So I got up this morning took one look out the window and decided that this weather is as yuck as it possibly could be... - 20.... a little warmer but oh oh oh... is the snow ever coming down. I will be staying home today and avoiding roads that are snow covered, snow packed and in a dastardly state of winter nastiness. To be honest, as much as I would like to get in to FSJ to catch up with the gals in the NPSW, I am really wanting to stay put and do so more spinning. I have been doing fairly well with my spinning, but not well enough. Yesterday I finished my second section in the level 5 books but I never even got started on the second section in the level 3 books. Today I will get out my Mawata frame and some silk cocoons and boil me up some worms... I will be making my very own Mawata... silk hankie with a cocoon or two. I also will be spinning silk.... in various forms.... commercial hankies, rovings, blended... I'm looking forward to it. The first time I concurred the level 3 homework I found it stressful.... but because I have done it before this time around I find I'm enjoying it more. I know what I'm doing so that makes it more liberating somehow. I'm going to say something now that I never thought I would ever say... I think everyone should do the MSP twice. The second time just for fun!You learn something new every time.... and you know what... I am totally not stressing over the tpi questions. What's more is I'm enjoying the MSP again. For two years I felt burnt out and when I said that to people all I got was, "Nah relax you can't quit now." Well I didn't want to quit and I kept thinking that everyone was right and that if I took a break I would somehow lose my momentum.... I don't know what would have happened if I had taken a break... and I never will know for sure now. I'm just happy that I wake up excited to get down to a day of samples.
Yesterday I finished the hemp samples. I enjoyed them actually. The first hemp sample was just plain hemp and it turned out fairly well. It reminded me a lot of flax but tow flax which is a little easier to work with. My second sample was a hemp noils/tow mixed with cotton. It turned out nicely too but as I was plying it... the darn thing snapped and that was the end of that. I had a 6 metre section and a 9 metre section, neither one long enough to send in with my homework. So it was back to the drawing board. This time I decided to try something a little different. I had read that a hemp silk blend would be nice so I thought, even though is was what I thought of as an odd combination, I would give it a try. I blended the longer hemp I have with bombyx silk on my hand cards and then rolled it off in a sausage.... (as apposed to a rolag, that means so that all the fibres were parallel)... Then I spun what turned out to be a lovely lustrous yarn that would work really well in a woven table runner. It would also work in a lace knitted table runner. I was really happy with my results. So with all that completed today will be my day for silk spinning for the level 3, and with any luck the latter part of tomorrow and Monday will see all of this written up and in my books.
Enough about spinning....
I went to Daughter #1's play last night. I was well entertained. There were only a few fluffs on lines and the singing didn't make me want to run away and actually the story line was quite hilarious. Daughter #1 did very well as a nerd and pulled it off really well (which makes me worry that my daughter may in fact me a nerd... which doesn't seem to worry her at all... even more worrisome!!!!) Still she is a sweet girl and she enjoyed herself, that was obvious. Unfortunately it did not draw a big crowd. Mostly proud parents. They have another performance this evening.
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