Well today is the final day of the tour. For me it has been a sprint all the way to the line to finish off this yarn.

First off here is the finished yarn from yesterday.

Today I spun up 50g of BFL:

Then plied it until one of my BFL bobbins ran out:

This was 103g, 279m.

Then I plied the remaining grey Dorset with both ends of the BFL to create a 3 ply again, until the BFL ran out. This was 14g, 41m.

The remaining 1g of grey Dorset I chain plied to create 7m of what feels like garden twine. I’m afraid I didn’t take a photo of that (you aren’t missing much). I think part of the problem was that the Dorset isn’t very soft, and part of the problem was that I plied far too tightly.

I am pretty impressed with what I have managed to achieve in the Tour de Fleece. I have just had a tot up and have spun 730m of 3ply out of the Dorset fleece, which works out as 2190m of singles! This is not including the bobbin of black Shetland which I haven’t measured. It has also been fantastic to see everyone else’s spinning, it has given me loads of ideas for things I would like to try. Roll on next year! (I think I might have a bit of a rest first)

Exciting finish on the top of Mont Ventoux today! I have actually achieved quite a lot in my spinning too.

First here is the finished skein from yesterday. This is one strand of white Dorset, one of grey Dorset cross and one of superwash Bluefaced Leicester. I have 93g and 278m. I still haven’t managed to measure the thickness but am guessing around 4ply / fingering weight.

Then I spun up my remaining 18g of superwash BFL:

and plied it with the remains of the grey Dorset and BFL. Here is the plied yarn on the bobbin:

and on the skeiner:

This weighs 43g and measures 124.5m, a similar thickness to the previous skein.

I still have loads of grey Dorset and the first bobbin of BFL left so I went for a dig upstairs and found another 50g of BFL, and I will spin that tomorrow to ply with the remnants.

In celebration of the newly fixed washing machine I have washed the sheets today, so I had better go and put them back on the bed so I can get a reasonably early night. Finish of the tour tomorrow!

I started my plying today. So far 278 metres done. I haven’t measured the thickness yet, but it looks to be about a 4ply weight at a rough guess. Here it is on the bobbin:

And here on the skeiner:

I am plying together one strand of grey Dorset, one of white Dorset, and one of superwash bluefaced leicester. I have now run out of the white Dorset, but there is still quite a lot of the grey Dorset and the bfl, so I think I shall spin up the rest of the bfl fibre I have (there was about 18g that I couldn’t fit on the bobbin yesterday), and ply that together with the leftovers.  I am really interested to see what this will be like when knitted up.

Today was a race around the Lac d’Annecy  in the individual time trial. I don’t have a lake here, and racing round our pond would be a bit tricky with the hedge in the way, so I settled for spinning like mad in the living room. I feel I gave even Alberto Contador a race for his money today with my spinning!

My bobbin of superwash bluefaced leicester is finished!

I think this is the fastest I have spun. I managed a whole bobbin in only 2 days. It is fairly fine too. Barring major disasters I should be able to finish this yarn before the end of the tour.

So, eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we ply! (ok I have been dying to say that for ages – apologies for the bad pun)

Today is challenge day! It was also knitting group at Ash which was lovely as always. I managed to get another sample for the Patchwork knitting workshop finished. However being out most of the day I didn’t get much spinning done. I have done a bit tonight. My challenge to myself was to see how much of my 100g of superwash bluefaced leicester I could spin. This is certainly faster than the Dorset fleece!

The plan is now to spin up a bobbin of this and ply it with the grey Dorset and the white Dorset, and see what happens.

Better dash, it is washing machine repair day tomorrow and I want to take down the utility shelves tonight so the repair person will have better access to the machine.

Today is the second rest day. It was also spinning group at Tilford, so a change is as good as a rest and I took Suzie and did some more on the black Shetland. I left it too late again for photographs, and really there is no way to get decent photos of dark brown yarn in my lounge at night so photos will come tomorrow.

The washing machine decided it was no longer my friend last night, and has developed a worrying grinding and whistling noise when attempting to spin fast. All the clothes were wetter than normal too. I managed to book an engineer through the helpline this morning (who will come sometime on Thursday, those who have to see me before then will be pleased to know I do have enough clean clothes to last me) and was rather amused that while I was on hold for what felt like hours the music they chose to play at me was Handel’s Water Music. At least someone there has a sense of humour 🙂

We are in the middle of birthday season for my in-laws at the moment, so we had a lovely day with them today and not much spinning was done. I did manage a bit later on, and then had to take some bad indoor photos. So here we are:

The good news is that with my new ultra-picky policy there are now only 2 bags of fibre left!

The weather has cheered up a bit here. It threatened rain but only delivered a few spots this afternoon.

A bit more spinning today, and a bit of fleece sorting. I have been having a closer examine of the bags of fibre I have left. Unfortunately there is quite a lot of unsalvageable stuff. I now have about 4 1/2 bags left, and am thinking that I am only going to be able to fill one bobbin with the white Dorset. I think I might do a 3rd bobbin of superwash bluefaced leicester, then ply the grey Dorset, white Dorset and white bfl all together and see what happens.

So here is today’s progress.

I feel that finishing this is actually a possibility now 🙂

Well I had a daft Heather start to the day by going to the Ashtead knitting group, and discovering I had got the wrong week. Luckily after that apart from the weather nothing else went too badly wrong (yet!).

We seem to be having much the same weather as they are on the tour today, pretty much wall to wall rain. I am very glad I went to Art in Action yesterday rather than today when a group from spinning guild is going. It is quite good to be having the rain now though, since it means I don’t have to water my pots on the patio, and I have been able to check that our gutter repairs are working (dry carpet, all seems fine so far). It does mean that I had to take indoor photos of the spinning today. You can tell that I am a bit tired and past it, in that having taken 11 photos of my spinning so that hopefully one of them might be reasonable, when I came to look at them, there were only 3 without my foot on, and two of them were out of focus. I think it is getting very close to bed time for tired Heathers. Before that though here is the yarn progress:

I have managed a bit more than I did yesterday. So progress is improving. Only 10 1/2 bags of fibre left to go. I got through the last bag more quickly because there were lots of manky felted bits which I threw away.

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday was that my driving around gave me a great opportunity to catch up on podcasts. At the Knitting and Crochet Guild AGM Emily recommended the Electric Sheep podcast from Hoxton Handmade. I have now got up to date with this and am enjoying it. Take a listen if you would like to hear a UK knitting podcast, she also talks quite a lot about things to go and see and do in London.

One other thing I did manage to do today was finally get round to ordering some Moo mini cards. Often when I am at knitting groups I find myself writing my email, blog and ravelry details down on a grotty scrap of paper to hand to someone, so thought it was a good idea to to have some pretty little cards (with photos of my knitting) with all the salient details on to hand over instead. If anyone else is interested in ordering any of their cards I have a code which will get you free standard shipping for any order over $15/£10/€12 if this is your first purchase with Moo. The code is HPM6WA and it is valid til the 31st August 2009. (in the interests of full disclosure I do have a vested interest here. If more than 3 people use the code I get a free packet of mini cards 🙂 ) Happy shopping!