…and I’m definitely taking the weekend entirely off. Of course, you realize that in my case, when I take a weekend off, odds are I’m still doing something fibery… ssssh, don’t tell my boss, she’s a real hard case and if she knew that, she would probably make me work even longer hours than the already-punishing ones she’s been setting for me.

Remember how Wednesday, I was too tired to take pictures? Well, I finally got to at least the photos of the new wares, and finally got ’em uploaded. I’m delayed another week, it looks like, on the plain ol’ shopping cart stuff. But here’s what I did manage to get done:

That’s 2 days of blending, 1 day of dyeing, and somewhere around 15 pounds of fiber. It felt like more while I was doing it all, I swear! But perhaps Marcy has a point with her comment about my expectations. Like I was just saying, my boss sets them for me, and as soon as I meet them she raises the bar. Still, that’s averaging out to like 5 pounds of fiber a day and that is not enough, not by any measure. I have to leverage synergies to heighten my efficiency or something. Or I’d have to if I hadn’t left the world of doing such things behind me a year ago, at any rate. Instead, like my boss is always saying, I’ll just have to work harder.

So, all of those are done, inventoried, catalogued, and listed for sale! Man, it is going to be beer o’clock here soon!

Oh, Hope? I apologize in advance. There’s going to be more pink and orange, starting with this:

Yeah. Sorry, Hope. That’s the Optim that I was spinning when I got the Pagoda in and had to spin that instead — the Optim that I thought was 2 ounces total, but then realized was 4. I haven’t weighed the finished, washed yarn yet as it’s still a tiny bit damp, but I did finish it last night, and it came to 1250 yards. With the quickie measurements, it’s 35 wpi, so not as fine as the other Optim. And one single was spun on the Suzie Pro, and one on the Saxonie.

The manchild said it looked like hot lava, so, “Hot Lava” it is.

Stephanie says she’s not a pink person, but likes the pinks here lately anyway. Kneejerk me, I wanted to holler back, “I’m not a pink person either!” but before I did so, I thought about it more, what with June having pointed this out recently too. I’m not a pink person, or a super-brights person most of the time, even though I appreciate almost all colours in the abstract sense of “not being something I’m about to wear.” So what’s the deal with all the pinks lately? I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of days, and you know, I think part of it is just that they photograph really well, and that makes them a good candidate for samples. So here’s another:

This is actually a really really awesome blend, it’s super cool, I swear! It’s hand-dyed merino blended with Tencel, roughly 75/25, in Cardzilla (have I mentioned lately that I’m a huge fan of Strauch carders? Well, I am). But you know, the sheen of this was so hard to photograph I thought I’d try it again cooler, and this time with little bit more tencel, more like 70/30:

Why yes, I did make an extra one of those for a sample. And it spins up really, really nice — drafts much easier than the commercial merino/tencel top, and it’s different, but… nice. Really nice.

It occurs to me I failed to take pictures last night of further hopping up that was afoot. I got in the first of my Majacraft tune-up and hop-up packages, you see, and got started tweaking the Saxonie, and then that was a slippery slope… right now, I’ll wager that I also have the fastest Suzie Pro around (and also the one that requires the most leaden foot, oof!) Speaking of speed, that reminds me, Sarah, you’re not the only one to break a Roberta flyer — I thought I was. And yes, it happened at speed, and yes, half the flyer went, well, flying, across the room, making such a thunderous sound it attracted every other member of the household. Definitely dramatic.

Oh, but the tuneups and hop-ups! Well, the stock whorl came off the Saxonie and was replaced with a Suzie whorl; counting flyer rotations while turning the drive wheel, this ups the top ratio on that to 25:1. With that whorl off (and it had one BIG groove on it), I got to thinking — what if we put that on the Suzie Pro’s accelerator head, on the intermediate whorl? Well, we did that, and… okay, pictures, and details another time. It needs a little more tweaking and tuning still. Back to the fiber pr0n!

This was a weirdly splitty brown. I mean, it should have been brown, but it split instead, and struck different on the outside and inside of the top… so I figured I’d spin it and see what it did. I really wanted to name it something like “Technicolor Yawn,” but that was… too blatant. I couldn’t think up a similar, but more subtle, euphemism, so I copped out and called it “Painted Desert.”

Here’s a watered down variant of Divine Bird’s colour combo:

as is this…

Well, that second one she suggested as an alternative, but the other one just works better if you ask me.

There’s a lot of lilac type action going on, because this is my first lilac spring in seemingly forever — you realize they don’t grow in California, right? Spring with no lilacs — what a penitential sentence. But here:

Baby lilac bushes… but they’re blooming. I can hardly wait till all the lilac bushes lining the roads and towns and everywhere around southern Ohio fully explode into bloom… while it’s t-tops off weather to boot. Oh, what a backroads driving spring I’ll have to have… perhaps this weekend. If I’m not just geeking on wheel tech.

Speaking of which, I have to thank my better half for his mechanical gifts, and his willingness to take a break from Jeepy here, to help me out with wheel tuning.

Jeepy’s a bona fide veteran of World War Two, having served in Europe and come to us with maintenance records from France, and everything. A 1942 Willys, Jeepy is being restored to 65-years-ago glory, give or take a few things here and there, so as to participate in a Memorial Day parade, as well as take us out for ice cream on nice summer afternoons.

Riding around in, or sometimes driving, a 65-year-old vehicle is, incidentally, something that provides a lot of food for thought about technology, preservation, what’s worth holding on to and what leads to what kind of developments… and it makes me wanna say something along the lines of those things people say about spinning, weaving, and the fiber arts, about feeling so in touch with my forebears. Only, you know, about a vehicle whose history I can’t help but wonder about, and imagine in the very few stories my grandparents would ever tell about World War Two… what the heck, when 65 years old am I, look as good I will not, to paraphrase Yoda and change the context.

Oh but before I knock off and call it beer o’clock, one last thing:

I still have plenty more work cut out for me Monday. The next time you see these guys, things won’t be the same, as the song goes. Colour will happen. You know… just… happen.