Of Dinosaurs and freshly spun yarn

I can post this now.  It's a dinosaur made of handspun and dyed yarn.   It was a wedding shower gift for my soon to be daughter in law, who when asked what the dress code was for the wedding was to "wear whatever makes you feel awesome, even if it's a dinosaur costume".  Then she said she kind of hopes someone wears a dinosaur costume.   Since I couldn't do the dinosaur costume,  I figured I could make her a stuffy to keep the fun going.   It's a free pattern on Ravelry and was actually for a dragon.  I left the wings off.  I was going to put a little tulle veil on it, but it didn't quite work with the spines on the back.  It didn't look finished without the spines, so I left off the wedding veil.

I'll have to admit, I do like the partners my kids have chosen.  

I just finished spinning and plying up 450g of Blue Faced Leicester top.   It went pretty quickly and I need to figure out what I'm going to do with it.   It still needs to be wet finished and dyed.   It's a light Worsted/DK grist before wet finishing.   I'm guessing it will bloom a bit and be a worsted yarn when I'm done.

I have some more of the Dorset fleece which still needs to be washed.   It's supposed to be a Dorset /Friesian cross, which actually works with the Dorset, making it a bit softer and nicer to work with, although Dorset is a fairly nice mid-grade fleece to begin with.   I also have some Icelandic that I need to wash up before the May long weekend.   It's an absolutely lovely fleece. It has a great colour, a defined Tog and Thel.  And I rather dislike actually spinning Icelandic fleece.   I'm using it for a class to get rid of it.

I attended a wedding shower this weekend.  It was lovely.  It was held in an old building, now a distillery, with old stone walls, wooded floor and a few antiques scattered around.  The atmosphere was great.  There were treats, a few activities but no actual games.  One activity was making bouquets (the wedding theme is wild flowers).  There were bunches of flowers and greenery, and little bags with tiny vases in them.   Most people made lovely bouquets, trimming the flowers to fit.   However, because there was no water for those vases to make transporting easier, I made a scraggly bouquet and just sort of put the flowers willy nilly in the vase.   When I got home, I trimmed them up nicely and popped them into the now water filled vase.  They are pretty now and now looking wildly over grown.    

The garlic is coming up in the garden nicely.   Some of it is about 8 inches tall already.   Garlic is an early sprouting plant to begin with.  Having been planted in a raised bed may help because the soil often seems to warm up a bit earlier.  As well we've had crazy amounts of rain so maybe all the conditions have aligned.   It did snow yesterday, crazy heavy flurries on and off.  I had to scrape ice off my car this morning too!  Which I find an unhappy task at any time during the winter, but more so in April!