Chill Man!

Chill is an odd word.... but it is most suitable for mt life these days... for several reasons. One time chill meant something like a cold. If you caught a chill then you were sick with a sore throat or a cold.... this happily does NOT apply to me right now. However there is a new meaning for the word chill which does apply to me. Chill can refer, of course to the temperature of the air... and recently around me chill has been the best word to describe it. It has been cold... really cold. Next the word chill can refer to calm down and take it easy and this more importantly refers to me. I need to chill.... seriously I do. So here's what's happening that makes me need to chill

I just heard about the earthquake in New Zealand... we have friends down there who are visiting their daughter and son-in-law.... I just hope all is well with them.  I have been looking at the pictures coming out of there and it makes me really worry. Our friends are enjoying their first grandchild and have spent the winter there for the last few years. They had emailed us with information about the house they are renting and Teapot has that information so we are trying to find out information about where they are and how the earthquake would have affected them. But as in any state of emergency it is very difficult to get information from specific friends due to power outages etc... but I have sent an email to our friends and hope to hear from them soon. I'm trying to chill.

Next reason to chill... I have been reading the blogs of friends and internet friends and have discovered that one of my intructors in the MSP was turned back at the border when she tried to enter the states to teach the MSP there. I was sorry to hear it since I think that these programs are  really good for any spinner and when I see people not allowed to teach for rather dubious reasons it feels like the most powerful and forward countries in the world has been derailed. Sad day indeed for Canada and the US. My instructor has been chillin' in Vancouver for a few days and while it is a big disappointment not to be able to fulfill her obligations I think she's doing the right thing keeping her wits around her and her head screwed on straight. The US border guards get really weird about teaching in the US... Visa's and all that are a little weird when it is just a few day workshop...

Next... we have our first new born lamb of the year. Queen my old pure blood merino gave birth on the coldest day of February. Thursday night while spinning a lovely Lopi yarn my phone blipped and there was a picture of a new white lamb in the barn. It was a whopping -27 degrees with a windchill of -34 degrees... (where I was it was -35 with a wind chill of -43 degrees). It is a lovely sweet female lamb and she's white.... and I want to keep her. Her name is Dewdrop. She's named after her dad who quite frankly surprised us when his ball did drop quite unexpectedly after making us believe for a full year that he was a whether and not a ram...  but ram he is... and lamb he has given us... So Dewdrop is chillin' in a shed with a heat lamp so that she's not chillin' too much.

The retreat.... one word.... outofthisworld!  Ok so I know that's not really one word but awesome just didn't cut it. It was a blast. Totally needed, in order to make February pass away quickly. The weather was cold.... like ohmygodit'sfreakingCOLD! But we persevered and enjoyed our time all the same. But while the weather was cold it meant that once again we were chillin'. When we arrived, the building had not been heated and so we were waiting for the building to warm, it was chilly and so were we in short order. But some of the rooms had heaters and we turned those on upstairs to warm our bedrooms so that we weren't too chilly at night. By the next morning the building was very obviously warming up, which made us all happy. I accomplished a lot but came away feeling like I got nothing done. Why? I don't know.... maybe I laughed too much. But in the end it was a great few days. I started out working on a flax sample then I did several Lopi sample with Icelandic wool and then with merino and mohair... then Saturday was spent teaching percentage dyeing and then finally I spun cotton... it all went well. The only thing is that I can't show my pics because Teapot has the camera with him today and I haven't had a chance to remove them from the camera and put them here. I got home on Sunday and am already looking forward to the next retreat.... but there's lots to do before that. I will post pics later.

Yesterday was a long day as I had to drive Mudder to DC for an appointment with a denturist... it snowed... I hate driving in snow. So today I'm having a chillin' day.... very relaxed. no spinning just a day to put my feet up.... a little laundry... a little cooking and a whole lot of unpacking and wrapping my brain around all that happened. 

See ya later and watch for those pics.....