The Tour de Fleece on line spinning challenge is finished.   The natural brown cotton was spun and plied.  I had 63 g of fibre and ended up with 391 yards of 2 ply cotton yarn.   I spun up 50 g of blue Tussah silk into 160 yards of 2 ply yarn.   The last of the brown cotton is still on the bobbin.   I found another bit of brown cotton tucked away, so will use it up at a later date.   Then I started spinning some white Egyptian cotton.   This stuff is processed differently than the brown and is super slick and slippery.   It takes a bit more concentration.  To be honest, if it was going to be a sample for marking, I'd card the sliver into punis as they spin more easily and consistently.  However, this is for woven yardage, so I'm just spinning straight from the sliver.

  I really wasn't going to spin up more cotton right now, but every skein I've spun over the last 4 or 5 years has gone into a container, so that eventually I'd have enough to weave fabric for a shirt.   I checked it, and there is enough, or almost enough cotton yarn for this project.  However, in my mind, there was at least equal parts of white and the naturally coloured brown and green cottons, with an occasional pick of some dyed yarns.   It turns out, I have almost no white cotton yarn spun!  Egads!   Even though the white is less fun to spin, and since it's my demo fibre, I don't tend to spin it at home, I'm spinning up white cotton so that maybe I can get this project to move forward!

 I didn't get enough white currants to do more than say, hey, "white currants".   There isn't enough for jelly, or pie or anything.  I could juice them and add them to another fruit to use as a source of pectin, but I can't think of anything else and it's not like these are something you find at our local farm markets or fruit stands.

After 2 pickings, I ended up with 500g of gooseberries.  That is just over a pound, after topping and tailing them.   They were smaller than normal this year.  I think this is due to several factors.  First, I did a huge pruning in the spring time, but neglected to prune back some of the new growth.  This means the plants energy went into those new shoots, instead of the berries.  Also, we've had near drought conditions.  That lack of water and the extreme heat which we've had, may also have affected the berry size.  Still, there is enough for a very small batch of jam.  This is another fruit which I haven't seen at any local markets or farm stalls.   I still have a modern, large berried gooseberry plant on my garden wish list though.