What's Goin' On

A few interviews...
A couple never made it past the HR screening phone interview, but I made it to the third elimination round for one position. I am not too disappointed.  It was for third shift.  Yes, I am applying for just about anything that  comes close to fitting the bill.
Is it close? Does it come close to paying what I made? Is the position halfway close to what I have done? Is it permanent and regular hours?  75% gets an application...

Knocking down the to-do list...
The house is cleaned like I haven't cleaned it since we started using cleaning people.  I have been baking bread and cooking most meals at home. The home inventory is juuuusssst about wrapped up.  I have gone through and sorted out for the upcoming community garage sale.  My baskets have been dusted (don't laugh, that is no small matter!). My basement has been cleaned.

Spinning...
The Estes Park Wool Market released the hand spun skein contest rules, and one of the surrounding counties has already put out their county fair rules, so I am spinning to that end, keeping in mind that I am also practicing for Sheep To Shawl.

Merino/Alpaca, 50:50. The dark is the merino and the white is alpaca.  I spun the singles randomly on one bobbin. The next bobbin, I tried to sort of stagger the colors opposite.  Turned out sort of crazy and pretty cool.

50:50 camel and silk.  This is really sleek.  Only 145 yards.

Knitting...
I have finished up a couple of requests from Middle Daughter and Precious Niece., a pair of slippers (my family goes through slippers like Sherman went through Georgia!) and a circular scarf (out of my handspun, which was nice as it was a choice on her part).

On the upside of not working, while Spring took a backseat to 22 inches of snow this past week, I could take my mornings easy, and stay inside.

Spinny Stuff

I made mentioned back aways that after my handspun fair entries did (amazingly) well, that I was asked to be on a Sheep to Shawl team at the Estes Park Wool Market this year.

Briefly put, a team of five take a clean fleece, and from 9-2:30, card the fleece, spin and ply it into yarn, and weave the yarn into a shawl, take the shawl off the loom, give it a quickie rinse, towel dry it, and let it be judged. And also interact with the looky-loos.

The loom will be set up with the warp (the longish bits).  We have already carded, spun and plied that part so the weaver will have that set up. Only the weft (the crosswise parts) will be what is woven the day of the contest.

It's doable, but we will be busy for that five hours...or so I am told.  I have never really seen this sort of thing happen.  Turns out I am the least experienced on this team.  I listen to the conversations of my fellow team members and find out they have taken classes with some big names and gone to some highly acclaimed retreats.  Our alternate has previously JUDGED Sheep to Shawl contests.  Pretty humbling.

So far, as I mentioned, we have washed the fleece.  We met and sort of test spun to establish what we wanted to spin our singles to so we would be spinning consistently. We have carded what is going to be used for the warp, and we each took about 2 oz to spin into singles.  We brought those singles together last Saturday and we traded off plying parts of each others bobbins, so the warp yarn would consist of every one's singles plied with everyone else's.

I was very surprised at how consistent the yarn turned out. It was really pretty cool. I am going to learn so much from these people, not to mention getting to know the women themselves.