Tour de Fleece teams and challenges

Welcome to my first Tour de Fleece post, this will be the first year I have taken part and I am quite excited about it. I am not a huge fan of cycling, so that aspect does not really interest me, but I am into the spinning part. I need to get more practise and this is a good way to motivate that.

For anyone not familiar with this the idea is to spin along with the Tour de France, spinning each day the tour rides from Saturday July 2nd to Sunday July 24th July apart from rest days on the 11th and 18th. An extra task is to spin something challenging on the day of the mountain stage (Friday 22nd).

First up, the teams. You can joint more than one team, and there is a choice of Main teams and Wildcard teams.

I have joined the Peloton team from the Main teams group, this the group for the pack and really the only option as I have been spinning too long to count as a Rookie (over a year) am not aiming for lace (Sprinters) or art yarn (Breakaway) and hope to spin every day so am not a Lantern Rouge. Climbers is a group for those with a big personal challenge, but I think I will save that for next year. I have not found a badge for this yet.

For Wildcard teams I have picked a few:

The Team of Wonder 2011, as some of my challenges are alpaca based, including a lovely Batt of Wonder.

Team UK, because that is where I live

I don't have badges for the rest of my teams yet, but I have joined Team Kromski as my wheel is a Sonata. I am using my wheel for my larger projects.

And the Spindlers team, as some of my challenges will be done on a spindle.

I have also joined Team Hopelessly Overcommitted, because I am :D.

Next my personal challenges:
To spin for at least 15 minutes each day apart from the rest days. This can be wheel or spindle.

To spin this beautiful merino and alpaca batt courtesy of Haze the alpaca and the Wonder Why Gal. I want to make some slipper socks so need a two or three ply that is fairly thick.

My third challenge is to spin up some of the fibre samples I have collected, I would like to try them all, but am aiming for three so I am not too over committed! There is baby alpaca, alpaca, humbug Bluefaced Leicester, Wensleydale, plastic bottle, tussah silk, seaweed and crab. I am going to spindle these into a thin single then navajo ply them using my wheel. I may make my mountain stage challenge to do a whole fibre sample in one day.

Finally I have this beautiful roving from Shunklies (post about the purchase to come later in the week). I tried to resist this as I think I have plenty to keep me busy just with the above tasks but it is so pretty. If I finish the other tasks this will start its journey towards becoming socks.

So with fibre waiting I am eager to get to the start line. I need to do some training first though, by which I mean I need to empty my spindles.