On Your Mark!

As you may know, the Tour de Fleece (Ravelry) is coming right up and I couldn't be more excited.  I joined a couple of fiber clubs, which wasn't very smart considering how much fiber I already have, but it's a done deal so I'm not complaining, so I'm ready for spinning.

Here's what came in the mail this week:

This is 4 ounces of superwash merino that I purchased from Into the Whirled.  The colors are so rich and lovely I want to keep it around just to look at it, but I'm participating in a spin along with Diane of Knitabulls and there's a deadline associated with it.  Dang!  It came with a little one of a kind piece of fiber (which will be my practice piece) and two tags so I can label my fiber when it's spun.  I love 'side gifts'!

Here's 8 ounces of Polwarth in white that I purchased from Paradise Fibers.  My plan is to spin it during the Tour and then, if I'm feeling brave, to dye it.  My fear is based on the number of hours I'll spend spinning it, and if it spins up beautifully, I fear I'll burn it up on the stove.  My worldview on that is, if I burn it up, ruin it or otherwise damage it beyond use - well, there's more out there.

Below is 8 ounces of gray Masham, which I've never spun before.  I'm excited to finally try spinning a fiber I've never spun before so this will be quite an adventure.  It feels soft in the bag, let's see if I can keep it that way.

Here's 6 ounces of alpaca/silk which is so shiny and slippery I could barely get it out of the bag - or back in.  Alpaca and I have the same relationship as merino and me; it's usually a fight to the finish, but in the end, I've always gotten a usable yarn.

Lastly, my next to last shipment of BFL from Sunset Fibers.  It looks like candy and BFL is my favorite fiber in the world, until I find out that I like some other fiber better.  It's almost too pretty to spin, but there's no sense having it hang around when I want to spin down my fiber stash during the tour.

The last thing that came in the mail came from Melissa at The Ploverbird, and it's a small project bag called happy snails.  Isn't it the cutest?!  I love it!  It's not like I need another project bag, I've been doing just fine with Ziplock bags, but darn it, this much cute was hard to resist.  It's called Happy Snails and the lining is cute little strawberries.

So that's it for today. There's only 23 days left until the tour starts and I've decided to join Team Must Stash with the ladies (Stacey and Steph) at Must Stash Podcast.  If you want to spend a little time with ladies that are nice, fun and productive, you should pop on over.

The tour is going to be fun, like every year, but this year my goal is to spin fibers I haven't spun before: Masham, Cormo and Shetland.  Everything after that is icing on the cake.

Will you be spinning this year?