No pics, just a story or two :)

Or, "Why I Learned To Spin".

Well, I have been thinking about spinning again, lately. For a very good reason. My inspiration for spinning.

Way back when, I had quit smoking. In order to "help", I dug out some of my crafting stuff. Well, not truly, since I didn't have much back then, but I bought a little embroidery kit. I had a couple latch hook kits, too. The only crafts I could do back then, were to knit, to embroider, to latch hook, and some basic weaving. All of those things my mother taught me, before I even went to school. So, I owned a few knitting needles, and a box of scraps of yarn. Anyway, I bought this embroidery thing, a little butterfly and some flowers. I worked on it. Never did finish it - the truth is, I'm not too fond of embroidery. I can do it, but I choose not to. Anyway, I decided that I wanted to learn to quilt. So, I started buying magazines. Hadn't yet discovered the wealth of opportunity at the library.... Well, at that time, the stores around me didn't have much to offer in the way of quilt mags. But, I did pick up one that had a variety of crafts in it. Knit, crochet, cross stitch, and a couple of quilts. I got side-tracked - learned to crochet, knitted an afghan, and learned to cross stitch. Now, technically, cross stitch is embroidery - but, it really kind of is in a class by itself. Anyway, I did eventually learn to quilt. But, in the meantime, I had seen an ad in one of these magazines that I bought, about a place that you could send your dog fur combings to, and they would spin it into yarn for you. I didn't have a dog. BUT - I *did* have a cat, that shed worst than any long haired dog I'd ever seen. Every year, twice a year, actually, I had to get my son to flatten the front end of this kitty, so I could comb or brush out the back end. I used to joke that I got enough fur off each back hip to make a kitten!!! (the flattening was necessary, since the cat hated the process, and it was much safer if teeth and claws were held down) Anyway, the simple little ad led me to the library catalogue (by then, I'd discovered that wonderous place, lol) and a book about spinning dog hair. Which led me to some other spinning books. Which led me to the phone book, to find that spinning equipment was scarce. Or, I was looking in the wrong places.... So, spinning went on the back burner.

Later, came Spud, with her spinnable fur, and Bear, with his.... And the internet, with all of it's resources and information and people.... And finally, my learning to spin. I began saving combings, brushings, etc. from all the animals. Separately, of course.....

So, when my skills get to the right stage for it - I shall be spinning the fur, and making a scarf, from my inspiration. Who? Well, if you haven't guessed by now, or if you didn't already know about it, my inspiration for learning to spin was Roxy. Which is why, too, that I clipped some of the yarn from one of my first spun balls of alpaca, and included them in Roxy's grave. Along with a toy, some potato chips (her favourite food), and some catnip....




Continuing on now, with the animal theme.... I wish I *could* share a picture of what I saw this morning. I've mentioned urban wildlife before - we get a lot of dear in the city limits, and we happen to live near to the airport, and not too far from a creek, and relatively speaking, a major river - anyway, this morning, drove DH to work, at around 6 am. Coming home, just after dropping him off, I saw something on the road in front of me - I wasn't too surprised - it was a huge deer. Had a huge rack of antlers on his head, too!!! Walking across the road ahead of me. I'm thinking, this deer had some experience with traffic. I mean, too often I've seen road kill. Especially on that stretch of road. Anyway, this deer walked across the first part of the street, stopped, looked at me coming towards him, then stepped up onto the median. Me - I was concerned for his well being. I mean, I'd seen him soon enough to slow right down, and there was no other traffic on my side of the street. But there was a lot of oncoming traffic - and the cars that I've seen in the morning going that way, are notorious for speeding, trying to get to work "on time", fighting for the best parking space, etc. (there are a couple of major businesses with hundreds of employees, and huge parking lots....) So, I was quite concerned for the safety of this poor deer. Oh, I guess I should care about the people and their cars - hitting a full sized deer can do a lot of damage. But, this deer stopped on the median, and watched the oncoming traffic, and when there was a break in traffic, he continued on his way across the street, and into a wooded area on the other side. I guess you don't get to be a nice big deer with a full rack of antlers if you don't get to be traffic-wise growing up ;)