Cotton Candy

This is what I made today.  I actually had most of the singles spun before today, so I just had to finish the last bit of the singles and then ply it.  That's not always a quick process for me, so this is my major accomplishment for the day and I'm fine with that.

Other than spinning I goofed around on the computer for a while and then spent the late afternoon sitting on the couch in the silence, reading a cheesy romance novel, wrapped in a blanket (because it's f**ing cold) with feline leg warmers.  It looked something like this....

Tomorrow will be less lazy and more productive, but I thoroughly enjoyed my day, including the take out sushi we had for dinner.

Fun with Friends and Fiber

I spent a long weekend in the mountains with my friends Michiele and Roxie at the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair (SAFF) where we engaged in our idea of fun... yarn, fiber, and classes on knitting and spinning.

Roxie picked me up Thursday morning and I was so excited I had all my stuff piled in the driveway waiting. 

Note the essentials: Cherry Coke Zero and wine

 We stopped a couple of hours up the road to add Michiele to the journey.  After a stop in Black Mountain for lunch and a little wander through a couple of shops, we made it to the place we were staying in Hendersonville about 4:00.  Roxie had reserved us a nice room in some one's house through Airbnb, a site I had never used before, but will definitely check out the next time Rob & I are looking for a place to stay.

Friday the fiber fun began!  We were at the Ag Center at 9:00 when the doors opened.  I wandered around all morning looking at all the great stuff for sale in vendors' booths and buying lots of goodies.  As a new spinner I wanted to get a variety of different fibers to try out, but I also couldn't resist some yarn as well. 

My total haul from both Friday & Saturday

Friday afternoon I had a class on working with antique and vintage knitting patterns with Franklin Habit.  He is not only a great teacher, but is hilarious and absolutely adorable!  I highly recommend any of his classes, but being a bit of a history geek myself, I love his passion for the history of knitting.

Franklin modeling a traveling cap

The "real" Franklin

After class I wandered around and saw some of the animals.  There were alpacas, llamas, sheep and goats, and I could have sworn I took some pictures, but apparently not.  I met back up with my friends and we finally left a little after 6:00 to head to dinner. But first we made a pit stop at a local yarn shop that Roxie and I had never been to.  What?  You think we should have had enough yarn by that point?  Never.

Saturday morning all three of us took a class on designing a triangular shawl with Vithard Villumsen a designer from Denmark.  Another great class, and instructor.  Vithard is so cute, we all wanted to take him home with us.  He was wearing one of his new designs, the1sleeved, and we all fell in love with it.  He let us all try it on and I'm not kidding when I say it fit and looked great on everyone.  He was such a good sport too, because we dragged him after class to the Miss Babs booth to help us all pick out colors to make one!  Unfortunately, none of us remembered to take a picture of Vithard, because we were too busy acting like 12 year old fan girls, but if you follow the link for the1sleeved pattern, you will see him modeling the design.

My yarn for the1sleeved

After another hour or so of wandering and shopping, we were all starving, so we headed in to Hendersonville for a late lunch/early dinner, a quick visit to another local yarn store, and then headed back to the room early.  Of course we had to show and tell, and wind our yarn to start Vithard's pattern before bed, but it was another great day.

Sunday morning Michiele had a class, so she got up and left, and Roxie and I sat around for a while before finally getting on the road mid-morning.  I got home Sunday afternoon, tired and glad to be home, but it was a fabulous weekend and I can't wait for next year!

In a Nutshell

I keep meaning to take the time to post here, but every time I think about it, I get overwhelmed by the number of things that I have not yet blogged about and I don't know where to begin.

So here is the past 2 months or so in a nutshell, and mostly chronological order.....

• Had a great visit to the John C. Campbell Folk School, where I learned to tat.
• Became a grandmother on September 19 to Cadence Annette Sitze.
• Had a knock down doors and shoot up bad guys good time at the Writer's Police Academy.
• Turned 44 years old and got an iPad from Rob, which I'm still learning how to best use. (I'm typing this post on it now.)
• Went to the land of cheese (i.e. Wisconsin) for a work related conference.
• Went to a corn maze with Rob, my brother, his wife and my 3 nieces.  
• Went to SAFF with my knitting group. My first visit, but definitely not my last!
• Spent this past weekend hanging out with my daughter and her boyfriend.
• Spent a couple of nice Saturdays hanging out with Rob and going to a fall festival, an antique tractor show & a local historic site.
• Did a lot of knitting.
• Have had the "crud", a cold, and now a chronic cough.

Overall, a good couple of months, other than the cold & cough bit.  So now that I've caught you all up, maybe I can get back to writing here on a regular basis.  And some of these events may show up again in more detail.

More Fun

I had planned to do a longer post or two about our week at the John C. Campbell Folk School  and our weekend in another part of the NC mountains by now, but the past couple of days have flown by filled with other things.

I'm in Greensboro for the next few days at the Writer's Police Academy, so the longer post about last week will have to wait.  After going to orientation tonight it sounds like the next couple of days are going to be fast paced and action packed.  I can't wait!

Most of the writers here are women.  I've only seen a couple of men so far.  This is my first writer's conference, so I didn't know if that was unusual or not, but one woman I spoke to said almost all the writer's conferences she's been to are a lot more women than men.  Are there more female writers?  Or do male writers just not like conferences?  It's not like this is a romance writer's conference or some other "female" genre.  I would have thought more men would like the opportunity to shoot guns and learn about things like digging up shallow graves.  Maybe they don't want to admit they don't already know about all those "manly" things?  Oh well, more guns for me.

Fun at the Folk School

I had all good intentions of doing a longer post by now, but we've been having too much fun here at what many call summer camp for adults.
But because I know there are thousand of you waiting with bated breath, I took a few pictures.  That will have to do for now.

Vacation Prep

This has been a week of running errands and trying to get ready to go on vacation. It always seems like there is so much to do before the trip. I don't know why I stress so much.  It's not like there won't be any stores if I forget something.

I was thinking late last night (very late, way too late, but this is when I think about this stuff) about how to do some blogging while we're gone. And as I was thinking, I thought "I wonder if Blogger has an app?"

Guess what???... Yep!  I don't know why it took this long for me to think to check. Maybe it's because I've never thought much about blogging from my phone until this week.  But it's now downloaded and if you're reading this...it works.

The only limitation so far seems to be that all the pictures show up in the bottom of the post.