Spinning weekend

The spinning retreat begins on Friday afternoon and ends on Sunday afternoon. It's not long enough. I had a great time.

I decided to stop at The Mannings on the way to Wilson College for the spinning weekend. I called ahead to verify that they had Lendrum bobbins in stock and when they said yes, I set up my route to take me past the store and then on to the college. I am proud of myself for thinking of a way to save the shipping on the bobbin purchase and still not make a special trip to the store (which is not in my neighborhood) to get the replacement bobbin. I usually don't plan that far ahead. I picked up some dyes and a bobbin for someone else who needed it and then got back on the road to the college.

Wilson College has a beautiful campus and at this time of year, with the trees turning red and brown and orange, it can be breathtaking.  The drive went well and the trees all around provided me with lots to look at. I arrived, unpacked spinning and knitting stuff in the gathering room and then carted my personal belongings to the room. It's a basic dorm room, bathroom down the hall, and basic dorm food. Facilities are not why we go there.

We gathered and spun and chatted, catching up on events and families and whatever else we wanted to talk about. I don't see most of these people during the year - just at the retreat - so there is a lot for me to catch up on. The theme this year was silk, and we received our bag of goodies on Friday night. It included some tussah silk, some silk hankies, some silk noil and a few cocoons. All of the fiber was natural in color. On Saturday some of us tried dyeing the silk with Koolaid. I brought my tussah and hankies home to try my new Mother MacKenzie dyes on them but tried the koolaid on the silk noil. The colors are fine but I didn't have enough room in the bowls to get good coverage with the dye powder, so I will have to go back and add more koolaide now that I am home. There is way too much white on that fiber still. I hope to be able to blend it with some wool and get an interesting effect.

Everyone brings a snack for the goodie table, and one of the attractions of the weekend is to sample some of everything. More and more people are bringing healthy foods rather than just cakes and cookies, so it's not as bad as it sounds. ; )  There were some very yummy goodies on that table .....

The weather was so nice that many of us took our spinning and/or knitting outdoors on Saturday. There is a nice patio there that we made use of for a couple of hours, soaking up the sunshine and vitamin D. It was actually heat that drove me back inside after a while!

Show and tell was fun - people bring and talk about different projects they worked on over the last year. I am awed by the talent and interest in learning new things that is apparent in that group of experienced fiber people. Each person walked around for a while, checking out other people's projects and asking questions or asking for instructions. Everyone was free with help and information.

Sunday is always bittersweet - one more morning to spin and chat, have brunch, but then it's time to pack up and go home. : (

The drive home was great, too. No traffic hangups and great scenery to entertain my eyes while I listened to my audio book. I am sorry - I took absolutely no pictures while I was there despite having brought my camera.

What did I accomplish while I was there? It was a spinning weekend, after all. I finished spinning my first Grafton Batt and started the second. I sampled some other fibers that were there for us to play with, but none of them really did anything for me. I spun some silk hankies (that I had brought from home), switching from spindle to wheel spinning,  and instructed others on how to draft silk hankies for spinning or knitting. I spun my silk (from home that I have been working on for a while) on the spindle outside on Saturday. I did some knitting on the new shawl and a bit on Rob's sweater, too. All in all, it was a great weekend. To top it off, Monday was a holiday!

I need a vacation

F***ing Fall. There is a disturbing trend in my family for bad things to happen in the fall. We made another emergency trip to NY on Friday, 10/1. Mom had re-accumulated fluid/blood in her brain and it needed to be removed. She went to the ER expecting to be evaluated and then sit there for several hours waiting for her surgeon to have time to take her to the OR (he was already scheduled for several other cases). Instead, as soon as she got there they repeated her head CT scan and rushed her to the OR. She had fresh blood in her head, not just the older accumulation that was seen on Wednesdays CT scan. Whew! That was a close call.

We have spent a lot of time with Mom since then and came home on Tuesday, 10/5, which is also eldest son's birthday. I returned to work on Wednesday. It’s more stressful than I would have imagined, being here working, trying to support Mom and my brother (who lives with her), worrying about here and trying to stay on top of things and also trying to get back into my own life – house, husband, family.

I had hopes of rejuvenating this past weekend, and I did. I attended a spinning retreat at Wilson College in PA. Friday afternoon through Sunday morning, devoted to spinning and other fibery activities. I'll post about that tomorrow.

Knitting has not been progressing much. I just didn’t have time to knit while in NY – there was too much going on and at the end of long days I was too tired to knit much. I did get in some spindle spinning one night (at about 3 AM). Silk is soothing. ; )

Rob’s afghan is a little bit bigger. 5 stripes of 8 are complete and the 6^th has been cast on. The Eliina shawl is still in the stockinette section but only needs one more repeat before the lace begins. I think (I haven’t looked in the bag in a while) that the Slinky Ribs sweater needs a neck edging and a bit more sleeve. I wore the V neck cardigan several times while in NY. There’s so much I want to knit …..

There’s so much fiber I want to spin and ply …..

All I want for Christmas is lots of fiber time. ; ))

Spinning Weekend

Perhaps I should have titled this post Eating and Spinning Weekend. LOL. We did not lack for food - both healthy and non-healthy food varieties were available.




We had a great weekend - good weather, good food (the stuff we brought, anyway) and good company. There was lots of spinning and catching up on recent events, and the sharing of knowledge. There is no formal presentation but I always learn something at this event. I didn't remember to ask permission to post photos - sorry. I can, however, show you photos of socks.

There was a great collection of hand knit socks, and I can share those since even I can't tell whose feet they were after the fact.

We have socks that are related, but not closely. Cousins, maybe.








We have identical socks. These were hand dyed to achieve this rainbow effect.
























Look twice - this is a different pair of socks.























We had sunset socks



















and spring socks. At least that is what they looked like to me. Pretty spring colors.




















What do you think? Are these Pretty in Pink or Hot Mama socks?














And then we had confused socks. Or were they confusing me?



















We even had some weaving going on! How cool is that! The little sheep pin was the gift for this year. We get a gift/momento each year, and this one is the cutest so far.






All in all, it was a wonderful way to spend a weekend. I hope yours was as good.