A Good Week

It was a good week, one of those memorable ones: good weather, good company and good times. Take four women, four days, many more than four projects and lots of consumable fuel:

These appear to be the World's Biggest Steaks, but really, it is a small grill! Honest!

I think we were somewhat modest in our wine consumption the first night:

but since I forgot to take any other photos of dead soldiers, there is no photographic proof.

We did get a lot done:


In this pile are some of the projects we worked on or finished: Lindsey spun 4 skeins of Black Coffee yarn, 2 skeins of white "coconut silk", has cashmere/tussah, Crosspatch Creations yarn, and black alpaca on the bobbins, is knitting a lace shawl off the bobbins, Lindsey's ribbon-knitted shawl called Shawl That Jazz is underneath Sue's loom (with cardweaving), with Sue's socks of Noro sock yarn atop, next to my knitted shawl and my bobbins of wool, then there are Sue's skeins of 3 ply wool, and a bag of wolf lichen we collected for dyeing. Dizzy yet?

Here are some details:

This is some of Lindsey's yarn: black coffee colorway dyed by Kimber Baldwin.


This is Eileen weaving, and Sue, um, resting! Eileen is making this scarf:

which she finished, and then warped up again for another scarf:

which she started weaving at the cabin:

and finished weaving at home:

This is Cascade 220 sett at 8 epi, and the beads are size 6 pony beads on the fringe.

Sue had a mission:

She was out to spin up a whole bag of wool, and turn into enough 3-ply for a sweater (she spun it all).

We needed a plan to accomplish all this spinning:

This is the line up of spinner's chairs in front of the laptop, with an audio book: The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, recommended!, and a full 18 hours long, which kept us in our chairs for several days.

Mornings were chilly, so we worked inside:

That is my Cricket, with some soumak samples on it; you might notice there were three of us weaving away each on our own little traveling looms this week.

It is wonderful to have the time away, to sit and spin until the wool is gone, to laugh and listen and talk (and take a brief walk or two). The weather was perfect, the company congenial, and the task at hand not onerous at all. There were even s'mores; we toasted the marshmallows at night in the outside fireplace.

Who could ask for more?

And yet, there was more to come:

The First Book arrived when I got home.

This is my one-and-only advance copy, the rest are on that proverbial slow boat from China, to arrive next month. But oh! to see it at last is a joy.