Tour de Fleece: Week 1

So, I am participating in Tour de Fleece again this year. I have taken the raspberry colored fiber that I was spinning a while back out of the cupboard. I dressed my distaff and am spinning singles on my Ashford student spindle. I have gotten in about four hours of spinning over the course of the week. The weather recently has been very humid and it makes spinning wool somewhat unpleasant.

When I wasn't spinning, I was plying. I have plied the two singles that I had from my drawer pull spindle - the middle weight one. I also wound the singles from the Turkish spindle into a ball for plying. I am trying out that technique I read in Spin Off a while back where you take your two singles and wind them into a ball and ply from that. If it goes well, I may just do the same with the singles I have from my French spindle. I am still trying to decide what I am going to use to ply that. I think I am going to ply the singles from the Turkish spindle on my kick wheel. I would be using the Ashford student spindle, but that is currently occupied with spinning that raspberry fiber. I finished the whole braid of the rainbow colored fiber. When I was winding balls for plying, I wound up with stuff getting tangled up. I estimate my loss on that being around two yards.

I am trying to decide what my goal for TdF is going to be this year. A part of me wants to try to spin that full mile of thread again. The rest of me looks at the pile of fiber I have and says 'I need to use some of this up.' So, I am thinking that maybe my goal will be a certain amount of time spinning every day, like an hour or something and the secondary goal would be using up the fiber I have languishing.

I have one problem, though. My fiber keeps trying to slide down the distaff. I'm not sure how to fix that. I have been doing some reading but what I find is inconclusive. I am thinking about switching over to the skinny stick that I was initially using as a distaff, but I don't think that is a great idea because it wasn't very comfortable to use.