Allright, first things first.

The coffee is done and I have some so it’s safe to try to blog. It’s been a busy few days. Beth and I were talking Tuesday about how I’d be able to ship her some new batts around the end of the week. I think what happened was that she said I ought to just bring them up and drop them off, and then I said no, she should come down and pick them up, and then we went back and forth like that for a while, and next thing we knew we’d hatched a scheme.

But she totally started it. You can tell when you look at her that’s the kind of chick she is.

First, she was going to drive down Friday, with the kids, and then head back that night. We (Chad and I) told her we figured she ought to stay for the weekend and we’d all go to King’s Island, but alas, she had classes to teach Saturday, so that was out. But we continued to work on the scheme and ultimately, about 2:30 Thursday afternoon, she arrived with a 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son in tow… plus some fiber, spinning wheels, a little loom just in case, a few accessories and stuff. You know. Just the essentials for an overnight trip.

Like young Maggie’s wheel:

which of course looks totally at home in our family room, amidst Legos, Bionicles, the decorative bare playfield for Williams’ Earthshaker adorning the wall next to a giant speaker, with scattered items on the floor including a small trebuchet scale model, bedspread my grandmother made in the 1950s, and a Doctor Octopus robot arm which we acquired at Disneyland a number of years ago, and which Edward has used for every imaginable purpose to which a robotic arm might conceivably be put.

Allright, allright, so other parts of the family room sometimes look sort of like this.

You know, sometimes. Kind of. Depending who’s over.

Anyway, the Ladybug there is Maggie’s. She is 7, and an accomplished spinner and fiber person.

She helps her mother with many things around The Spinning Loft, and she’s been spinning for almost 2 years I think? I met her — as many spinning teachers have — while teaching workshops at Beth’s shop, and for me personally, it was really a thrill to meet her. While Maggie is almost certainly better behaved and quieter than I was at her age, I definitely remember helping my parents with fiber workshops and spending time learning fiber-related things at every opportunity. I remember that not everyone took me seriously as a weaver then (and by extension, spinner and knitter and crocheter and many other things), and that it was sometimes hard to have interests which no other kids participated in, while being so young that grownups often just assumed you wouldn’t want to interact with them.

Maggie’s totally a kid, but she’s serious and focused on her pursuits. She’s skilled and knowledgeable and aspires to be a spinning teacher, perhaps starting as soon as next summer. She wants to teach kids to spin, and this fall, she’ll be attending the Spin-Off Autumn Retreat as a scholarship recipient. She’s as interested in spinning as many kids are in Spongebob, Pokemon, Legos and the like.

She also makes Maggie Batts — from scraps and miscellany and samples — which she sells through her mother’s shop, and uses her earnings to fund her fiber pursuits (right now, she’s saving for another spindle). I was absolutely thrilled to be able to contribute to her Maggie Batt materials stash the other day, and get to hang out carding with her.

Her son Ryan came too.

Ryan’s a lot like Edward was at that age, and despite the age difference they got along famously. Everyone enjoyed the cats, and Kaylee out-cuted Paimei, somewhat to Paimei’s chagrin. It took Kaylee a day or so to recover from all the being-played-with — a day during which she was sedate and well behaved. The kids can come back whenever!

Everyone got to go feed the neighbour horses fistfuls of clover, and pat them on their velvety noses. When Ryan slowed down with the clover, one horse started nudging him in the head with her nose. Beth found a four-leaf clover; she says she finds them all the time. Me? I’d never even seen one before.

A few rides in Jeepy happened.

Just look at the carnage! And I showed Beth my favourite swift:

I think she might be trying to stock them in her shop. Oh, and I’ll have you know that while Beth did manage to find a picture to take that included not only a skein of Bernat acrylic but a Robert Jordan book on my shelves, it’s much more likely to see a shelf that looks like this:

So there. But it’s true: there is cheap yarn in my house. There’s a purpose for everything. I don’t recall why I have a skein of pastel ombre Bernat acrylic, but there was doubtless a reason. As for the Robert Jordan, I plead “airport bookstore.” Seriously though, the first one was fine. 2 and 3 were even allright. But since then, it’s as if 8,000 books have gone by and NOTHING HAPPENED. “And yet you bought them,” Chad always says. You see? I’m an optimist.

Anyway. There was much scheming and conspiring… and ultimately a spinning wheel hostage exchange.

Beth will be back next month to reclaim this (Lendrum Saxony) hostage from me, and when she returns she’ll be bringing back the Journey Wheel I let her and Maggie take with them.

Neither of these wheels is something people lend out! What’s amusing about it is that I have a Lendrum Saxony on order, and Beth has a Journey Wheel on order. So this is like a preview visit.

All in all, the question is, was this a day playing hooky — or a serious business trip? I vote “serious business trip.”