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Lexi’s new phrase: “Thank you.” It’s so nice to realize that we are courteous enough as a family that the littlest one learns not only to say “thank you” but then uses it constantly in context. Hand Lexi a sippy cup, “Thank you.” change her diaper, “Thank you.”, help her with her oatmeal “Thank you.” It’s so rewarding and I’m so proud of her.

The green stuff from my last entry is on the wheel for plying right now.
Speaking of my last blog entry, after I finished for the day Friday the UPS truck brought my order of Merino and medium staple roving. Of course I just had to start it on the Foo.

It’s very lovely, I didn’t realize that it would be a heathered gray, but I’m glad it is.

And I wrangled up some left overs.

Ripley has come home! I’m so happy. Ripley disappeared about 8 weeks ago and when I went to look for her around the neighborhood I found a Ripley colored smear in a ditch nearby. I didn’t go into the ditch to investigate, I came home and cried, figuring that she’d been hit by a car during one of her nocturnal wanderings.

I called the kitties in for their food last night and Ripley made a nonchalant appearance returning from the dead, jogging down the driveway as if she’d never gone missing and meowing as if to say “Hey, dinner’s being served awfully late. What took you so long?”

The kitties ran up and sniffed her, then returned to their food bowls. No big deal. After she’d eaten her fill she followed me into the shop (Ripley is the only cat with full shop access) and hung out with me until I was done working. I’ll admit that I turned squishy again and didn’t exactly get everything I’d planned on done because I had to take multiple ‘pet-the-kitty’ breaks.

Maybe I should have saved this picture for St. Patricks day?

My current spindling pleasure from the crockpot. I love all the different and subtle greens, over all it’s pale shamrock green but there’s also eggshell, grass, sea foam, pale jade and little hints of teal here and there.

I made Matt some fingertip-less gloves for his birthday and now I’m working on designing some mittens to go over them. I had to clean out my overflowing yarn basket though, so I took a break (actually a few of them) from knitting Matt’s gifts to work on socks.

My apologies for not blocking the little socks prior to snapping the photo.

Some Valentine’s Day eye/finger candy.

I hate art schools. Hate is a strong word. Art schools typically veer students towards commercial art and marketing skills rather than educate those mushy young minds and refine their talents. Yeah, *hate* in reference to my feelings towards art school schooling is accurate enough. I fear the phrase “art school ugly” was permanently set into my vernacular at a tender young age.

My friend Audrey (poor thing) had a chance at a particularly bright future as an artist, but then she enrolled in an art school, dropped out of art school, and now she lives with her mentally ill boyfriend, a divorced woman of only 22 awaiting her second illegitimate child. True story.

One can only hope that she’ll gain confidence in herself again and forget everything that she ‘learned’ in art school.

(Love you Audrey, but your tragic story must be told.)

It may sound horrible, snobby and discriminatory, still: What ever happened to learning by process? It can’t possibly be a disadvantage to having a strong foundation of basic skill sets in a craft (or art) and to study masters and masterpieces where ever they might be found. Once the basics are habitual everything else is between your hands and your eyeballs, you needn’t worry about getting stuck in a rut or hating your work later.

This isn’t to mean that you can’t teach yourself, because learning by process is all about teaching yourself, observing the play of form and structure, learning the unwritten rules, learning the physics in some cases, and then imposing your own rules (or lack of) at the point of mastery.

Part of this rant is born out of the ‘art vs. craft’ thread on the Spindlers list and part of this rant is born out of the art-school-ugly arts and crafts floating around in the electronic ether that is the internet. I am livid. It’s frustrating to see good expression marred by ignorance and laziness, I’d like to see some talent emerge from the muck.

My darling daughter has managed to remove both of her socks and her little pants and, she made a pretty good attempt at filtching a ball. I wonder if this is an early indication of fiber addiction?

I asked her, “What do you think you’re doing?” and Lexi said “Ut-oh.”

I am very bad: I ordered some 100% Merino wool top that is dyed lead gray and some medium staple wool top (that I assume is mixed) undyed. There is method behind my madness, I’m down to my last two pounds of undyed processed wool top and when I tried to go buy more of the same, the website where I purchased it was poof! gone.

Fortunately though, I think the medium staple wool is the same or similar enough to what I have, so I bought a pound to compare to mine. Yes, I know– normal people would ask for a sample card or buy an ounce. So far, very few people have accused me of even resembling normal. Truth be told, if it is different stuff I really do need a whole pound to play with to see if I like it or not and if it’s the same I’ll go order more immediately.

As for the pound of Merino in gray? Why the heck not?

Some of my not-quite-grownup-yet dying in Easter Egg dyes.

And my current source of spindling pleasure, the second batch of navy/dark denim blue.

I’m always amazed at how so much fluff can quickly be condensed into so little space when it’s spun. It’s like reducing cotton candy into so many pixie-stix.

My little helper last night. Lexi’s normal job during the spinning process is to pull on all of the desirable and interesting parts but this time we were plying so she decided it was much more fun to hold on to an extra ball of singles, just in case I needed it. As you can see, she’s quite amused.

Thanks to everyone in defense of me and Easter egg dyeing. It meant so much to me to read such supportive comments from my online friends.