JessaLu Knits (and Spins!)

…and happy to be here. Let me sum up the past few weeks:

In case you all forgot (that was kind of sarcastic, I mean, how could you forget? I haven’t been able to shut up about it), we drove to Wyoming and back over the course of the past few weeks. I still haven’t uploaded all of the pictures and I’m working on it, when I have them up I’ll let you know so those who are interested can check them out. :o)

We arrived home last Tuesday, I had one day of somewhat normal crammed in between WY and W.O.O.L. I left for Lake George on Thursday morning and arrived at Wiawaka in the mid afternoon - after completely forgetting to stop to get water to share (doh!). Tina and Harriet greeted me at my arrival and I settled in for three days of spinning and relaxation.  (btw, that’s the extent of my linkage, other than Jess, Risa, SeeKay and Kim I can’t remember who all was there and the blogs thereof, I’m sorry, my memory is shot…feel free to yell at me in the comments if I’ve forgotten you!)

I thought I would spend my time there balancing my attention between spinning and knitting however, I ended up doing more spinning than anything else. It’s easier to do when talking, not as hard to lose your place than when you’re knitting. ;o) I managed to finish up the Fruit Salad roving purchased from The Loopy Ewe, washed it (thanks to Diane’s magical bucket and her foresight to pack Eucalan), thwacked it, dried it and am now halfway through a pair of socks:

I also tackled one of my Grafton batts:

I decided to go with the ‘rip and ball’ approach:

and ended up with 100ish yards:

Not sure what I’m going to do with it, but I’ll marinate it for a while and see what it wants to be.

Want more W.O.O.L. pictures?  Here you go:

…on a Saturday when it’s 86 degrees out and the air is so thick you could cut it with a butter knife?

Why, spin outside, of course! ;o)

This past Saturday was the Hudson River Knit & Spin 2008 in Catskill, NY. It was also the second hottest day of the year so far (the hottest was the day Dobby graduated and we had her graduation party in the back yard). My day began with an email from RR:

too hot. can’t breathe. stay inside with a/c if you can.

I wish. I wrote back:

can’t stay - promised Tina! Must be with my people!

…and in the end, I was glad I went. There was a very good turnout and I had a great time! Here are most of the attendees (huddled in the shade, thankful for the breeze coming off the river):

What was I spinning?

80/20 Merino/Tencel purchased at Rhinebeck ‘07 from Clover Leaf Farms in the colorway Jungle Fever. Isn’t it pretty?

Late afternoon we ran into some showers so we had to adjourn to the Muddy Cup coffee shop:

Through all this excitement, Tina’s husband Steve managed to retain an air of cool detachment:

Honestly, I don’t know how he stayed so calm. ;op

…this may or may not be eye candy to you but to me, this is eye candy AND a vacation. Spending three days with my wheel at a car show can be pretty relaxing. Even if you don’t like cars, at the very least, it’s time you can spend knitting or spinning (or blogging, hehe). ;o)

(taken with my Blackberry…)

I do have a couple of things to ask while I’m away - first, I’d like Bloglines to update my feed like I’ve been asking for a week and a half (seriously, EIGHT emails and no reply - and I’m not the only one having a problem and getting nowhere with them. Bloglines sucks. Google Reader is THE way to go**) and second, I’ve been hearing that my blog is loading veerrryyy slooowly. If you are having an issue please let me know so I can try to fix it! (on Monday *grin*) Thanks!

**I say Google Reader because it’s my personal favorite but there are many other RSS readers out there - if you look to your right at my list over yonder –> (under Subscribe…) you’ll see some options other than Bloglines. They are seriously the. worst. RSS reader out there. Bottom line, they have terrible customer service which is something that really annoys the heck out of me and because of that, they don’t deserve the usage they get. /rant (thanks for listening, hehe)