My Glass of Whine

...has been half-empty for the last couple of days.  I'm feeling quite trapped in the house by the cold weather, and I seem to be caught in a never-ending spiral of housework that is keeping me from spinning, or doing anything else interesting.  Everyone I know seems to be in a crisis, recovering from a crisis, or anticipating a crisis.  Add a lingering head cold, a sore knee, and a plumbing problem that seems to have no other viable fix than to burn the house to the ground, fake our deaths and move to another country, and you have quite a case of the Oh-Poor-Mes. 

I spent the morning drinking coffee and feeling unusually pessimistic that things would never improve, even though they usually do.  Even a beautiful morning view like this did nothing to cheer me up.

So imagine my amusement when this showed up on my horoscope this morning:

Rather than being a pessimist, embrace the happy moments around you. This attitude will make you feel better. There is no good getting upset over things out of your control.

You know you are a grumpy panda when even the great sages at mytelus.com start noticing.

So let's embrace some happy moments, shall we?

First of all, the workshop line-up for Fibre Week 2010 is finished and up on the website.  Huzzah!  My rather scattered fall made the tasks of getting all of the instructors sorted out and the schedule arranged a little more difficult than it should have been, but the information has all been passed on to the fabulous team at Olds College and they have managed to make sense of it all and put together what looks like another amazing week.  You can check it out for yourself right here.  (I have to add my thanks to Otto and his team at Olds for all their patience and support at this point.  I would still be flopping around in a pile of papers if not for them!)

Secondly, the Christmas knitting is almost done.  Yes, I am well aware that Christmas was two weeks ago.   But the Christmas knitting is usually finished in March, so I consider being one sleeve away from the end of this year's batch a personal triumph.    As usual, I did not have the sense to take photos of the work, except for this one:

The pattern is Eunny Jang's Tangled Yoke Cardigan from Interweave Knits Fall 2007 and I knit it up in that yummy, yummy alpaca/silk/cashmere blend I had spun in November.  The yarn was a joy to knit,and aside from a few issues with the fact that I do not read charts carefully, the knitting went quickly.  Okay, there were a lot of issues with my inability to read each line of a charts carefully, which led to the Tweets about the Celtic Cables of Insanity.  This is in no way a reflection upon Ms. Jang and her pattern, but should have been the first clue that things were slipping around the edges of my mind.

The sweater turned out to be stunning, in spite of my best efforts to ensure otherwise, and was much appreciated by Miss Lexi.  I'm hoping to see a picture of it being worn someday (hint, hint?)

The other gifts included a Moebius wrap for my sister that I liked so much that I'm making one for myself out of the same yarn, and a hat for Brendan.  Promptly wrapped and shipped off to Edmonton, without a photo shoot.  D'oh!

My third little happy thing actually involves a project that got bumped from the Christmas list pretty early on.  I spent the last couple of days spinning up the cashmere for a hat for Miss Julia and I now have about 225 yards of lovely, is somewhat pink, 3-ply fingering weight yarn to knit up...

Mmmmm,mmm,mm!

So I've made some nice string, gotten some knitting done, even set up the loom to finish those tea towels I started last year.  My household is all suffering from the same cold I have, and we are all red-eyed and snuffly, but we are together and wearing handspun, handknit goodies to ward off the chill.  The forecast is for warmer weather, which should resolve the cabin fever and the plumbing problem for a while.

And I have three weeks of clear calendar to spin in.  Things start getting nuts again in Mid-February and the teaching season kicks in in March, but, for now, there is time for me to spin.  What could be better than that?  Okay, maybe a working bathtub, but what else?

Today is St. Distaff day, also known for some bizarre reason as Rock Day, the day when spinners and weavers traditionally return to work after the Festive Season, so it seems appropriate that I set aside everything that's bugging me and sit down at the wheel.  There is a bulky yarn to finish up, some Merino/silk to ply, and some guanaco calling my name from the stash.

Well, what do you know?  It worked!  I'm in a much better mood.

I'm gonna go spin.