Bastille day and the cyclists ride into the Pyrenees for the start of the serious mountains. Slightly surprising in who did well and who did badly today, it looked hard work for all concerned.

I have had fun cramming as much yarn as possible onto my bobbin 🙂

Today’s coin is a £2 celebrating the Commonwealth Games.

More beautiful scenery as the cyclists go through the Tarn region, although rotten weather for the finish. It has been cold and grey here but luckily not wet. I haven’t been to this area of France but it looks lovely, another place to add to the list of nice places to visit.

It was spinning group at Seale today so the spinning progressed well. We spin in the Manor Farm Craft Centre Tea Room which was not quite as busy today as it sometimes is. They make lovely homemade soups and cakes so I had tomato, celery and lentil soup for lunch and carrot cake and tea for a treat afterwards 🙂

In amongst all that eating I did manage to spin a bit more on the alpaca/merino:

I think the colour is growing on me.

Today’s coin is a Japanese 100 yen.

Tomorrow I get to play the fun game where I see how much yarn I can pack onto the bobbin (its a game that never gets old 🙂 ).

A good day here. I managed to finish the current stage of a work project, and then it was an exciting race for the cyclists, with no major crashes.

Also last night was a speaker meeting at spinning group with Teresinha Roberts talking about Woad and Indigo. Really interesting talk, I hadn’t realised there were so many different kinds of indigo, and Teresinha was a very good and knowledgeable speaker. She also let me have a go on her rakestraw spinner which was great fun!

I managed to do a bit of spinning today too. I am now working on the 70% alpaca, 30% merino fibre in Cappuccino that I bought from John Arbon last October. I have about 600g and the plan is to spin a 2ply to a thickness of somewhere between a commercial 4ply and DK, and make a nice big soft squishy shawl. Here is my progress so far:

The coin is a £2 celebrating the discovery of DNA.

I thought I would give your eyes a rest after the searing orange of the last week, but I am a little concerned about the beige-ness of the current yarn. I think I like it, but I’m not totally sure yet.

I also realised today that I had forgotten to photograph my new tool for becoming a more consistent spinner. I have been making myself little record cards, which I think I shall do for any project over about 100g. The idea being that I write down what I am doing and attach a sample to the card and then I can keep comparing the stuff I am spinning to my sample. It usually takes me months and months to actually finish things, so I thought this would be a good memory jogger.

So here we have my first two sample cards:

At the top I have information on what the fibre is, where I got it from and what ratio I am using on my wheel. Then there is a sample of the single, a sample of the plied yarn, and at the bottom the plied yarn after it has been washed.

The only problem I have had so far has been finding suitable record cards. The ones I bought are a bit flimsy and more paper-like than card-like. For these two sample cards I have created my own laminate by sticking three layers of record cards together to make something a bit more rigid. It has worked ok but is not ideal. I think next I might try finding some card and cutting it down to a reasonable size.

The Bremen 2 Euro coin makes its triumphant return today. After some crawling around in the garden with the secateurs this morning I liberated it! It seems to be none the worse for its night outside, but I have given it a nice wash. To celebrate the retrieval it is staring in today’s photo as well as yesterday’s.

My first finished skein of this year’s Tour de Fleece.

This is 70% merino, 30% silk from Wingham Wool Work. It is about the thickness of a British commercial 4ply weight (American fingering weight), which should be a good weight for knitting socks. I spun it at a ratio of 13:1, which is the 4th speed on my Majacraft Suzie Pro. There is 231g and 892m.

It is a slightly odd weight of yarn because I bought this when I visited Wingham. When you buy fibre in person you put it yourself into the bags they supply, then they weigh it and you pay for exactly the amount you have chosen, so it doesn’t have to be in multiples of 100g. Me being my paranoid self I thought I had better add a bit more than 100g to be on the safe side, and got a bit carried away. I probably have enough here for two pairs of socks!

I think I am going to make the Cathedral socks from an old issue of Knitty. I think I shall probably make the middle size, but I might alter the ribbing so it is a bit wider as I have wide legs 🙂

During tomorrow’s rest day I shall make the difficult decision of what to start spinning next.

The cyclists had a rather dramatic day with all the crashes, it makes me doubly glad that I am at home watching it all on the telly rather than out there cycling.

Today’s concert went well, fun pieces, and I only played a moderate number of wrong notes. Despite me putting sun cream on it didn’t rain! Barnes fair was very busy, lots of stands and lots of people. I didn’t really have a chance to look at the stands this time, maybe next year.

This evening we caught up with the Tour and I did a marathon of plying.

I like how it is coming out, though am a bit concerned I have underplied some of it. I shall skein and finish it tomorrow.

Today’s coin is a Bremen 2 Euro, unfortunately you wont be seeing it again because after I took this photo I dropped it into the bush and I can’t find it.

It has been another wet day here, though it has perked up a bit this evening.

I have finished the last of the singles of the merino/silk. Here are all three bobbins, waiting for me to start plying tomorrow:

The bobbin on the right is the one I finished today.

I love the scenery of the Loire that they cycled through today. So many lovely places to visit. Their lunch station was just down the road from the campsite where we spent our honeymoon.

The longest stage of the tour today for the cyclists. I haven’t had quite that long to spin today, but we do seem to be having the same filthy weather as they are in France. I am hoping it will cheer up a bit by the weekend as I am playing in an outdoor concert with Barnes Concert Band on Saturday.  If anyone is local and feels like popping along, we will be playing in a marquee at Barnes Fair, on the green near the pond in the centre of Barnes, London, UK. We are playing from 4 til 5.30 but there will be lots of other bits and pieces going on all afternoon, and it’s usually good fun.

I made good progress on my work project during the day, and spun a bit more of my merino/silk while watching the tour this evening. Fortunately I managed to find 5 minutes when it wasn’t raining to take a picture of the progress on bobbin number 3 so far:

Today’s coin is a Gibraltar pound.

I am hopeful that I shall finish this bobbin tomorrow.

It has been rather fun the last couple of days watching them cycle through places I have been to. I am hoping I might recognise a few places when they go down through the Loire region tomorrow too.

Luckily I haven’t been involved in anything like the crashes that the cyclists have experienced today.

I dropped my parents off at Heathrow this morning without a hitch, then came home and put some sealant round our upstairs tap which has been leaking, hopefully I have fixed it. Then made some good inroads into a work project this afternoon and watched the tour and spun this evening.

I’ve made a good start on the third bobbin of merino/silk:

After some fun suggestions on ravelry I shall be trying to use a different coin each day to demonstrate the yarn thickness. So I thought I would kick off with a french 1 Euro coin as it was rather pretty.

An early update today because I shall be busy later. We are recording the rest of the cycling today to catch up on too.

In between catching up with other bits and pieces today I have managed to finish my second bobbin of the merino / silk!

The one I finished today is on the right. And I manged to trim the bush I use as my photo backdrop this morning 🙂

More good progress today as the riders enter Brittany. I am really looking forward to watching the next few days as they ride closer to the area we used to go to for many happy summer holidays as children.

It was spinning group at Ash today, so I made a good start on my second bobbin of merino/silk:

It was lovely to catch up with everyone. Due to being on holiday and other bits and pieces I have missed the last couple of Ash meetings, it was nice to be back.