Some Artistic Thoughts - Tuesday evening I went over to Rae and Renata's, ostensibly for "Apprentice Dinner" but I got there close to 9 pm, so it was really "reheat my leftover dinner and socialize while everyone else worked on their arts." I brought my purple and black overdress, to continue the purple silk embroidery I started at Black Oak Lodge. Rae had an extra purple silk floss, and so now I'm not as worried about running out of silk before finishing. They are slightly different shades, which gives me ideas about filling in additional embroidery with the 2nd shade. Rick has been doing zillions of award cords in 4-strand braiding, and made the cutest "hold my braiding disk" stand. I'm so impressed that so many people have come to the task, making braided cords for Kingdom award medallions (picture a long necklace).

When I got home, I decided I really wasn't tired yet. So I put on several hours of back episodes of "Battlestar Galactica" (marathons leading up to the new episode) and sat down at the spinning wheel. I'm really pleased to say that with my 30-min session Tuesday morning, and 3.5 hours later that night, I completed 2 ounces of the bamboo yarn and filled the bobbin on my spinning wheel. There are 24 ounces of fiber to complete for this craft exchange, and now I know I can complete spinning 2 ounces of fiber in 4 hours. I still have to finish plying the yarn, but this drastically improves the completion schedule!

I may start using my spinning wheel more often, now that I have larger quanities of fiber sitting around the house, waiting to be spun. And it spins wool like a dream, so all those fleeces that need to be washed will be perfect for wheel spinning. I need to pick up some baking cooling racks (even used ones from thrift stores) so that I can dry fiber on racks. I should be able to get quite a little assembly line put together where I wash a few ounces at a time, let them dry, and spin it up regularly.

I'm thinking that it might be worth putting some of my fiber up for sale on etsy (a website that specializes in people selling home-made items). Perhaps I'll do both dyed roving and spun yarns. It's a thought.

Bardic Things - I'm still working on several music projects right now, too. This weekend is Crown Tourney, and I'm scurrying to finish a big history piece for the day. I'm not sure if I'll get to share it with the whole court or just a few friends, but I won't leave the site without trying to perform it at least once... that's my goal. I promised to have some lyrics memorized from our normal White Star repetoire, so I need to get those printed for the drive. And my roomie wrote a sonnet for her Ren Faire gig that I think is *marvelous*, so I'm working on memorizing it too. I've never had very many pieces of poetry memorized before, so this is new for me.

And I need to get crackin' on a big hands-on and research project, with a "first-of-June" deadline. Unfortunately, I don't have a single weekend free, so I know now that all my research is going to have to be shoe-horned into weekday work. Just what I needed, right? More reasons to hurry home and work on projects during the week?

Today's Photo Portion - (1) More pictures of Benjamin (baby's first bath, the first time I held him, and some cute photos of Jeff with his baby) (Mar 2008); (2) Visiting Audrey at her church's live nativity, with my friend Wade (Dec 2007); (3) Photos from my March Arts Log

  

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Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: Julie, Judy, and Linda