ianuk

Well, after the icky work week I requested that mel take me out to sushi when I got home from the gym. I didn't make it out of work until 4pm...my afternoon of knitting fun was dumped upon by paperwork that was still not complete by 4pm. Though not without me trying my damndest. I was tired and still kinda grumpy when I got home but a shower, smiles from the Benton and a good protein rich dinner made up for it.

Got home and got the boy ready for bed and Mingo and Tati stopped by. It was really, really good to see them and we talked house plans and chit chat. Benton was in bed pretty quickly and then we all gabbed for a few hours. I knit on my second felt bag and then it was time for bed.

Benton was up early on Saturday for food and then we all went back to sleep. I got up and worked on the felt bag and finished it up and got it felting. The one thing I learned was that single spun yarn shrinks way more than plied yarn and I'm really glad I made this bag bigger since it felted down to smaller than the previous bag. I then did some more reading and realized that I needed to over night soak my yarn. Oops oh well. So, I made plans to do that sunday. I spun up the pewter colored silk merino and then spun up the alpaca. Alpaca is so soft and it spun nicely. I had a lot less thick and thin on it. We realized that we probably need at least on more niddy-noddy since we filled them up and mel used his warping board to put the icelandic (or was it gotlandic) on since he had plied up the entire thing. Its funny though I guess we do need a few more fiber tools. I will probably pick up the larger kromski niddy-noddy for myself since I'll be doing larger quantities now and need the space.

Mel also spent part of saturday working on the main cooler. It really needed new pads. He got that taken care of and we now need to figure out where to put a water reclamation downspout so we can dump the cooler every 8 hours to prevent buildup. It was a nice day of spinning though. SyFy was playing the Indiana Jones movies and we watched most of them.

While mel and I were playing with fiber Benton was figuring out how to turn over and army crawl. He'd been almost doing it last week but he kept getting his arm stuck under him so he would roll back the way he came. Now he's figured out how to roll over, untuck his arm and then move in an army crawl across the floor. He had lots of fun crawling around and chewing on things. He nommed on my little cthulu and the puppy blankie toy that

spartanmom got him. He also managed to not freak out when the puppy was over his head and he couldn't get it off. We had some issues with that on friday and he got scared that it was covering his face. He had to be rescued from the attack puppy and comforted but he wasn't scared too long and recovered really well to go back to playing with the puppy.

Sunday we got up and had breakfast with

american_knight and the HD at Joe's. Had a really nice family breakfast and that was good. After that we headed home and I headed to Target to get essentials for the week. Managed that errand in an hour and then was home to work on dyeing things.

I did the dyeing in two different ways. One piece of roving and 2 yarn skeins were jar dyed and 4 other rovings were crock dyed. Jar dyeing just entails stuffing stuff in jars and letting it sit. The crock dyeing involved pouring the color over the yarn and letting it cook. Both had advantages and disadvantages. The issue with crock dyeing is that if you mix colors incorrectly you get muddy colors and I had that happen on one roving but all in all it was fun. I managed to dye stuff, work on laundry, fold boy clothes, pick up the kitchen and work on another alien throughout the day before setting down to spin. I plied up all of the yarn I had spun on Saturday and then started spinning on a batt I had gotten from Blue Mountain Handcrafts. Its a wonderful corriedale in a pretty colorway of autumn colors. Mel's comment when I was spinning it was that it looked like I finally know what I'm doing. YAY! It seriously wanted to spin itself and if it hadn't been benton's bed time I so would have spun until my bed time. Its lucious and I have a total of 8 ounces to spin. Not sure what I'm gonna make but its gonna be fun.

So, I had a really nice weekend and got things preset for myself so I didn't feel rushed before bedtime or in the morning. Unfortunately, I didn't remember that I give blood today so no gym time for me but that will be good for me to maybe get some bike maintenance going or at least drop it off for maintenance.

So, the pictures of the weekend projects:
This is the bag before felting, note the 12 inch scale on the side.