Tour De Fleece Challenge is Here

I am spinning my Romney fleece for the Tour which mirrors the actual Tour de France race but has been adapted for spinners.  The goal is to spin fiber everyday of the tour while taking breaks on the days that the tour takes breaks.  I am on 3 teams and have to convert the fiber into yarn by the last day of the tour.  I think creating the yarn will be the most challenging for me as it requires plying my yarn.  The center pull ball technique should aid in the plying but we shall see how the Romney fleece works with that method.

I have been doing lots of research on Ravelry and the web on how to clean and spin Romney.  Looking forward to putting the advice into practice.  I have cleaned about an ounce of raw fiber and it turned out so lovely!  Here are links to some pictures:  Raw Romney fleece, Clean Romney Locks and Spun Romney.

Picked up my fiber and yarn and they are so nice.  The yarn store placed a wholesale order for 10 oz of the roving and I think I will give 4 oz to the Renaissance festival too.  I have agreed to trade 4 oz of the fiber for 5 oz of raw llama caramel color fleece.  My 24 ounces of roving is quickly disappearing so I think that Montana's fleece will have bamboo fiber added to it to meet the demand.  At this point I am not going to spin any of it up to keep up with the demand - which is an awesome place to be from a selling standpoint.

I met with the soon to be shop owners of Wild Yarns today to discuss what they are looking for in the needs of hand spun.  Pretty much the same conversation I had with the store in Lakewood.  Need to seek advice from my fellow ravelers on gauging yardage/weight of spinning fiber to get a 400 yd skein consistently.  At this point I choose a fiber, buy a few ounces, spin, ply and wash and this gives me a wide array of yardage/grams.  As the shops are looking for specific yardage I will need to research and test how to make this happen.  The new shop is looking for 5 to 6 skeins (400 yd each) that are similar.  It is a good thing I have lots of roving coming and the Tour challenge so I can begin prepping for their September opening.  This is a never ending educational process which definitely keeps the brain cells sparking. 

Back to spinning for the challenge!