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the good news: I won a contest at Knitting Fool! although I didn’t guess what the shadow was, her wonderful mother just happened to pick my name from the hat! thanks Kristi & Mom!!

the bad news: I either have a head cold or seasonal allergies. Either way, my eyes are bulgy and my nose is runny. eewww.

the good news: D#2 has made me tea and oatmeal for breakfast. I think I can look forward to a day of her tlc – she has one more day of spring vacation.

the fiber bad news: have made no headway at all in getting those spinning samples off of the bobbin. Also I finished Lauralund – but don’t know if I like the way it fits me. Perhaps a few weeks of WW will change my mind.

the fiber good news: have finished one Oak Ribbed Sock and the other has progressed to the heel. That will be some good mindless knitting for my day in between sneezing.

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Well, I have been doing the WW Core program for one full day – so far so good. I even went out to dinner with some girlfriends last night. Since we are all attempting weight management, we decided to go to Applebee’s where they have a WW section on the menu.

Normally before going to WW I would try to lose a few pounds first. This is by it’s very nature a ridiculous plan. It assumes that the person weighing you has never seen a fat person before, or a number that high. As a former leader, I assure you the shock value is quite low —- there are no surprises and when you come right down to it, the only number any really and truly cares about is their own.

So I went the whole other way and had a “Last Supper” before the meeting. Heaping quantities of chinese food. The sodium intake was astronomical I’m sure. This is another potential ridiculos approach, however it has one major thing going for it ….. I have lost three pounds in one day! ; )

Blogging with be sporadic – D#2 is off from school, yard work bekons and a holiday approaches. If I don’t make it back here, have a wonderful Passover and/or Easter!

playing with samples….

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After a full weekend of playing with fibers, the bobbin is full and needs to be emptied. It seems that spinners are a very organized bunch. They make and keep sample cards – a large card is made to hold all the fiber info – what it is, how it was prepared, method used to spin it, all the various plyings along with a little piece of the unspun fiber. I suppose this is to go in some sort of album or something.

I cannot imagine ever referencing the album again, but nonetheless I spent part of today making samples from my bobbin. Of course, this is all hindered by the fact that I neglected to keep snippets of the unspun fiber …. but I did what I could.

The first order of business is to become familiar with Andean Plying. This is an organized way of getting the yarn off of the bobbin to access both ends for plying.

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The thrill of being an Andean Plying natural was quickly diminished by my first f-up. We were supposed to spin a bit of colored fiber in between each sample fiber so that we could distinguish one from the other later on. I misunderstood the direction and spun the colored fiber in between the spinning groups.

Thus my Combed Man-Made fiber samples look like this:

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Within that heap, lies ingeo which is a corn fiber, soy silk, tencel, nylon, polyester, acrylic and rayon. The only one I know for sure is the Ingeo because that is dyed. oh well, spin and learn.

Moving on, here are my Thrown Silk Waste Samples [degummed dyed bombyx waste, undegummed bombyx]Carded Silk Samples[bombyx, tussah, tussah noil] and Combed Silk Blends Samples [wool/bombyx, camel down/tussah, cashmere/tussah]. Hard to believe that all of that is in there!

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so there you have four of the twenty four groups we did – I have a lot more cataloging ahead.

in other news, I am rejoining WW tonight. It’s about time – the year of quitting smoking is behind me and the time has come to pull my shit together.

I hate pulling my shit together. As most of you know, I have been very successful on the WW program and worked for many years as a leader. This is both a blessing and a curse – I know it is a good program and that it works as long as you work it. I can’t believe that I have to do this again and I just wish it were easy.

Why can’t I have my cake and eat it too? In large quantities, with lots of icing???

Passover Humor

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Matzo Man

Moishe took his Passover lunch to eat outside in the park. He sat down on a bench and began eating. A little while later a
blind man came and sat down next to him.

Feeling neighborly, Moishe passed a sheet of matzo to the blind man.

The blind man handled the matzo for a few minutes, looked puzzled,
and finally exclaimed, “Who wrote this shit?”

[thanks to my friend Flair !]