On April 1st, it was nice enough outside that I was able to hand the laundry out for the first time this year! A bit of an April Fool's joke by Mother Nature though as it snowed on April 5th and left us a couple of inches of the white stuff, which is still melting off today.
I do love hanging out the laundry though. It smells so fresh when you bring it in. I don't even mind that linens get a bit crunchy and stiff sometimes.
The grass is starting to green up. The ground is still soft and mucky though, so there is much yard work yet to be done. I did get the currants pruned, which is a good thing. I should prune the raspberries as well. I left the ancient gooseberry bush alone. I couldn't tell which branches were old growth and which were new. Only one looked like it might be newer growth. I'm trying to decide whether it should be dug up and replaced, or if I should try to rejuvinate it. It really doesn't produce well any more. The fruit is also really sour, even for a gooseberry.
Other than that, I've been pushing through my Master Spinner level 5 homework. I think I have all the book work done and am ploughing through the 50 hour project. This year we are required to use cellulose fibre. I really should have used cotton as I think I could have done with that much cotton practice but the thought of making that many punis was a bit daunting. Instead, I started spinning hemp. I knew I didn't have enough fibre on hand and was pretty sure that I could get more. Unfortunately, I didn't actually check before I started spinning. As I was finishing up the 100 g bag of hemp fibre, I went to order more and there was none available. Egads!
Luckily, I guess, I had some flax fibre left from last year. As this is hopefully going to be a woven project, I am hoping I have enough hemp for the weft and can use the linen thread as the warp. I really hope that Keven is over his linen thread chewing stage, since he ruined my last linen project, by chewing on the warp threads.
I'm not horribly happy with the flax. It isn't a strick, but rather a processed flax top or sliver. It is supposed to be longer fibres , but not as long a a strick. Instead, what I am finding is that it is a mix of long and short fibres, mixed with lots and lots of tow cruddy bits, tangles and neps. Some of the fibres spin smoothly until you get to the shorter bits. Then it is stop and start, picking out the garbage. Sometimes I get lazy and just try to spin some of the smaller bits in. Once in a while it gets a bit slubby and I have to start picking it out again.
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