Wow, a week since my last blog, huh? Let’s see…I bought a ‘learn to spin’ kit on Etsy from a helpful seller with a lot of nifty things in her shop – she was very communicative and helpful with regards to my shipping concerns, and it got here safely and in a timely fashion. I even made yarn!
Spinning is both simpler and more difficult than I expected; all you do is twist the fiber and it’s yarn! The brown yarn (my first attempt) varies wildly from superbulky to laceweight and back and was so badly overtwisted that I had to untwist it a little before I could wind it on my little bobbin. (That was also in the kit. Too cute!) The blue you may recognize as fiber I squirreled from Kid ‘n Ewe handouts last fall – and I’m glad I did. Spinning with something colored was way more fun than the undyed fiber (pretty much all I have at the moment). I’m going to have to get on that.
I’m afraid that’s the only picture you’re going to get today. I’ve gotten back to the end of the first clue for my Laceweight Mystery Shawl (no picture of that yet), but I’ve put it to the side for the time being. I’m knitting something (that I can’t show you) to submit to Knitty! It’s turning out well and I am so excited. I haven’t done a huge amount of designing knitwear – or any clothes, for that matter – but I had an idea, and I’m working it up, and it seems to be working. It’s an adventure! Doesn’t make for great blog fodder, though.
In other news, Greg is going to be going TDY for a few months and we had what is for us quite short notice, so we’re scrambling to get everything sorted for while he’s gone. I haven’t really come to terms with the fact that he’s leaving (likely aided by the fact that I actively avoid thinking too much about it) and I’m sure we’ll get down to the wire and not have enough time to do things…
The prospect of him leaving has made it clear how far from home we really are. Usually I make a trip back to my parents’ sometime during an extended separation, and I’m almost sure that I can’t this time, even though it’s scheduled to be the longest separation in our marriage. (Look for us some time next year, though!) It seems like they just keep getting longer and longer, even though I have little right to complain when I compare my situation with people who have a spouse ship out for a year, or deploy for 15 months…it’s tough.
I also feel like I’m struggling just to keep in touch with my family back home. It’s not something I thought we’d have a problem with. After all, there’s email. IM. We have phone service through the internet so we actually have a phone line with a stateside number. We figured it wouldn’t be too different from Texas – we were already far enough that most of our interaction was online or over the phone, right? The time difference is staggering, though. It’s easy to miss the time window to make phone calls. It’s easy to miss special days when you think, “I should call about this,” and realize you need to wait eight hours to catch someone. It’s easy to forget over those hours. I’m sure we’ll step up and get it sorted out, it’s just going to take some extra effort – much like the extra effort required to keep my dishes clean now that we live in a house without a dishwasher. (I do miss my old kitchen. Yes, I do. So many things about it…)
Welcome to spinning!
Even though AK is only 4 hours behind us, I think 4 hours is where it starts to get annoying. Many times I’ve though–Oo! I want to call mom and tell her this! But then I realize if I call her she’ll think someone died because they’re still sleeping.
As for the TDY, I did that five months and it was harder on the boy than it was on me…he missed his daddy something fierce.