Le Tour de Fleece

Congratulations to all the particpants of Le Tour De Fleece 2009

It's been great to watch what's been going on in the Tour de Fleece this year -- thank you for sharing your spinning with me, it's been a great inspiration.  And now, I want to hand out the maillots!

If you reached your goal, then please take one of the yellow jersey images below -- I've asked the tech guy to write some information on how that's done, and if you have any techie questions for him, please leave them in the comments.

Now -- let's say you didn't quite make it to your goal.  This happens.  Life is busy, stuff happens, and sometimes despite the best of intentions, we just can't do what we'd planned.  If that happened to you, and you know that you tried your hardest, then please take a red jersey -- that's the Prix de la Combativité, a little jersey I made up based on the prize that's handed out at the end of each day's stage for the rider who was the most combative, who tried something, who really pushed his limits. Did you try, did you push your limits, but you just didn't quite make it?  Then take the red jersey.

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To display your Tour de Fleece Maillot Jaune 2009 or Prix de la Combativité 2009 badge on your blog or website, please download a copy of the image file of your choice to your computer and then upload it to the server that hosts your blog or website -- please don't just link to the image file here.

To download the image file, if you're on a Windows PC right-click on the one you want to download and from the pop-up menu select "Save Target As...", "Save Link As...", "Save Image As..." or something similar (depending on which browser you are using).  For Mac users, if you have a single-button mouse, you will need to Alt-click to get the pop-up menu and select the appropriate "Save ___ As..." item (sorry I can't be more precise, just doing this from memory...) from the menu.

Once you have saved it to your PC or Mac (you did remember to make note of which folder you saved it to, right?), upload the image file to your blog or website as you would any picture or image file.

There are two sizes of images provided, depending on how much space you have to fit it into -- choose whichever size of the badge you've earned fits best, and if you want to use both sizes please feel free to download both.

Here are the badges:

   

   

woot! i filled a spindle!

Almost three weeks, one spindle filled.  Oh, and a little more spinning done.

A very, very small victory -- and I will say, I miss being able to do what I've done in a couple of other tours, spin enough for a whole project (did that twice, spun enough to make two shawls, immense sense of accomplishment).

But by taking it slowly like this, I've still made a teensy-weensy bit of progress, and I think by the fall, I'll be back spinning regularly again.  Had I gone crazy and taken on a big spinning project now, that wouldn't be the case.

The hardest thing?  I've just finished taking a tour around some of the participants' blogs.  Some lovely spinning, and some lovely fibres that just made me drool. 

technical difficulties

Hey, folks,

We had a power outage a few days ago, and our wireless modem died -- and rather than just replace it, we decided it was time to upgrade to cable modem.

This, of course, meant cancelling our old account and setting up a new one and making an appointment with a technician to come and install it.

Long story short -- I've only just got my internet connection back in the last few minutes. I can see there are quite a few emails about the Tour, but I've got a great whacking backlog of messages and work to catch up on, so I'm hoping you can be patient as I spent some time today and maybe tomorrow doing that.

I hope everyone is doing well with their challenges -- I sure was wishing my shoulder would have allowed me to spin more the last few days without the internets!

10 minutes

That's how long I managed to spin this morning before the shoulder started to ache and I couldn't lift it anymore.  It was really hard to put the spindle down, as I so want to make some progress on this project and get it off the table.

But I did it.  Better ten minutes at a time, than not being able to spin at all for weeks.

Back to organizing magazines.  Discovered I don't have enough boxes to put them all in.  This is the downside of organizing -- you start with one thing, then that leads to another, and another and another!

So, how's everyone else doing?

ready, steady, spin!

And we're off!

I've just added in the folks who signed up last night -- and no worries, if you turn up tomorrow, I won't turn you away.  As it says in the "rules of engagement" -- if you come late to the party, just set a goal that's appropriate for the time remaining.

A reminder that I have nothing to do with whatever is going on over at Ravelry -- but if you want to participate here and there, well, that sounds good to me.  Whatever you need to meet your goal, which is the point, right?

A note about how you report your progress -- or not.  Again, this is entirely up to you.  If you have a blog and want to report there, fine.  If you're on Ravelry and want to report there, fine.  If you want to leave a note in the comments here, fine.  And if you just want to set your goal and not report, well, that's fine, too.  And there's no timetable -- if you feel you have made progress and want to share, then do so whenever you want to.

It's your challenge, and you get to set it yourself, manage it to suit your needs.  It's also about attitude -- if the goal isn't working a week from now, well, then look at the goal and change it.  Adapt to changing situations, apply a new strategy.

As for me -- many thanks for all the good thoughts about my shoulder.  It's still bothering me, and although my usual operating mode is just to jump in and ignore it, I know from experience that I can't, so there will be very little spinning for me in the next three weeks.  This was bothering me -- how can I set a spinning challenge and then not spin?

And that's when I realized that over the last year, issues of Spin-Off and Wildfibers have ended up all over the house, and I keep having to go search for them when I need something, so there it is, a goal!  I'll spin as much as I can without causing more shoulder problems, and then the rest of the time, I'll gather up the magazines and put them in some order and put them in a magazine box and get them on the bookshelves, where they belong, and where they're easily accessible when I want to consult them.

So there we are -- and now, I'm off to check the Tour de France website, and see if Europe1 has got their podcast feed up again this year!

Best of luck, everyone!

okay, I said "low-key", but I'm not sure I mean't *that* low-key...

First, welcome to everyone who has jumped aboard -- I think I've got everyone's name listed on the main page, but if you don't see it there, or if I've linked incorrectly or something equally dim-witted, pop me a line or leave a comment here and I'll fix it.

Second, as I mentioned in the comment to the previous post:  I'm not affiliated with any groups elsewhere, such as on Ravelry, so be clear that if you want to join the fun (much more high-key, I'd imagine) over there, you need to go and see what they're up to.  That's fine with me -- the idea is just to get people spinning towards some kind of challenge, so wherever, however.  I've just been out here the last four years doing my low-key thing because that's how I am.  You are most welcome to join me;  you are most welcome to join the festivities elsewhere.  It's all cool.

Third, and the most interesting to me, anyway -- it seems that an old shoulder/neck problem has decided to flare up this week, so if it persists, I will be doing *very* little spinning at all.  So my challenge will be to accept that, because I can't change it;  to do what I can; and when I can't spin, to work on knitting up a couple of projects started with my handspun that are languishing, to get them off the plate by the end of July.

As always, you may choose to change your goal mid-stream if you find yourself struggling.  If in a couple of weeks my shoulder is better, I'll likely work on a couple of spinning projects I need to clear out of the way as well -- by I'll be playing it by ear.

Now, where is the team massage therapist when you need one?

testing, testing

Yup, it's that time of year, and time to start thinking about this year's Tour de France, and also about this year's Tour de Fleece.

I'm just popping up briefly to say that I'm looking forward to the start of the Giro this weekend -- I'm working on a secret spinning project, so can't post anything about it, but plan to use the Giro to push this project to a finish.

We'll be updating the blog in the next couple of weeks with information for 2009 -- I'm already thinking of my challenge -- I think I'll be finishing up some spinning projects that have been hanging around a bit, and the knitting projects they correspond with (also stalled because the spinning is).

Oh, there's lots of time before July to change my mind, though...