Good morning! Today I will begin dyeing the August club colorways. I can’t wait. I’m having withdrawal symptoms from not getting to dye much this week! I haven’t gotten to knit or spin or weave either, but there’s a good reason for all of that, which I want to tell you about.

Last week (can it have only been a week?) I was watching Felicia Lo’s video blog called Taking Back Friday. The vlog is interesting, and I’m a big fan of Felicia’s. Well, she mentioned that Spinzilla had been cancelled for this October. Spinzilla has been an annual spinning competition sponsored by TNNA for 5 or 6 years to see which team and which spinners could spin the most yarn during the course of the week-long competition.

I had been planning to sponsor a team this year for the first time, but of course neither I nor anyone else would be able to do that since it had been cancelled. It was such a neat event and gave spinners from around the world a good “excuse” to spend more time–lots more time–spinning over the course of a week. If you spin yarn, you’ll know as I do that spinners don’t really need an excuse, but we will certainly take one given any opportunity.

That got me thinking. Somebody should start something new. Somebody should bring spinners everywhere together for the fun and camaraderie of a lighthearted competition, and that somebody should include awards not only for yardage on both spinning wheels and spindles but also for other more creative categories. There should be prizes and lots of spinning fun.

Well, you have probably already guessed where this is going. Somebody (aka me) reached out to the fabulous group of indie dyers I am part of to see if they too thought that something could be done to get a new competition started for this October. Happily, a lot of the other indie dyers were as excited about the idea as I was!

I proceeded to spend the next couple of days figuring out all the details–what the award categories would be, how the organization of the whole thing would work, and how I could make the various web design aspects work. I also started running spreadsheets to make a semi-educated guess as to how much the team entry fees and individual spinner entry fees would have to be to account for the prizes we would need to buy and how many sponsors we might be able to get. I spent at least one sleepless night trying to decide if I could actually do this at all and whether there was any chance of success.

Well guess what? I got all the details worked out, and I was all ready to email the indie dyers who volunteered to help with my plans for entry fees and all the rest when it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, we could do it without any entry fees at all. It would certainly simplify web design and a lot of other things as well, and it would make it clear to everyone who was interested that it would be about the joy of spinning.

What if instead of individual entry fees we made it free for individual spinners and just asked them to make a donation to Habitat for Humanity if they could? That’s an organization I think does a tremendous amount of good.

What if instead of charging an entry fee for people and businesses who wanted to create teams, we just asked them to sponsor at least two small prizes each so we would be sure to have prizes for the winners of the competition?

So, after much consultation, that’s exactly what we did. And here we are a just week later with a live website, an active Facebook group, and a group of tremendously capable organizers who are spreading the word far and wide. I feel like I’ve had another child and written a book all at once, but I’ve had a lot of help with both.

Team registration started just 2 days ago, and we have 12 teams already along with some amazing sponsored prizes from team captains and other fiber-related businesses.

I keep asking myself if this can really be happening, and then the fact that my backside is completely numb from sitting in a chair doing web design all week is proof enough. Remind me not to get an office job. I’ll keep dyeing yarn and fiber and making art batts instead, thank you very much.

We are still looking for more teams and more prize donors. I know many of you buy yarn and fiber from lots of different indie dyers. It would be great if you could mention Spin Together to them when you have the opportunity. Team registration is from now until the end of August.

After that, individual spinners will be able to sign up to join the team of their choice throughout the month of September.

I’ll be leading a team too, so if you enjoy spinning, consider joining Team Purple Lamb for a week of spinning fun as soon as individual spinners can register to join teams in September.

The competition will start on October 6th and end on October 12th at midnight. There are award categories for the team that spins the most yardage as well as individual categories for the person who spins the most on a spinning wheel, the one who spins the most on a spindle, the most beautiful skein, and the wildest skein of art yarn. We also have a category for the team with the highest average yards per person to help smaller teams compete against full teams of 25 members.

You can find out all the details at www.spintogether.org. If you have any questions or ideas about what will make it run smoothly, please let me know.

Now, off to my dye pots to start making a yarn and fiber rendition of “Young Mother Sewing” by Mary Cassatt.

Have a wonderful weekend, and happy fiber artistry!