p piece) so I thought I would borrow one of them for today’s photo. So here is my Shetland, with a New Jersey quarter:

I picked NJ because we have been there a few times and Paul lived there for a few months when he first started his current job. The area of NJ he lived in was actually rather like Surrey.

Team time trial day today. I haven’t really replicated that in my spinning! Although I did go to spinning group yesterday, and am going again tomorrow so that counts for my team spinning in person, and I have been contributing a bit to the teams I am a member of on Ravelry as well. I am finding it jolly hard to keep up with all the posting on the ravelry group!

We have been having some bizarre weather today. Real monsoon stuff this afternoon. At least it means I don’t have to water my pots on the patio! I need to buy a new hose head before the weather dries out again. The current one has cracked, and every time I try and water the plants I end up watering my leg. Due to the weather, we have an indoor progress shot today.

Surprisingly enough there was enough light in the lounge to take this. The weather having prevented outdoor photography. My second favourite photographing spot is by the back door but we seem to have an unexplained wet carpet there after this afternoon’s rain, so the carpet is up to try and dry the floor, and also so we can hopefully work out how the water is getting in. It is all a bit of a mystery since the door itself and all of its edges seem to be dry.

I thought I would attempt a scale shot showing a 1p piece (aplogies that the penny is a bit grubby, it was the best I could find). This is partially to distract from the fact that despite having spun for a couple of hours today the bobbin looks jolly similar to yesterday. I am making progress, it is just rather slow.

Day Three of the tour conveniently coincided with spinning group at Ash. I took Suzie along for her first outing and she was very well behaved.

I have been spinning some of my black Shetland tops practice fibre on her, and this is the progress so far:

This evening I managed to catch the tour highlights programme and spun a bit more of the grey Dorset.

I should hopefully finish this bobbin tomorrow. I am still thinking I will probably go onto a second with the grey, but it looks like there will be not very much yarn on a second bobbin. We shall see.