Over the weekend

Friday I went to my first Whidbey spinning group! Finally, after months of meaning to go, I was free Friday afternoon and motivated to load my spinning wheel into the car and go out. I sort of tried to look up where the meeting was, but didn't find it very easily on the World Wide Web, so I set off in the car with a vague notion that the spinning group was either meeting at a library or senior center. I stopped by a retirement home, where they told me the "senior center" was down the road a ways, so I headed there next only to find musicians all set up for a concert and a very confused receptionist. With senior centers out of the way, I headed back to Freeland to try out the library. The very quiet library with a meeting in the conference room didn't look promising. The librarian informed me there was no spinning at any library she knew of on the island at 11am on a Friday, but opened up her link to the World Wide Web and quickly found the answer I sought; the meeting was in the "library" of the senior living center in town! I managed to arrive right on time back to the first place I went where they showed me to a group of ladies and wheels streaming in and setting up. A kindergarten-sized boy came by and recognized our spinning wheels as something to do with wool and quickly hopped up on my chair and started running my wheel. Amazingly, my yarn was just as thin and consistent with him working the pedals and helping with the draw as I'd been doing on my own. Maybe I'll spin with him again next week.

Over the weekend, Tim helped me set up some seed trays on the counter of my "sheep room" (the funny little windowless room between the house and the shop - I still haven't settled on a proper name for it) with a light to help them get started. I went through my whole seed collection, sorted them by type, and made up a list. I'm ready to start planting now! Though it's January, it's been about on par with many days in a Juneau summer and in 6 weeks or so when the plants are ready to go out side, I'm sure it will be sunny and warm. Our neighbor said we could use her fenced yard to start a garden and our friend Fritz has a roto-tiller we can borrow to get things started. So far, though the seed trays are filled with dirt and laid out under the light, the only thing I've planted is an old potato that was beginning to sprout. Hopefully soon I'll get planting.

We've been taking Tilly on some good outings the last few days; playing hard at the dog park, going on a long run through the woods we me, another dog, and her owner, and today Tim took Tilly on an adventure hike through the woods around our house. When I got home, we jumped in the car to run to the grocery store and when we came out from shopping, Tilly had jumped over the back of the seats and eaten the remaining pound or two of Yummy Chummy dog treats that were in the car. Oh my goodness! So far she has been amazingly not sick and I'm hoping that will keep up. The suggested serving size on the bag said 10 pieces... I'm pretty sure she's set for a month.