What a week!



On Thanksgiving day, we got the first real snow of the season. It was a marvelous, delicately gloomy day and I was more than happy to stay indoors doing...








this!

Casey felt it necessary to guard me from the fire. Or is he guarding Norma? You never know with those cats.

The spinning was a welcome relief from more serious worry. My brother's wife was due to have her baby on December 3, but because of sudden looming complications they put her in the hospital on Monday to induce labor. Just after midnight on Thursday morning, her water broke.

I felt helpless and useless and anxious, knowing what she was going through and that I couldn't be there to help. So I spun. And spun. And spun. About 800 yards of shimmery clouds from Persimmon Tree Farm.



And then by early afternoon, the storm suddenly stopped, the clouds parted, the sun came through, and there was a rainbow above the pond. The last time this happened was when I returned from my grandmother's funeral, so I knew it was an omen.

But good or bad?

I needed not worry. A few hours later I got a call from my brother announcing the birth of ...





his beautiful little baby boy!

So I guess you could say I had more than enough to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

Welcome to the world little fella.

Is a blog still a blog if you only update it every three months?

I know, it's shameful. How can someone who uses words so freely in other environments be so miserly with her words here? I can't really say.

But it's been a spectacular fall.



I finally made it to the Wool Festival at Taos, something I've dreamed of doing since I first heard there was such a festival. My family drove from distant regions to join me, and I also met up with my fiber crime buddy Theresa, who was there with her mother and the family peke (discretely included in my Taos write-up).


Just a few weeks later, I was back West, this time for a brief visit with all the inspiring folks at Interweave. Twas an amazing experience to be in the company of my heroes.




Then a few weeks after that, it was time for the Knitter's Review Retreat, now in its fourth incarnation. It was beautiful and sweet and inspiring and humbling and insightful and NOT restful—nobody got to bed before 1am the entire weekend, myself included.

And then, at Dulles as I was heading home, I walked smack dab past the Dalai Lama. I used to laugh at people's claims that he had a "powerful aura," but not anymore. He does.

And now it's November, the boats are out of the harbor, the summah folk are gone, the onions have been harvested, and the leaves are completely gone off the trees. Fall wants to arrive. Really it does. We just keep having these 50-degree days. Everything is confused. My viburnum has buds on it. The roses are still blooming. The nepeta is in its fourth flush of the season. And the strawberries—were they not covered with at least a foot of fresh straw (oops)—would probably be starting to bud.

(It's a good thing the goverment keeps insisting there is no global warming or we'd really have something to worry about, eh?)

So there you have a general picture of the last three months.

On a knitting front, I finished my qiviut knitalong project without ever posting a thing on the knitalong blog. (Is it possible to be a knitalong lurker?)

And last week I drove down to Boston and picked up Norma. In a bank parking lot of all places.

OK, ok, Norma is a solid cherry spinning wheel from Norm Hall, which a very kind friend of mine procured at this year's Rhinebeck. Her original name is "Mariah," but I just can't work with a wheel that used to be a pop diva. So Norma she is. It's only been four days but I can tell you it is true love. And I have about 750 yards of two-ply yarn to prove it.

More about Norma, with hopefully at least one picture, in another post.