So many hobbies!

Never long enough

Hiya!  Did you miss me?  I had a wonderful time at my parents' cottage with my family.  It was pretty quiet.  I read, spun every day and almost finished knitting my sock - I just need to bind off.  Do you want to see where I was?

 

My parents built the cottage the summer I turned three so we've been coming up here for a while.  The level of the lake has been rising and we've been losing land to erosion so we had to put in a sea wall.  We used to have a nice little beach as you can see, not any more.  No, I don't sail - unless someone else is driving.  The catamaran is a blast to sail but a huge pain when you want to come about (turn around).  One time a certain member of my family managed to flip and got the mast stuck in the bottom of the lake.  Dad had to come rescue them.  Nope, not me.  I know the basics of sailing but I'm not confident enough in my abilities to go out on my own, at least not with the cat.  Give me a nice, small Sunfish and I'd be happier.

Some of my best memories are being up at the lake.  One summer, we spent the whole summer up there - Mom and us kids.  Dad came up for long weekends.  We'd pick wild blueberries, visit the gravel pit (trust me, it was fun), go mushroom hunting (for fun, not eating), go petosky hunting, swim, hunt for worms one day to fish the next... it was a wonderful way to spend summers.  My birthday is in August and when we were at the cottage, there were always kids up there to help me celebrate.  At home, I can't remember ever having a birthday party because everyone was on their end-of-summer trip.

I've joined up with the Tour de Fleece 2008 and I've been spinning every day.  I decided not to take David along so I spun the roving for my second Divine Melon sock while up north and plied it yesterday.  This will be the next yarn I use.  Sock #1 is longing for a mate.

I'm putting some of the roving I dyed two weeks ago up in my store tonight.  It's getting late so only some will be going up.  Here are a couple more I dyed but haven't posted about:

4 oz. of Merino/Tencel.  What do you think?  Pansies?  Purple Haze?  Grapes?

4 oz. of Superwash Merino.  Any name suggestions?  I really love this one.  The colors are very saturated, which is what I like.  The more color, the better.

Okay, gotta go stock the shelves.  'Night.

"Dappled Shade" - 4 oz. of Superwash Merino, cooked up on the crock pot. 

"HOT!" - 4 oz. of Superwash Merino, hand painted.  This is another one I'm tempted to keep myself.  It'll spin up into such a fun sock yarn, perfect for the dull, dreary days of winter.

I've got three more I dyed tonight: two hand painted and one in the crock pot.  I'm going to wait until after my vacation next week to put them up in the shop.  I'll be going to my parents' cottage in northern Michigan for the week where I'll spend the week with my family.  We all have my dad's sense of humor so I anticipate lots of laughing.  I've decided to join the Tour de Fleece 2008, which starts Saturday, for my second year so Owen and lots of fiber will be going with me, as well as my current sock-in-progress.  I'm trying to decide if David will be coming, too, so I can ply.  I've got him set up with the jumbo bobbin and flyer so I can ply without worrying about running out of room on the smaller bobbin.  I suppose I could wait until I got home to ply things up, but where's the fun in that?

It's a 3.5 hour drive so besides the necessary driving snackages, I'll be listening to "The Hobbit" on CD.  So aside from my butt getting tired of sitting that long, I probably won't notice that it's a freaking long drive.  Oh, and since gas is now so damned expensive, I'll be driving the entire way going 60mph.  I expect I'll be annoying the snot out of a lot of other drivers.  Too bad.