Well, it is a few days into les Jeux Olympiques, and I am wondering if I can finish this project. I cast on during the opening ceremony … well, during my viewing of the recorded opening ceremony. It was on too late … I was tired … I hit record and went to bed. Here we are, a week later and this is all I have to show for my efforts so far:

I’ve finished plying the grey wool and now have approximately 538 yards … 238 over what was needed for the pattern. I’ve spun finer than commercial lace weight, and will probably need more than 300 yards, but I think I have enough now. The last stage will be on telly in about two hours time, so I am across the finish line now. The photo shows the 2-ply on the niddy noddy with an Australian 10 cent piece (above) and a US dime (below) for scale.

That’s all for now … have to go back to the living room and sit in front of the heater. Spent the morning outside today, and still haven’t been able to get completely warmed up. I think I will need all the wheat bags in bed with me tonight.

Thursday I moved on to the second bobbin of wool … well, I only half filled the first one, thinking I probably had enough by that stage. I have still a way to go on the second one before plying. I seem to be falling behind a bit. I will need to spin for a couple of hours each night, I think. C’est ça le prix de la gloire !

This is the start of the spinning. The pattern requires 300yds of lace weight yarn. I’ll try to translate that for my spinning tomorrow. I have some merino that I spun that is about the same weight as the grey I have started, so I’ll get an estimate from that (tomorrow … it is Friday … and it has been a rough week … and it will probably involve numbers). I should be able to finish the challenge by the end of Le Tour.

Well, this is the roving that will be my challenge during the Tour de Fleece. I can’t remember what it is or where it is from … it has been in the stash that long. It is slightly felted from being moved from basket to basket over the years, so there will be much splitting and pre-drafting. I actually made a start this morning. Luckily, there was a spare bobbin. I picked up some lovely fibre at the Wool Expo this year and couldn’t resist spinning samples, so the spare bobbins are thin on the ground. The plan is to knit the Wavy Feathers Wimple from Caryll Designs. (NB: only the spinning of the fibre is part of this challenge, not the knitting of the wimple … just thought I’d make that clear.)

Haven’t yet finished watching Stage 5 of the Tour de France  (past my bedtime in real time), but will hopefully finish it by the time I need to record Stage 6 tonight). SBS has a fairly comprehensive web site about the Tour. I never followed it before, and apart from thinking, “Cool, Lance Armstrong won again” at the end, never paid it much attention. But now, between the ‘French Connection’ and the Tour de Fleece, I’m getting right into it now.

Just joined Le Tour de Fleece. I will shortly post pictures of the grey roving that I will be spinning for the duration of Le Tour de France. I will also be catching Le Tour in video, at The Wall Street Journal, at Bicycling.com and en français.

Just wanted to post that I have spun half of the fibre. I’ve discovered that it is very hard to spin two singles of variegated fibre similarly enough that most of the colour zones match. (A-t-on j’ambitieux, ou quoi ?)

Even so, I really like the way it turned out, and am thinking it is destined for a scarf and socks for my dd. Don’t think I will get all of it finished before the next lot of fibre arrives, though.

Some time ago, I joined the fibre club at Ewe Give Me The Knits. My first pack of gorgeous, hand-dyed wool arrived this week. Je suis très heureuse ! (Il semble très intestinales, n’est pas ?) I’m not sure I would have chosen these colours to dye my own wool, but they are really nice together. The name of the colourway is “Hippie Heaven”, and is Blue Faced Leicester. Couldn’t wait to try spinning some. I decided to split the roving lengthwise several times, and to spin each length on separate bobbins starting from the same end on each (if that makes sense). I don’t want the colours to ‘muddy’. I’ll be spinning the singles a bit thicker than I have been spinning my lace-weight Merino, but it will still be fine enough that the colour changes might not be obvious if the second single doesn’t reinforce it.  Très cool !

I have been checking out some text to speech engines. According to S, the engines are all pretty similar. It is the quality of the voices that you buy separately that makes the difference. I ended up buying TextAloud. That one seemed to suit my needs the best. You can directly open a range of documents, and it is very easy to sync with iTunes and my iPod. It also has a toolbar plugin for Firefox (my preferred browser) as well as Internet Explorer.

I bought two voices. I decided on an Australian English male voice (Lee by RealSpeak) to read emails and documents, and a French female voice (Juliette by AT&T Natural Voices) to read French text and web pages. Lee is very easy on the ear. I don’t know if it is because I have been living here so long or because of the quality of the voices, but it sounds much more natural to me than any of the American English voices. There is something about the quality of the long vowel sounds on those that sounds unnatural. Juliette seemed to me to be the most natural sounding of the French voices. My opinion may change when my ear gets better, but for now she is fine.

I couldn’t resist playing around with the application. Of course, I had to have Juliette read some English text. Some words are unintelligible, but mostly it sounds a lot like someone trying to put on a really thick accent … not unlike a female version of Steve Martin. (And for a real laugh … Lee reading Le Monde! Surely, I can’t sound anything like that, can I? :-/ )

I really think that my reading comprehension is improving, and I seem to be catching more of spoken French, but I just freeze up when I have to speak. I need to have some strategies to work on this. I need a confidence injection … my French is better than Joey’s (Lord, I hope so!), but I sure wish I had some of his confidence!

Je veux avoir plus confiance en soi.

avoir de la confiance en soir

have self-confidence

avoir de l’aplomb

have confidence

avoir de l’assurance

have self-assurance

assuré(e)

assured, confident

certain(e)

certain

confiant(e)

self-confident