Mmmmm....chocolate!

I have been spinning like crazy! I have been mostly working on the Corriedale fiber on my homemade spindle, but the chocolate alpaca has been calling my name in a manner most unbecoming a ball of fluff! Since my Ashford spindle had been sitting idle, I pulled it out and answered the alpaca's siren call. The picture barely does it justice, but it is just the color of cocoa or a really creamy chocolate bar. I have to resist the urge to lick it when I'm spinning.

After seeing someone using a top whorl spindle, I decided to give it a whirl (tee-hee, whirl...get it??? *snerk*) and something just clicked with it. I finally figured out how to spin it off my leg so it goes really fast and I don't have to keep stopping to get it spinning again. I still occasionally have trouble coordinating spin speed with drafting speed, which results in the drop spindle being very aptly named, but I am spinning about twice as fast as I had been and working through the fiber a lot faster. It also transferred to the bottom whorl homemade spindle, so that is moving along quite nicely, too! I still haven't felt brave enough to go back to the dreaded viscose, but eventually...

We have had a relatively quiet Memorial Day weekend, but on Saturday, we went to Blue Mounds State Park. We had a nice hike on one of the trails and then spent some time hanging out. The kids (Bug, Bean, and Kitty Daddy) tried to fly their kites, with not a whole lot of success, but they had fun trying. The day was beautiful, the scenery was breathtaking:

the wildflowers were amazing (by all means, embiggen them all!):



and the hikers were intrepid (though some had trouble keeping her pants up):

The trail we hiked was Indian Marker Trail. This is the marker:

It is a white oak that, as a young sapling, was bent into place with leather straps to point toward a significant site. The one points to the place on the horizon where the sun rises on the first day of summer. When it died in 2003, it was about 150-170 years old.