The wrong sort of busy?

No, I shouldn't say that, really. I have been busy, but I haven't been doing fibre stuff, which is what I want to do, but I have been doing things I like.

Disentangle that lot, and I'll give you a lollipop!

A book group, loads of domestic stuff and a day trip to Warwick. Not to the castle, nor even a yarn shop, but on Cat Business. I was asked by a friend if I would help out with an admin problem, and fancying a brief change of focus, I agreed. It made for an interesting day, plus time spent with three utterly charming eleven week old snowshoe kittens, not to mention a guided tour of the rest of the family. Pretty yummy, especially the oriental bi-colour. I've tried to find a photograph of one that I liked, but all the ones on the internet have been chosen for "type" and are therefore all needle-nosed and spindle-legged. The one I saw was not as extreme and very beautiful.

Not one kitten came home in any of my pockets, much to the DSM's relief.

And that day was my best knitting day, six hours of sock knitting in the car, as the friend I went with did all the driving.

Yesterday was a filthy day weather wise, and I had to do two round trips to Halifax courtesy of the DSM's car needing some work done on it. Considering I was also jet-lagged so to speak for the previous day, I did pretty well. Also had to do a bit of prep for a student this morning.

I am sure that I have said before that I find teaching one-to-one to be no sinecure. This young woman was very good, already had the basics, and fortunately from someone who knew what she was about (a former Guild colleague). But of course, if your student already has the basics, how to structure the session? I always ask them what they want, of course, but they don't always know. This person did, and she wanted sensible things, so we did well. I took her through all the drafting methods (she had short draw, but didn't know any of the whys and wherefores, neither did she know about ratios, wheel maintenance, twists or wraps per inch, so there was plenty to keep us occupied. I had some very short Castlemilk Moorit, so got her carding that and then attempting long draw, which she did very creditably. All that plus a bit of a look at recent books, and a discussion about fibre suppliers was more than enough to render us both a bit bog-eyed.

Next week, I have AH, and then we are doing a spindle spinning workshops down in the Midlands, further away from home than usual. The penultimate Guild date of the year - just where has all the time gone?

The other fun of the weekend is that the heating and hot water combi boiler proceeded to die this morning. I got my shower, fortunately, the poor old DSM didn't. And to our complete annoyance, the very expensive 24 hour service contract we pay for proves to be no such thing, and we don't get an engineer until Monday morning. praise be it is slightly warmer today than yesterday - we had the heating on it was so dank and chilly, but there is a bit of sun today (shhh.....)

OK, off to spin for a bit. Which project to choose? The woollen samples, I think, with Babe. Nice change from bamboo. I've got some lovely coloured stuff I am itching to get to, but plain vanilla first.