"Her hands are busy spinning thread, her fingers twisting fiber." Proverbs 31:19 NLT

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Yarn Give-Away Winner

With lots of company coming for Christmas and the week afterwards, and with hosting a small all-day-long get-together for a few of my knitting pals, I have been relishing my evening knitting sessions as a rest from the decorating and the "spinning my wheels" in all sorts of directions in preparation. But I do have some lovely inside photos to share with you.












Awaiting the arrival of Mary & Joseph - tomorrow evening.

I was quite adamant that I would not be decorating so much this year. But when the grandchildren's parents all decided to come here for Christmas, well, you can't have children around without a tree and all the decorations. And I think I decorated more than ever. It really is lovely. BUT it all has to come down and back into boxes at some point. Uhhh! We are, however, enjoying it all for now.

Soooo, the deadline for my yarn give-away has come and gone but I did do the drawing for it on the December 20 deadline and I have a winner. I had very few comments so very few entries. There was an entry for each comment on these three blog posts: herehere, and here. And there were a couple of multiple entries. Of course, you would assume the odds, with so few entries, would be with the person with the most entries. But that is not what happened. The winner is Beverly Hellenbrand. So, Beverly, email me at lindacp.0@gmail.com and I will mail you your yarn.




So with that, I will wish you all a wonderful Christmas filled with good family times and especially filled with the amazement at the miracle of an all-man and all-God person being born to pay the penalty for the sins of all mankind. When you really ponder that, it almost takes your breath away.


Thursday, December 3, 2015

Spinning Demonstration - and the Perks Thereof

I've been planning to do a blog post on a recent spinning demonstration for a couple of weeks now but today I received a thank you note for doing the demonstration in the mail. That prompted me to put aside Christmas decorating to report on all the excitement.

On November 10th I traveled to my former hometown of 28 years to do a spinning demonstration for 2 classes of 4 year old kindergartens. One of the teachers there is a dear friend of mine and she remembered that, in my former life, I often demonstrated for school classes. The children were studying the Pilgrims as part of their history lesson so my contribution fit in nicely. However, I don't have a Pilgrim costume so my Pioneer costume had to suffice. (I may make a Pilgrim-type of costume now. I have the perfect material from my late grandmother's fabric stash.)

I had to make the demonstration a bit more simple for the attention span of 4 year olds but I think it went well. I tried to ask lots of questions - although some of the answers were completely off topic. Some of their questions were, as well. HAHA  They really were great and were very attentive. However, I was surprised and saddened that only about 3 out of maybe 35 children knew anyone that uses yarn to knit or crochet.

I know that my teacher friend crochets (and has a blog called The Sparkly Toad) so I asked her to bring something on which she was working, to show, along with the few items I brought. I thought the students might enjoy seeing something she makes. I certainly enjoyed seeing her project - it was a lovely shawl.

In order to keep our roots alive, I like to try and connect wool and yarn with its origins - the farm. So after playing a You Tube video of sheep Baaaa-ing, passing around locks of raw and washed wool, explaining and showing carding, AND explaining and showing spinning, I read to them A New Coat for Anna. It is a wonderful book about the process of creating a new coat for a little girl.

Here are a few photos of the day: (If you notice faceless children, I blurred their faces if I couldn't crop them out. I didn't have permission from any of the parents to put their kid-dos on the internet.)






I was able to eat lunch with my friend and her co-teachers which was great and after the afternoon session, I packed up and drove home. 

Fast forward to today. In the mail I received a lovely shawl from my teacher friend as a thank you for coming to their classes. Yes, the very crocheted shawl that I oooh-ed and ahhh-ed over during the demonstrations. I am overwhelmed - it is such a lovely shawl and I believe the gift far out-weighed what I put into the event.



For your informations, it is called Virus Shawl and is on Ravelry. My friend blogged about it here at The Sparkly Toad. Such fun and such surprise. What a great perk. Thank you, Julie.

NOW - DON'T forget to leave a comment on this post or my previous 2 posts to be entered in for the yarn give-away. Deadline is December 20 for 3 skeins of Cascade 220 Paint. 


P.S. Did you know that the Pilgrim women did not bring their spinning wheels to the new world. There was simply no room on the Mayflower. And when they arrived, there was no fiber to spin. And, at any rate, they were in debt for several years to their financiers so they worked hard to pay them back which left no time for spinning. Already by that time there was ready-made fabrics available from Europe so they purchased what they needed for clothing. But once they were paid off, after about seven years or so, they began acquiring wheels and sheep so they were able to again provide for themselves in the way of thread and yarns.