Tour de Fleece Day 1

Well, the race has started and I've managed to get in 1.5 hours of spinning on a spindle today. Since I'm going camping next week, figured I might as well spend the first full week getting reacquainted with the ol' spindle. Since I got my spinning wheel several years ago, I haven't even seen the spindles, much less used them. But there just won't be room for the spinning wheel in the van when we leave to camp, so spindling will be my camping activity.

Other goals during the Tour de Fleece:

• Bust Stash! Going to use as much of my stash as I possibly can during the Tour de France.

• Learn to spin silk! I have several sets of silk hankies that I've been too scared to touch. But during the mountain stages of the Tour de France, I'm going to challenge myself to learn to spin silk.

• Attempt at least 3 different novelty yarn techniques I learned over a year ago at Shepherd's Harvest. I haven't decided which ones, yet, but I will as soon as I get back from vacation.

• Finish washing and carding the Coopworth fleece I've been working on. Of course, since this work will have to come after the spinning, it may or may not get done. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.

In other news, I managed to get a 26 mile bike ride in this morning. My Hubby and I have a favorite trail we like to do on Saturday mornings. It starts in St. Bonifacius and runs all the way to Wayzata. Since Hubby has a rode bike, that is much lighter and faster than my trail bike, he takes off at his own pace and proceeds past the end of the trail as far as he feels like going, then comes back. So he squeezed in a 40 mile ride this morning. So we both get a good workout but I don't hold him back and he doesn't push me to go faster than I want to go. Win/win, wouldn't you say?

On the knitting front, I'm nearly done with Arwen for Peeps. After trying it on her, I decided to add a couple more inches of length to the sleeves. She's apparently grown some since I started the sweater. Fortunately, the body is more than wide enough and plenty long enough. I've knitted the cabled cuffs for the sleeves, so once the sleeves are long enough, I'll sew the cuffs on and call it done.

Except for the closures. I haven't decided yet how to do the closures. It will probably require a trip to the yarn shop to look for buttons. After all, buttons are not yarn, right? So a yarn diet wouldn't preclude the purchase of buttons, right? And the fact that there is a new yarn shop within 20 minutes of the campground I'll be at next week means I just have to stop in and check it out, right?

(Hint - This would be the perfect time for all those enablers out there to lead me on!)