Sometimes the News Gets to Me

Good Morning!

I've said this before but I really should just stop reading, watching, etc. the news but there's no escaping it. Even reading through my friends' FB posts and emails yields a trove of the not-so-pleasant sometimes. We all go on and live our lives though, wish the best for those facing adversity and hope that tomorrow brings better tidings.

St. Pat's Dinner was awesome as evidenced by the steaming bowl o'beef, cabbage and taters shown here. The Guinness was a nice addition as well.









I'm prepping for the arrival of my new spinning wheel. On Ravelry, I found a program run by a lovely Alpaca farm. "Spin a Bag, Get a Bag" means that the farm sends two bags of Alpaca fleece. One for me and one for them. I received a beautiful caramel-colored fleece for me and a white fleece to spin up into lofty two ply for them. The white fleece was pretty dusty so I washed up some and it's been drying in the sun for the last day or two. Nice fluffy cloud-like fiber - I can't wait to spin it!

While my life goes on, my thoughts are with the people of Libya, Japan and friends who recently received bad news.

Happy Groundhog Day!

You know, life is really, really good when you just don't even have time to blog. I'm serious! I keep myself so busy sometimes, I don't know which way is up - and that's a very good thing! However, this is me slapping myself for not blogging more because I like sharing my crazy crafting exploits and general life musings with you.

Here's a little of what I've been up to this week -

I've been chatting A LOT with my rediscovered friend, Rich. We were interns in Washington, D.C. when we were in college. It wasn't the right time for us then, but now? Maybe so...

It's been dang cold here - dang cold! I wake up to 7 or 8 degrees regularly. It's Groundhog Day and I don't actually care whether Phil saw his shadow or not, spring cannot come soon enough. This is my view out my front window.



We did get some snow last night but it just piled on top of what we still have from December.

I've been spinning Rich a hat. Here are some photos of the process. I love it that I've learned to spin - I'm trying to make myself more valuable for that deserted island experience, should it ever come to pass.

Thin spun singles from that wool that I saved and told you about in an earlier post -

Plied into a thick and thin worsted weight yarn -

Winding off onto my mini Niddy Noddy -

More photos of the "Spinning a Hat" tomorrow...

Finally, while semi-watching the Super Bowl yesterday (what a game!), I was playing with BronzClay. It's clay, infused with Bronze and when these are totally dry, I'll fire them in my kiln and the clay binder will burn away. I've had one terribly failed experiment with this already but I think I used the wrong carbon material for firing and I dried my pieces too quickly. Cross your fingers for these!