A Serious Case Of Sleepitis

For two days I have indulged my inner me... and have gone back to bed after Teapot and the Daughters departed for school. I have had great pleasure checking out the back of my eyelids for several hours each morning and may do it for the remainder of the week.  In the meantime though, that does not mean that I have been doing nothing. No indeed. I have been working very diligently on my work at home here with little or no thought to anything else (the dust bunnies are poking their noses out from under the china cabinet again). In the meantime, it is onward and upward with level 4. I have finished all of the cashmere questions a second time and still am not satisfied but I think this is the Freudian Annal coming out in me and so I have decided to carry on anyway. Two of the samples will do so I will use them and will put the other two away...

and get on with it. The next section was silk and I say WAS most strategically because I have completed that section as well. Reeled silk was the first question and since I had done that one last summer in class there wasn't a whole lot of work to with it... just a write up and voila... finis! Then came 3 wool silk blends.

My first was a Polwarth/silk noil blend in 75% and 25%. I'm absolutely enchanted with that one.
Then came a Finn wool/Bombyx silk in a 50%/50% blend and it turned out very lovely too. My last one is nice and even and nicely consistent but I do have to admit that it would not be my choice in a yarn. It is a 75% Dyed Tussah silk and 25% Polwarth wool rovings and I decided to try something different in the blending... something that is not necessarily recommended but I wanted to try it more or less as an experiment to myself. I carded the blend into a Sausage and then elongated it before spinning. The result was, that though silk is shiny, it lost most of its sheen. I figured it would do this but, all the same,  I wanted to see what exactly would happen... like would it have any lustre at all. it didn't but it is still quite a nice yarn but more of a raw silk look and of course the wool really knocked the lustre back too. Anyway it is going along with the other samples and that is that!  Meanwhile I was listening to Canada Reads on CBC last night, and while doing so, I decided there's no point in pi--ing away time and so out came my cards and I combed some Supima Cotton into punis and began the cotton section. I find myself at mid day today with the cotton section finished too. One of the questions for cotton was to spin cotton on a support spindle (that being a Takli) and I had done that last summer.

So With the two cotton questions done I have 5 sections done on my level 4 books. Still I'm not sure about my Takli sample and I may redo that one in the evenings. I carded some new punis and this time I'll be using yellow.

The next section is Flax. Yikes! I had a look this morning and the first question already has me scratching my head. We are asked to spin a 10 metre 2 ply linsey woolsey yarn and there's nothing in our text book about linsey woolsey. I think this is a serious oversight on the part of the MSP text book people. We are not asked to research linsey woolsey... so why they have that question there without some information in the text is weird to me. I must write to the instructor about that... It's just plain weird.  Since I have the Blueberry retreat coming up next week and there is some organizing for that, I decided to put the Flax section on hold until I get back on the 20th. Meanwhile I am beginning the section on low twist singles yarns better known as Lopi style yarns. The fleece is washed and so I begin.

As for the Blueberry retreat.... my heart does flip flops when I think about it because I am so excited. I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to that.  5 whole days with only myself to think of. 15 other women all spread out with wool, cotton, dye, weaving, knitting, and more fleece... etc... I think it is going to be awesome.  I am giving a little dye workshop on percentage dying with two colours. But other than that, its relax, and spin for five whole days... yipee, yahoo, hurray!  It is what drags me out of my mid-winter blahs.  For the last few weeks, even though I've been fighting it hard, I have felt it poignantly. (I think that's why I'm sleeping so much.) Something to get me out of the house... something to give me heart again... and who knows I might be able to come up with something interesting to write about again.... (because I'm sure you haven't missed the fact that you could snore your way through my blog posts/ramblings).

The Blueberry retreat is so named because we rent a summer camp for kids called the Blueberry on the Blueberry river. It is a vast log building with beautiful rooms and balconies overlooking the rolling hills beyond, and is just divine for a retreat.  I am soooo lucky. I leave on the 16th.. and there will be pictures.

Meanwhile, Pops' thumb is continuing to improve slowly (more slowly than we would like) but with Diabetes, healing is not that easy, so we are glad of any improvement.

Now that my sleepitis has been dealt with, I am off to spin a little Lopi and do some write ups. But meanwhile, I think that I will leave you with this picture that I'm so proud of... (pat pat pat.... that's on my back if you're wondering)!