The Weekend I Needed

When you work full time and have a family, sometimes you find that no matter how much you want to spend your weekends relaxing, you tend to cram all the things you have to do into them and they're over much too quickly. That's what most weekends are like for us -- there's the errands to run, cleaning and laundry to do, social engagements, religious school, and all the other stuff. So it's extra rejuvenating to get a weekend without all the usual to-do, as rare as it is.

Rainbow has an extra-long weekend this weekend, with school closed Friday and Monday for teacher in-service days. I decided to take a day off from work to stay home with her Friday, so I got to sleep in, have a second cup of coffee, and just generally lounge around. We left the house only once, to make a quick trip to the market to get ingredients for dinner (we had some family over), but for the most part, she did her thing and I did mine. Yesterday we went out for about an hour in the morning to help unload some Girl Scout cookies for her troop and then went out for a nice dinner to celebrate Valentine's Day a bit belatedly. Today we had a couple of errands to run, but for the most part, we're staying put. There have of course been the usual chores around the house, but I've been able to sleep in, read for pleasure, knit, and spin to my heart's content the past several days. It's something I wish I could do every weekend.

I started a new spinning project this past week, on Tuesday afternoon after getting my braces on and before it was time to pick Rainbow up from school. Among the many braids I received from my friend Colleen last year when she was downsizing was a beautifully shiny braid of merino/bamboo/silk from Yarn Hollow. On a whim, I decided to spin it up into a three-ply fingering, and I finished up the first bobbin yesterday afternoon.

The fiber is a mix of blue and two shades of purple, one tending more toward blue and one tending more toward red. I didn't manage the colors at all when I split the braid, so it will be interesting to see how they blend in the plied yarn.

Meanwhile, I decided to pull out my Zoom Loom and weave up a little square with some of the mini skeins I finished recently. It's been a while since I last used it, so I had to review the instructions pretty carefully, but it really didn't take much time at all to get back into the swing of it.

I've only finished this one square so far (using the Karakul mini skein), but I'm pretty happy with how it worked up. It's very scratch and rough, but it should work well as a coaster. I'm going to attempt to felt the squares to make them a little thicker and fuzzier, though I honestly don't know if these breeds will felt. At least I feel rather virtuous for using up some stash, however small.