Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2024 Stage 16

The Cycling: Stage 16 is 188.6km of a flat route that starts in Gruissan and ends in Nîmes.

The Daily Challenge: A little bit of a tenuous link to our song today... Nîmes is twinned with Preston in Lancashire and Lancashire is the home of fictional duo Wallace and Gromit.  Our song of the day is the Wallace and Gromit Theme.  Spin something that you find tricky - grab your fibre-arch nemesis and conquer the challenge!

Suggested Fibre: We've opted for Carded Fawn UK Alpaca Sliver because its soft and short, so we really have to pay attention!

What I did

Well, I didn't watch 2 hours worth of instructional videos last night for nothing.  I decided to tackle my arch nemesis fibre.  Silk.  I'm not talking about Silk in a blend.  I'm talking about 100% pure Silk spun on it's own.  Fine, flyaway, slippery as hell, easy clumping Silk.

I have a very particular set of fibres that I have been putting off spinning for a very long time.  It is a 12 Days of Christmas set that I got in 2018 from a past supplier.   I wrote a couple of posts about it at the time here and here.

I am starting with the first 20g bump of Tussah Silk from the pack and will spin over-the-fold.  The main braid was the first day and the Silk started from Day 2.

I haven't soaked the finished yarn yet, I will do that when I have all of the silks spun up, but here is a photo of my first skein of handspun 100% pure Silk yarn.

It wasn't as difficult to spin as I envisaged but I did get a little tangled up at the end when I made a small Andean plying bracelet as one bobbin had a bit more on it that the other one and the Andean plying bracelet slipped over my hand and off right towards the end.  It's not perfect but I'm pretty happy with it and at this point it is measuring up as 19g/97.5m but that might change slightly after a good long soak sometime in the near-ish future.  I'm certainly happy to carry on and spin the remaining 10 bumps of Silk.