And while we're on the subject of spinning...

I'm making plans for the summer. Big plans. Crazypants plans. Spinning and knitting plans.

The Tour de France is from the 30th of June to the 22nd of July. The London Olympics are running from the 27th of July to the 12th of August. Pretty cool stuff, and I'm looking forward to watching both events. Of course, what this also means is that the Tour de Fleece will be followed immediately by the Ravelympics. So a bunch of us are planning to spend the Tour spinning up the yarn that we'll then knit during the Olympics.

Like I said, crazypants plans.

I've got some BFL that I want to use. 415g of oatmeal BFL, 115g of white BFL and 131g of dyed BFL from that brief period when Posh Yarn was dyeing spinning fiber. I want to do all of it into a 3-ply fingering-weight, and then knit it up into an Oranje cardigan.

I'm not planning to spin nearly 700g in three weeks, that'd be ludicrous. I'll spend April and May getting the two smaller bumps spun, plied and finished, and then just have the 415g of oatmeal to do during the Tour itself. Challenging but doable, which is the whole point of the exercise.

In the meantime, I'm working on getting everything prepped so that it all goes as smoothly as possible. I've divided all the fiber up into smaller bumps to fit the bobbins I've got. I'll end up with 2 skeins each of the contrast colours, and 6 skeins of the oatmeal.

I'm also working on clearing all my bobbins so that I've got space to do all the singles at once. I only own 8 bobbins, and I'm going to need 7 for the project. (6 to hold the singles and 1 to ply on.) At the moment I've got two bobbins with WIPs on. Fortunately they are both going to be n-plied, so I don't need to do loads of spinning to clear them! With any luck I'll have time to clear both, but it won't be a tragedy if I don't.

I've just taken a small yarn sample off another bobbin. I'd thought it was a singles, but it was actually something I'd done as a 3-ply. I have no idea what it is or when I spun it up. It's definitely wool of some sort, but it'd make a passable twine. It's seriously over-plied! Pretty even though, which leads me to suspect that it's more recent than I'd initially thought.

I'm also going to spend some time doing wheel maintenance. The whole thing could do with oiling (the wood, that is), and I really need to dismantle the treadles and tighten the screws holding the hinges in place. And I want to sand and seal the bobbins - they keep catching on my yarn!