…where I had a wonderful time teaching a customized 3-day Spinning For A Purpose: Being The Boss Of Your Yarn. I love teaching this class, partly because it’s challenging and partly because it’s never the same twice.

This was a particularly good time, because the folks at Foothill Fibers Guild were just fantastic hosts. The venue couldn’t have been better, the group of people were all fantastic, Morgaine came up with the Yarn-Vee so we could all have anything our hearts desired to work with, the weather was beautiful, the food was great, and there weren’t even any travel snags. I’m almost suspicious in retrospect, wondering if perhaps I left something behind and still haven’t realized, or nobody told me I went through the whole weekend with toilet paper stuck to my shoe.

I did take a picture in class, which almost never happens. I always feel, after classes, like I should have somehow managed to get pictures — and yet, I never do. I’m just too busy making the class thing happen and I forget. Once in a while I remember to snap a photo at the end or right in the beginning, but… never in the middle. Never any action shots.

Except this time. I got one. ONE.

Diane’s goal was this: “Make friends with cotton.” Here they are, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.

Last night, just a bit over a week after the class ended, Diane dropped me a line to let me know she was bummed to be out of cotton. The poor thing.

On the other hand, I did manage to take a few pictures of visiting Sara Lamb at the Magic Yurt which is her studio.

Sara lives in Grass Valley, which isn’t far from Nevada City, and is a member of the Foothill Fibers Guild, so really, it was sort of like I was at her house already. It would have been silly not to go visit.

The yurt really is a fabulous studio space, but also, Sara is a fantastic studio owner. After my return, I was describing it to Beth, and we were pondering about how she does it. Beth suggested, and I think this may be true, that part of Sara’s secret is that she puts things away. While this is a radical solution to the problem of workspace chaos, well… it’s so crazy, it just might work.

But before we get too far down that path, let’s take a look at the floor.

I actually took this picture for reference for myself, but it’s too interesting not to share.

But before I forget, there was this little incident wherein someone spotted a bundle of Sara’s samples — she’s big on samples, and she’s right — and found evidence that Sara has, in fact, woven twill. My phone camera and I were tasked with documenting this shocking fact.

As you can see — and as Sara said — she may have woven twill, but she didn’t enjoy it.