Perhaps I really do have a one track mind…

Monday being a school holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Kid had a jones to go to to The Crayola Factory in Easton, PA. While I don’t hate this place, I was thinking she might be a wee bit old for their target demographic and didn’t really want to drive and hour and a half and pay $30 only to see her yawn with boredom. But her father agreed to drive, and I had a sleeve to finish (photos later in the week) and so we went. She actually still quite likes it – it is a whole floor of arts and crafts stuff to mess with, and what’s bad about that?

My favorite part is where you get to play with the air dry clay that they make. So of course all my little airdry clay thingies are knitting related, because what else do I think of? My favorite is this here sheep. While not a shining example of the sculptor’s art, it was kind of fun to do 🙂 I should have put in a quarter or something for scale, he is about and inch and a half high.

Then I made a ball of yarn with some knitting needles sticking out of it, then because I don’t want to be accused of ignoring my brothers and sisters of the hook, I made a crochet hook as well. The Kid just rolled her eyes at me – she wasn’t surprised at all!

I had had to put the spinning wheel away in the weeks leading up to TNNA because I wanted to spin because I was stressed, but if I sat at the wheel all day nothing else would get done which would make me even more stressed. So over the weekend I dug out this batt I bought right before Christmas at Woolbearers in Mount Holly, NJ. It is a lovely lovely blue and I can’t remember for the life of me what breed of sheep it is, although I know they told me. Romney perhaps? Anyway, this is my first experiment with something other than merino top. My thickness is okay, I like how it handles (and the lanolin on my hands!), but the singles are a little fuzzier than I expected. The Kid has had great success spinning this as well so we are going to have a yarn co-production – we will each spin some singles and then ply the two together. Ah the joys of mother/daughter projects.

Dance has started up again for her – oh boy… Which means tons of sample making for me in the waiting room of the dance school. We both had a nice breather after regionals though, and she is getting her grades up a bit which makes me very proud. We have a rule that she has to work as hard on her homework as at her dance, but honestly when you were eleven, which would you rather do?

Off to play with my new design software. I am still very early in the learning curve – will give you all a full review when I start to get the hang of things.