I love doing the Tour de Fleece each year. I am so glad to see its getting bigger and bigger. It looks like its the thing to do for the summer. I know I have enjoyed my first week. I am half way through my goals. I have completed the yarn for my first sweater. For my first sweater I want to take an easy knitting project to SOAR. One that I don't really have to think about as I am working on it. So of course its going to be a Top Down from Knitting Pure and Simple. I'm not sure what pattern I am going to use but I know that I will need some where around 1000 yards of a worsted weight. So that was my goal. A few months back there was a Spin Off magazine that had the coolest yarn on the cover. It was a moorit brown that was over dyed with bright yellow. Instead of the end result being a yellow yarn it turns out to be a really cool green. So that's what I was shooting for. I found about 2 pounds of a Shetland in my stash and on the 4th I got busy. 
I spun a bobbin full for the first 6 days. I then plied them together making a two ply.
Once all the plying was done I wanted to make sure I would have enough for a sweater so I ended up with 1100 yards. Into the dye pot it all went. 
Dyeing brown yarn green using yellow dye takes a bit of faith. For one it shouldn't work. I'm yellow makes green. No way. So as its sits in the dye pot you have to let it be and do its thing. Once its done it still doesn't look green, not until its dry will you be happy with it. So for me it was really hard to let it alone and do its thing. I was like a cook watching a pot to boil. Then of course I thought I messed up all my hard work, but once it was drying I fell in love with the result.
Now the hard part. Letting it alone until October. I really want to get to knitting on it. The Sheltand was not processed all that well, there was a lot and I mean a lot of VM through out. So I was a bit surprised at how soft the yarn ended up. I'm thinking dyeing it helped burn up some of the VM.
Besides the sweater yarn I also worked on some silk on my newest Greensleeves spindle. I plan to make the Quaint head band that is on the cover of the current Spin Off for daughter number 3.
Lastly for this week, I spun up about 110 yards of Spinning Bunny's High Fiber Dessert club for the month of June. The Color way is Fudgy Chocolate Bundt Cake with Strawberries topped wit Sour Cream Chocolate sauce. The fiber is a Pixie Batt of baby alpaca,and merino. Now only was the recipe really good. I bit hit with the family and my knitting girls, but the fiber was a dream to spin. I am planning on knitting the button up neck warmer that is in the current Spin Off.
Tomorrow is a rest day for the Tour. So I plan to clean my wheel and change the drive band from Scotch tension to Double drive. I haven't decided which one I like better so that is part of what I want to do during the tour. My next big project is to spin some Cooridale that I bought for my birthday. I have been cleaning and carding what I hope is enough for an Einstein Coat. Its a wonderful shade of medium grey.
So stay tuned and see now only how I do on the Tour but if you haven' been watching the Tour de France its been fun to see Lance Armstrong back on the bike. I'm betting he just may be wearing more yellow before its all over. Right now he is in 3rd and looking really good. Yea for the old guys!
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