Friday Night Spinning and "stuff"

 I'd decided to devote my Friday night to finishing up projects, or at least finishing up a project.  Mainly, I wanted the blue merino off the wheel.  So Friday night, I hunkered down and spun blue yarn.  I filled the rest of the second bobbin  by the end of the evening.  I'd hand carded most of the roving, but I'd been finding some of the rolags were getting very neppy, so the last little bit, I simply pulled strips from the roving and pre-drafted it.  It wasn't quite as easy to spin, but there were definitely less neps.  Saturday night, during the hockey game, I plied.  I decided to use the jumbo flyer on the Minstrel.  It took the whole Leafs hockey game, the Montreal game shoot out and a bit of whatever was on next (I didn't pay attention), to fill the flyer.  I was tired of plying by then.  This morning, I wound the blue yarn onto my niddy noddy and have this gorgeous skein of 533 yards of Merino, dyed with Japanese Knotweed.

Last weekend, I dug out an old window which we found when clearing the little barn to make space for the chooks.  My sweetie cut the pieces of scrap wood and a couple of days ago, my son assembled it for me.  The new cold frame is now a fixture in the garden.  I've planted some lettuce, mesclun mix and spinach.  Hopefully we'll get some early salads out of it.   I have to be careful when propping it open for venting as one of the chooks likes to hop in and scratch around in there.  There are two more windows and enough scraps to make a second cold frame, if this one proves useful.

I think that the unseasonably warm weather has jump started our spring.  It's like everything is almost a month early already.  We have Crocuses blooming, all two of them.  The rest seem to have vanished.  If the hungry chooks didn't eat them, then our resident squirrels did.   I'll have to remind myself to plant more this fall.   The Daffodils are starting to set buds and should flower soon, if the weather doesn't cool off.   The Maple trees are flowering!  I love the look of the flowering trees.  It's one of those signs of spring I look for.  Of course, normally I don't get to spend the whole day outside in short sleeves and a sun hat, admiring the trees while doing yard work.  It's a lovely and rare treat to have a late winter, since it's not yet spring, like this!