Spinning, Part II
Okay. I raced through the Corriedale cross top, and started the merino/tencel wheel. I had no idea that wheel would provide nearly three weeks of spinning!
Here’s Tuie with my first singles. And Risky with a bobbin of the merino/tencel. Isn’t it gorgeous? Risky thinks so. Her eyes are shut because she feels unworthy to gaze upon it.
I tried to show what a nice fine yarn I’d done with Tuie’s help but quickly learned not to get it too close to his mouth. SNAP! He is also known to snag a bobbin by its leader and drag it off to his lair behind the television.
I’m still afraid to spin the really pretty fibers. So I acquired a little more of the plain stuff. I love the Kiwi. It knows how to handle a beginner.
Now I have added a Kromski Sonata! Some financial finagling and jostling about produced just enough for this sleek wheel. And of course I was hooked the moment I saw one at last Sunday’s fiber show. Bob and Patrick (Winderwood Farm) exhibited, it’s the sole reason I went. I was gibbering to the guys and to Precious Child when Bob’s Sonata stood up and waved to get my attention. LOVE. Bob ordered mine to be delivered to his shop, and it arrived yesterday while I was there. I wonder how many wheels I’ll have by the end of a year. Will I own a fleet of spinning wheels? Anyway, the Sonata is very nice! See-I have the walnut finish.
The wheel is handsome and the dark stain makes it even nicer. It spins like a dream, too. And yes, my efforts are beginning to turn out far better and rather consistent singles. I still need to learn plying.
Mine are they very first feet to ever touch the Sonata’s treadles, I am the very first person to spin with it! Bob believes that a new wheel should be first used by the owner. I think that’s great.
I visited Bob and Patrick yesterday. I swear, being at their house is so like being at Mum’s was. There’s a nonstop flow of coffee and talking. Thanks to Bob I’m spinning and loving it. He sent me home with that merino/tencel wheel over three weeks ago. Just before Easter he made me a batt-it was neat to spin and now I’m knitting that yarn into a particularly nice cowl. It’s hard to take a day away from work but I have figured out just how to keep up without having to miss sleep for days and days. And it’s so damn fun there! The lambs are being born now, Patrick fetched twin black lambs up for me to see yesterday.
And one of the cats had kittens in a box of fleece on the porch. Another cat is expecting. The dogs remain childless but Sadie mothers everything. She’s a born nanny, I guess that’s the Border Collie personality. She even watches over the box of kittens. She was delighted with the lambs, too.
Here’s Avery sunning in his window.
A Sadness: Two weeks ago I’d set out for errands, and spotted one of my ferals at roadside. She’d apparently been struck by a car then thrown to the shoulder along with an empty beer can. Poor little Mamacat!
I first saw Mama in late autumn. I fed her through the winter, and provided food, water, and dry shelter under the spruce tree whose ground-sweeping branches protected her from the wind. The area under the tree was well padded with clean straw, her box contained straw and soft old woollens and her food dish. There was always a bucket of water handy. I’d hoped she’d use the shelter more often, at least she ate well. She was a lovely thing with two kittens which are now grown. I really enjoyed watching for her in the evenings, and looked each morning for her prints by the shelter and its food dish.
When I found her, ice had begun to form on parts of her fur but her belly was still fairly warm. It must have been only moments after the accident. It is so sad to think she was alone with no final comforts, and on such a remarkably cold snowy day. She looked so cold and defenceless in the bitter wind. I wrapped her in the sheet I keep in the van and did some door knocking to see if anyone recognised her. One young lady did-she works at the pub and had been feeding Mama and her kittens. The Husband had offered to bury her under her shelter beneath the spruce tree. I took Mamacat to the Humane Society to see if she’d ever been there-they’d check for a chip. No chip found. Her body was placed in the freezer there just in case someone bothered to claim her, of course I was the only one who cared. I did try to take pictures of her but they just look like a dead cat. Eventually one of the kindest men at the Humane Society had her cremated, putting her remains into a pretty tin. I’ll tuck the tin in amongst the blue spruce roots, right where I’d left a shelter and food for my ferals through the winter. What a slob I am, getting all worked up over a feral cat.
A Crazy Sadness: This Monday past, 16th April, a student at Virginia Tech shot and killed 32 people including himself. It’s a horrific event leaving no ability to ever comprehend why. The young man had been under care previously. No one foresaw this though. Little bits about him are cropping up from video he mailed to the news headquarters, from teachers and class mates and family. But there will never be a satisfactory reason for that massacre.
Naturally, overseas news reports focus on our gun control laws, sneering as if a different set of rules would have prevented the killing.
So, to you newscasters across the Atlantic:
Now that you’ve postulated this nonsense, why can’t you write about why you think different laws will keep murderers from getting guns. Our laws might make it too easy for them, but if they want guns they’ll get them, legally or not. They do in your country, but us yanks aren’t sneering at your gun laws. I’m surprised that I must tell you this. One report went so far as to categorise Americans as walking a thin line between “Bible belt” evangelism and gun violence. Thanks, guys. We love you, too. Um. I didn’t know that God inhabited your newsroom, issuing anti-American sentiments and handing down judgements via your newspapers and newscasts. That’s real professional (snort), but I’ve learned to expect this from you. I know it’s fun for you to be supercilious jackasses, but I do expect respectful treatment of events here. Have you forgotten that 32 families are in mourning, along with hundreds of friends, class mates and acquaintances? So shut up unless you’re prepared to act in a rational, professional manner. Meanwhile I’ll bear a grudge and not read your news nor listen to your newscasts. Until, of course, I forget to bear a grudge.
Of course as I rant about the overseas news reports, I’m sat in my office hearing the neighbours shooting horribly loud guns. They do it daily, the guns are so loud I think it sounds more like cannon fire. BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
No they are not hunting. They are just shooting. I think it’s absolutely tasteless in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. Couldn’t they silence their playtime target shooting for the week? These are the people that overseas news reports are talking about. I guess they’re on the gun violence side of that thin line.
But who cares what I think? None but me. And you if you’ve read this far! As my friends say:
Quitcherbitchin!
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