Yikes!

Like, I could be blogging. I woke up at 5 a.m. Aren't I doing anything productive yet? Sheesh!

So I'm working three jobs. Now, admittedly, these jobs are not terribly stressful or difficult. But there are three of them. I still type, I still sing, now I'm working in the office at church, no biggie. But add on kids and classes and costumes for the 4th grade musical and a fundraiser for the music program and the flu and, well, I should add the laundry except that I haven't done it, at least not all the way into the drawers. Haven't cleaned the house since Obama Day.

So what did little miss smarty-pants do? I started a Cardalong on Ravelry. Because I'm not busy enough and the whole reason I haven't used my drumcarder in a year is because I don't care to. Right. Anyway.

I'm really enjoying it, though, so there you go. And I love the job at church. I think in my long years of working office jobs (and they are long) this is really the first time I've looked forward to going to work. Thanks, folks!

So on Sunday, in the five minutes between taking the kids swimming (thanks, J!), making dinner, typing and falling over in a heap, I did some carding, woo-hoo!

We're working our way through the Self-Study Exercises in "Color in Spinning" from the very beginning with color blending. No multicolored layered batts for us. Yet. Oh, no, we must begin with "Make a color warmer." We are newbies. We are starting slowly.

Here are my elements:

I dyed the blue on Saturday because I did not own 2.5 ounces of any one color except white, black, or olive green. What can I say, I love handpaints and crazy colors! The blue/violet is from a dye experiment I did ages ago where I did the whole color wheel in two different combinations with my cool and warm dyes to see what my base colors were. Except I did the yellows backwards (I can't even remember, it's so long ago). Anyway, what I ended up with was 1/2 ounces of a lot of different colors. And also long ago I bought a giant lot of somebody's samples of merino in a ton of colors. So I can play with those, too, when it comes down to it. I should be okay in the colors to blend with my base color department. They are both Bluefaced Leicester. Want to see the result?

The batt. I think I probably will do fewer passes through the carder next time, as the spinning blends the colors even more and this was a bit much. I reread the book afterwards (of course) and Deb Menz said not to do too many passes, but what's done is done.

Most exciting thing about the Cardalong? Go ahead, guess!

Deb Menz is doing it with us!!!! If you don't understand this, know that not only is she the author of the book we're using, she is (to me) the Goddess of Spinning Colorful Yarns. And Colorful Yarns are my obsession.

Abby Franquemont of Abby's Yarns gave Deb and me a heads-up and we connected and I could not be more thrilled! And frankly, having Abby there, too, is a great thing. She is totally an expert and I have learned a lot from her before now through her blog.

And so, the yarn: I forgot how nice spinning batts is and spinning singles yarn is so relaxing. What I'll do with a million little 30 yard skeins I don't know, but it's never bothered me before. If I can come up with a decent color progression, I'll have some socks to show for it eventually.

Next up, "Make a color cooler." So blue and green it is!

And if you have any good thoughts to send, please send them to my step-dad who is having minor (but what is really minor?) surgery today. Love you, D! Mom, call me when it's over, K?

Peace.