My Birthday Week!

It was a great week. My earliest surprise was a beautiful Keurig coffee maker from my very good friend who probably loves coffee more than I do. She is an enabler of the best sort. Last year she gifted me with a collection of goodies from King Arthur Flour for making donuts. Yumm! Now we have the coffee to go with them.

Then, after a week of bailing out the laundry room because the furnace was acting up, I decided to buy myself a new furnace. Just what every girl dreams of. Our old one was simply a nightmare, noisy, nasty and very cantankerous. Every morning, I'd wake up and wonder if we'd have hot water for a shower. I think I had heart palpitations when I wrote the check, but I promised myself that we'd be happy we did it next winter.

At the end of the week, it was time for my trip to Fibersmyth, in Woodstock, VA, for a Beginning Spinning class. I'd been eagerly looking forward to the trip and it was even better than I had anticipated. The weather was more like July than April, so the class was held on the porch of the old farm house that now houses the yarn store and tea room. Priscilla, our teacher, is a lifelong fiber artist who, at one time, also ran a working sheep farm and spinning business. What this lady doesn't know about spinning and spinning materials isn't worth knowing and the best part of it is that she's a gifted teacher.




Here are some other photos from our class:




Erin, on the left, has an imaginative method for securing unspun fleece and Kristin, on the right, is hard at work, using her Louet wheel.





Here's shot of Gillian wearing a skein of her newly spun yarn and another of Linda using the drum carder, which I later broke! (I'm sorry, Elizabeth!)

I had a lovely weekend and learned a great deal--everyone was so friendly and open--the kind of folks you want to gather up and take home to be your neighbors!