Happy Birthday to me!

Hey, today was my birthday! I’m 31! Yay!

Travis, in addition to getting me the awesome Camera of Wonder, also hooked me up with a subscription to the Threadless shirt-o-the-month Club. That rocks, because now I’ll be getting an exclusive Threadless T every month for a year! I just hope I don’t get any Ts with clowns on them.

Since today was my birthday, I boycotted work. We took the dogs out to Wolf Run this morning at like 7:30 before it started to get real hot. This was the first time we’ve taken them out since Toby came down with giardia. She seems like she’s getting better, though, which is a relief. I just know I’m going to be on poop inspection duty for a while now (see, I used “poop” and “duty” in the same sentence – I’m not 31, I’m 12. :).

After we got back, Travis helped me warp the loom. I used some of the hand-dyed cotton I dyed the other day for the warp.

We went to Staples and found some awesome brown Kraft Paper to buy that fits perfectly into the loom. It’s 30″ wide and is nice and heavy. The paper helps keep the tension on you loom all nice and even when your warp is rolled up.

So, I did some weaving today, but I also spun some more for Le Tour de Fleece. I was going to finish up my blue and tan crappy yarn, but I combed this out last night:

It’s a combo of the kettle-dyed Sheep Shed wool/mohair roving, some sparkle fiber, and some of the turquoise ramie. I really loved combing this out. I am all about the hackle, I just feel so creative when I use it.

I combed out these:

And then I couldn’t wait to spin them up. So I change my goal to spinning all of the Emerald City roving balls (I started to call it Emerald City because that’s what it looked like. So there) today. Some of my sparkle fiber didn’t get combed quite enough apart, so I wound up with some disco-blingy spots here and there, but it doesn’t bother me. I just think they’re funny.

I finally got done plying a little bit ago (I let Travis use the Louet to ply his yarn, since it was so fat – the Louet has a larger orifice).

Here’s the finished skein! 5 ounces, 240 yards:

I’m very pleased with how it turned out. I had moments of doubt, thinking that one ply was going to clash horribly with the other, but after I started plying I thought that it was going to turn out pretty cool. I can’t wait to get a photo of it in the sunlight.

So tomorrow my Tour goal is to spin the crappy blue and tan roving and ply it with some leftover weirdness from the Babe. I’ve got a fair amount of work stuff to get done tomorrow so I’m keeping my goal pretty low. Besides, there’s weaving to do, too – all of my photos of the actual woven bits turned out pretty bad, so I’ll try to get some better ones tomorrow.