Tour de Fleece, week one!

Hello, dear readers! While the Tour de Fleece is going on, I’ll be forgoing Community Thursday posts – I know, I know, but it’s just too much for me to handle properly at this time, so I picked the super exciting TdF to focus my energies on!

I’ve had a lot of people ask me questions about Tour de Fleece, and why I’m running a team that’s not connected with the other TdF things happening on Ravelry and elsewhere. I thought tonight might be a good time to talk about all of that!

What made you interested in participating in Tour de Fleece?

For me, it was the community aspect of the event combined with the self-challenge. I generally spin every day anyway, but having that expectation of reaching a goal is always motivating… and I love doing challenges like this with a like-minded group, because it is SO FUN and it makes it so much easier to push myself.

I did a couple of years of TdF – first as a loner, then with a Threeravens team, and it was fun. I got a lot of things spun up! I was hooked.

How did you decide to “go rogue” and start your own team on Facebook? 

The problem with many community-driven things that get big is that drama and confusion can seep in if the event isn’t carefully managed to avoid drama. I am very much the anti-drama person. I just want to make pretty string and have fun! As the Ravelry event grew, it started to get more complicated and uncomfortable for me. And some of the people that I wanted to have in my event community don’t enjoy Ravelry for whatever reason. So I decided last year that running a team via Facebook and Ravelry together might be fun. What eventually happened was that the event happened pretty much exclusively on Facebook, and then after the TdF was over, we started Nevermore Forevermore, an ongoing, closely knit group of supportive and silly fiber artists. We have regular challenges, make each other laugh, and ooh and ahh over our shared projects. It’s pretty great. I love our little community.

Why “Team Nevermore?”

I like ravens. I like EA Poe. I like the imagery that goes along with all of that. I like how that imagery kinda goes along with our rebel status. And it seems to appeal to the members of the Team for various reasons and doesn’t just make everyone spin under the name of my business – I felt that naming it “Team Threeravens” was just too limiting and shill-y for me. 🙂

Do you actually watch the Tour de France?

…not really? I do try to catch what the general standings are each day, and there are some Team members who do follow the actual Tour, though. I’m just a busy lady who would rather be making something or being active than watching sweaty men  other people be active. Ahem.

Can we see what Team Nevermore is currently spinning as a part of the Tour de Fleece? 

Yes you can! We have an event page on Facebook and if you’d like to see what we’re making, you can join it and just cheer us on! We are also knitting and crocheting as part of the TdF, because like I mentioned… we’re  rebels. https://www.facebook.com/events/285972804917937/

Do you have other questions about the Tour de Fleece or Team Nevermore? Please do ask in the comments and I’ll answer everything that I can! I hope that if you don’t join a team, you keep spinning/knitting/crocheting/random fiber arting as much as possible! 

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