Tour de Fleece day one, 2026

Well, here we are again, I'm thinking about spinning natural coloured fleece that I have prepped myself on the Ashford 3, The World of wool dyed 50gm packs on the Louet Victoria, the dyed fibre from Petes Fibre Studio on the Argonaut and if I happen to need to take a spindle anywhere I will have some Shetland to hand.

I may reassess at some point but I have plenty of bobbins for the Argonaut and the Ashford so I will be able to swap around if needed.

quick update, builders turning up on Monday so replace kitchen ceiling so it looks like I won't be spinning in public quite as much as anticipated!

Also my senior !! bus pass has turned up, not sure if I have to wait until actual retirement date to use it but will try on the bus on Saturday, fingers crossed. Update... it works :-)

Day one

 New T-shirts and empty bobbins, let the games commence.

I was awake early so I had a little practise and spun 100gm Texel quite thick but tested out new brake band etc.

My plan for today was to head into town, grab a coffee then catch a bus over to Wollaton Hall and Deer park as they are holding an open weekend in the walled garden which isn't often open to the public.

Coffee done, off to the garden. I arrived a little early so wandered round with my camera for a few minutes.

There are a few old tree stumps scattered around, the decaying remains revealing interesting patterns.

Once inside the walls I explored the gardens and grabbed a few pics of the flowers before buying a cup of tea and getting my wheel out.

However, once my wheel was out on the table, I had a steady stream of people wanting to ask about it and the spinning, my brief tea break lasted for two hours !

As I made my way from the park I spotted a squirrel and he obviously saw me, ran up the tree and froze. Not a flicker until I passed by,

I'm home now, trying to decide whether to stitch or spin tonight, whichever it is will be revealed in the next post.

Final TDF prep 2026

 Here we are, poised to start spinning on Saturday morning. Most of my bobbins are empty, just one on the Victoria that I need to finish and ply but I will be ready.

My fibre choices are  a little different this year, I have the usual selection of Ryeland, Jacob, texel, Shetland etc all combed and ready to go.

I also have some more commercial fibres ( I know, so not like me ! ) including this selection from world of wool as I couldn't resist the colours. 50gm of each to be spun as a 4ply weight for some fair isle knitting.

I also have a selection from Petes Fibre Studio on facebook just because I love how his dyeing has progressed over the years. These may end up as a holiday spin later in the year if I don't get round to them during TDF

Usually we end up with a couple of festivals in July but this year they are later in the year so I will be looking at local locations to spin. I will be getting my senior bus pass halfway through so I may be heading out a little further around Nottingham.

As usual posts will be either daily or 2/3 days depending on how busy I am, wish me luck :-)

just a rambling post

 Will it ever stop raining ? I'm longing for some sun, blue skies, regardless of the temperature. Today I've stayed in and tried to get some sort of order in the workroom as I was faced with this earlier.

and I needed to make a start on prepping some brown Jacob ready to spin on my next trip.

slight improvement ! I did also empty a couple of containers out from the cupboards.

Back to the Jacob, it was already washed so I just combed it through, beautiful colour that will be very useful in my next bout of colour work knitting.

my current project on the needles is knitting up some early hand spun that I discovered in one of the bottomless pits, I think that it may be merino, I'm not sure who dyed it but I don't think that its one of mine. Correction, Its Polworth, dyed by babylonglegs and spun in 2010. No wonder I couldn't remember the details but here is a link to the blog post.

and the mittens finished 16 years later....