Week three of Tour de Fleece began with Day 14: Mountains. The people on our team who bought the kit were to spin from bag #3. Since I was focused on stash busting, I continued spinning superfine merino on my puy yok spindle.

Day 14 was also when I realized all my photos were. Looking. The. Exact. Same. A hazard of slowly supported spinning, I suppose!

Day 15 – Mountains. The rest of the team spun from bag #4. I switched back to my thick Crushed Velvet merino, just to provide some visual interest for my audience!

(7/22/2019 was a rest day. I used the time to work on Angelique!)

(If you’ve missed the Angelique drama, you can read all about it here.)

Day 16 – Flat – Spin something easy. I realized my easiest spin right now is the superfine merino on the pu yok. This will be the second (and maybe third) singles yarn to ply with my Peach Gummies combo spinning project.

I’ll be honest, initially I wasn’t a fan of my pu yok because it has a comparatively slow spin. But as the cop builds up, the momentum is getting longer and longer, allowing more time for a nice, long draw. I have to decided if I am only going to have one white singles for the peach gummies yarn, or if I want two for that fluffy, smooshy three-ply texture. Plus I think the “flecks” of peach that I am hoping for will be more fleck-y (is that a word?) with a three ply.

To mix my photos up, this time I tried dramatic lighting.

Day 17 – Hilly. Today’s team instructions: Spin something “slubby”. I will confess, I didn’t want to spin anything slubby, because that would mean starting Yet Another New Thing. I kept spinning my thick Crushed Velvet singles, because that continued to challenge my skills and attention.

Day 18 – Mountains – Spin from bag #5. I went back to the Peach Gummies project. I resorted to photography with props to make the picture fresh and different!

Dory sang, “Just keep spinning, just keep spinning, what do we do, we spin, spin…”

Day 19 – Mountains. The rest of the team spins from bag #6. I challenged myself to finish the Peach Gummies singles yarn, since I had gotten so close the day before. Victory!

Day 20 – Mountains. The rest of the team spun from bag #7. I tried to fit the rest of the Crushed Velvet braid onto the three spindles I had already started, but my hand gave out from the weight before I ran out of fiber. Off to find a fourth spindle for this project!

PS – this is why we need more than one spindle, guys!

Day 21 – Flat. The team instructions: Spin something easy but don’t coast in. I finally finished the Crushed Velvet braid. It went faster than my usual spinning because it was so thick.

I finished 220+ yards of three-ply yarn (the same yarn I started in my YouTube video on using the Spanish Peacock Supported Spindle Plying Stand); spun the first singles of the Peach Gummies project (alternating punis and merino/silk blend); started the second (and/or third) singles of pure merino for the Peach Gummies project; and spun the entire 4 oz braid of Crushed Velvet superwash merino. (Still debating how best to ply this one.)

(If you missed my previous posts on Tour de Fleece 2019, you can find Week 1 here, and Week 2 here.)

So those were the “facts” of the Tour de Fleece. I’m recording a podcast on what it actually meant to me, participating in my first Tour de Fleece since 2013. Look for it (wait… listen for it?) later this week!