I took a walk after...

I took a walk tonight after dinner. I know a lot of people don't like daylight savings time because they get up at the crack of dawn and it's still dark, but I love the longer evenings. So I took a walk after dinner and stopped to talk to Deb and Rozz. The snow is so close to being gone, I was looking around the yard and was happy to see the apple tree survived, we didn't think it was going to, this little tree has the spirit to keep going on. Then even better yet my rhubarb that I thought was gone is now coming up, the thought of rhubarb makes my mouth water, mm mm I can hardly wait. I need to get out in the garden and do some cleaning, since last year I was having trouble with my back and couldn't do it. I got my bike out (do you think I might have cabin fever?) it needs a good cleaning and air in the tires. Well I shouldn't get to carried away now should I. When I last blogged I started to tell you about the machine that Katie brought home from her adventure at the Judith McKenzie week long work shop. Well a year prior Katie had an interest in a electric wool carder, and this year it was ready. How exciting, and it needed to be broken in with some wool before using finer fibers, so Katie asked if I would like to wash my Romney Lamb fleece and then bring it up to card. Well I washed the wool and mostly it was just dirt, hardly and debris, the tips were sun burned just a little, but they weren't weak, I thought the reddish color of the tip would add some color interest after it was carded and it did. Really I wasn't going to worry about it anyway. So I took it up to Katie's last Monday the 3rd and we started to feed it into the toothy jaws of the carder, one after the other till we were just about through, and then there was a slight malfunction . We had put some fiber to close to the chain drive and it got suck up and jammed the works, it wouldn't work right, so we stopped for the day and Katie called Judith and they got it fixed with her advice. So the next morning I went back and finished carding the wool, and the second time through it turned out very nice. Katie is going to put together bats of fibers for spinners and I'm sure they will be beautiful. So then the following Saturday, the Omak guild had their meeting at my house, and you couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day either. There were about 14 of us all together including some from the spinners from our guild here. We had a great time and lots of show and tell, also good food. We also did a "whats this fiber" challenge. I put out little bits of unidentified fiber that had numbers on them, then each person who wanted to participate could mark on a sheet of paper that had the answer, which ones they were. This was fun and a learning experience, I think it was a enjoyable day all together. Then sooner than we wanted it was time for everyone to get going back over the pass for home. Well I didn't have much time to rest on Sunday, because my regular group of spinners were coming on Monday. The group was Small but that's OK, because some of them came on Saturday. We had a nice relaxing time, Sandra came back over from Omak, so that was a treat, and Jan came, that's can be rare cause she's usually busy working out of town, I was happy to see everyone. Tomorrow we are going to Wenatchee, I need to pick up my window blinds I had fixed and we're looking for a new dish washer, so that will make for a long day away from home. I'm knitting on the wrap that Katie designed, I took a break from it for a while, truth be told, Deb got hers done and it inspired me to get busy. I hope all is well with you and you'll be hearing from me again. L. Diana