We interrupt today's broadcast

 So, last time I gave a bit of a foreshadow to the interruption. But in case you're not aware or don't remember, TDF is on!  Tour de Fleece is an annual spinning event that takes place during the Tour de France.

 It started  last Saturday and goes till the middle of this month.

I started relatively slowly the first four days:

 

You can kind of see the progression of bobbin filling.  Spinning is really slow when you spin fine.  I was only spinning for 30-45 minutes a day, too.

But don't worry.  It picks up.  Around this time (I was still cross stitching every day!) I finished page 10 of the epic pokemon cross stitch:

I can't remember where I was last time I chatted, but I'm officially here. One third done! And I've barely made any more progress since I reached this point.  I *did* learn some more of the names of these guys, though.

Since then, though I've just spun.

At a certain point the first bobbin got quite full of singles, so I had to start a new one.  Here it is, the braid has been completely transformed into singles yarn.  My plan was to do a chain ply.  If you know anything about crochet, you know essentially how this works.  If you don't, essentially you pull a loop through the last loop you've made.  in crochet, these loops are small and chain-like.  In plying, the chains are very long, an arm's length or so.

This results in a 3-ply yarn that maintains the color order.

Here Is the first bobbin.  It ultimately took two.

And here is the finished yarn on a niddy noddy.  I was taking the yarn off the bobbin so I could tie, soak and finish the skein.

Et voila!  This skein is 474 yards in 121 grams, which is right around fingering, which is my favorite.  The original floof is from Greenwood fiber works.  It's 100% Polwarth and the colorway name is Paper Roses.

But TDF is far from over!  And I have miles of singles to spin before I sleep.

And I already had something lined up:

This is half of a braid of fiber (the second one looks the same) that I'm planning on making a gradient out of and chain plying.  I'm going to end up with two relatively identical skeins of this in order to make socks!  The floof is from Three Waters Farm, and the colorway is Charcoal and Maple.  Oh! It's also Polwarth, which is just a coincidence.

The first day of spinning was all grays and charcoals.  And then it got interesting yesterday, when I spun through the red gradient (I did not get a picture of this when it was on the bobbin, my phone was with daughter who was using it for actual talking) and into the oranges and yellows.

 

The second day of spinning was actually the end of it.  I filled the bobbin, plied and finished.  It is still drying.

I am Very Excited about this spin.  Today I'm planning on getting started on the second half of the braid.  I'm also planning on counting yardage and weighing the first half.  I know that in the end the socks will end up more like sisters, but that's kind of the way hand spinning yarns usually work out in my experience.

And even though I'm kiiiind of a control freak, with spinning I'm learning to let that go.  I actually tried the control card thing for the first braid featured on this post, and mostly it tripped me up.  I have a way I spin and more or less, I usually end up somewhere near where I'm hoping for.  It has it's idiosyncrasies and interesting bits.  That's kind of what I like about it.  If I wanted perfect yarn, I could buy it.

Now, I'm kind of full of shit here, because that gradient spinning?  is probably the most perfect spinning of my life.  Or at least since the last TDF I participated in in 2019. TDF is magic, people.  You get to see in real time your spinning improve.

I hope you all are well and trying to stay cool through these horrific heat waves we've been having.

Happy Summer! And Happy Spinning!