Craptastic Weather, Lovely spinning

Well, the weather here is dreadful. It has been warmish, well, anyway, not super cold, and we have a big, fat inversion. Yuck! It is so bad that they have to keep the kiddie winkies in at recess, the air is too nasty to breathe. Last night on the news there was a report on the top 10 worst places for air that day. The top three were here. My mom can't even laugh without practically choking to death from her asthma. Ewww. Fortunately (sadly), we are expecting a storm in a couple of days, that should clear the air.

Well, DH has been watching me spin off and on, and it occurred to him whilst watching, that my whorl on my spindle wasn't big enough. So, I got a bigger one, and what do you know? He was right! It speeded up my spinning a great deal once I got that bigger whorl on there. And made it much more even. I did learn on Ravelry that a lighter weight spindle is great for fine plies, but I was making worsted for Lillian's soaker, so I needed more weight and a bigger surface for the yarn to sit on. I also learned how to set the twist in my yarn, which I didn't know before. You have to whack it. That's right. Whack the crap out of it. So, I washed it, rung it out and smacked it a few times on the counter and it made quite a difference. The yarn is all lovely and pretty even and doesn't twirl up on itself anymore. Very exciting. I wound it into a lovely, twisty skein (another trick I learned on Ravelry) and it looks downright professional.

I got some llama/merino/tussah roving in the mail today from a very kind person and oh, is it soft. Not nearly as easy to spin as the wool, though. I guess llama fibre has a rather shorter staple than the merino, and I know the tussah has a much shorter staple. I had to switch back to the small whorl on my spindle to spin this yarn. Not only is it much softer and shorter staple, I am spinning fine plies to make plied yarn.

My brother and his daughter both want to learn to spin, plus he is wanting to do some needle felting. I asked my dad if he knew any sheep farmers from whom we could get raw wool, and funny enough, one of his good friends is a sheep farmer! Dad lives in a very small town. Anyway, he is pretty sure he can get us a big bag of wool for pretty cheap. I am excited, as I also want to try my hand at carding and hackling wool. Should be interesting, and probably stinky. ;)


In personal news, baby takes after her daddy in many ways. This kid is a comedienne. She knows when she is being funny and deliberately tries to make us laugh. Tonight's amusement, however, was not intentional. Baby has been peeing a ton lately, so when I change her cloth diapered bum, I like to let her bum dry out for a bit. So tonight, I changed her and left her diaper off. Well, she loves to be nekkid, so she promptly took off with a giggle. Daddy was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher. I warned him she was coming and he said it was fine. She likes to "help". So a few minutes later, Dad says, "what is that stink?" Looks down and lets out a yell. Baby poo'd on the floor. He calls me in, I walk in and promptly dissolve into laughter. Not only had she poo'd, she stepped in it with her socky feet and looked quite amused by it. I picked her up under her arms (I didn't want the poo on me!) but I couldn't stand up straight, I was laughing so hard. I asked DH to take her socks off, and he gave me this exasperated look, which just made me howl all the more. He saw I wasn't going to be much use, throws me another dirty look and stomps off to the nursery to get wipes to clean the floor. I manage to make it to the nursery with the baby and wipe her butt off and get a diaper on her. Laughing my head off all the while. When we went back into the kitchen, DH said "you think it's funny she poo'd on the floor? Well, she peed in the dishwasher!' That was it, I couldn't take any more. I don't need to do my crunches tonight.