tour de fleece!

It's the beginning of the Tour de France, and to spinners of yarn, that means the Tour de Fleece is now in session! The goal of this tour is to improve one's spinning, by spinning every day that the Tour rides, and to set up special challenges on the days of the hard mountain stages. Here's a pic of my wheel, sitting empty and ready to be spun this morning during the opening - the Prologue.

I'll be spinning this pretty roving, purchased at Stitches South this spring. Superwash Merino by knittyandcolor, in the Candy Hearts colorway. My goal with this braid is to spin nice singles. I don't spin consistent singles, thus I have to ply everything. I hope, by spinning daily, to work this out. 

In other news, we are having a spectacular heat wave here on the East Coast. It is supposed to reach 106 today. oy. I have a few things to do outside, and a little run to Costco for coffee and greek yogurt, but otherwise, I am going to be ensconced in the cool of my basement for the day.

an attempt to catch up

Gah...have I really been gone since mid-February? (shakes head, dusts off laptop, wonders where to begin)It's not like the blog hasn't been in my thoughts. I've composed entries almost daily, but haven't quite been able to put those good intentions down on this here dashboard. But a chance early rising (thanks, Ella) and a cup of coffee might just make this happen today. I can't completely catch up on every little thing in life, but I will hit the highlights...the trip to The Mountain, with the knitting guild was definitely one of them. Oh and I spent 8 weeks in the spring taking the Georgia Master Naturalist certification course, spending every Friday out in the woods around Athens, GA, sciencing, learning about our local natural surroundings and hot environmental issues. I am now a certified Master Naturalist, a title I do not yet feel qualified to carry, but there it is. This path got me interested in stream water quality assessment, so I've been pursuing the trainings for that certification, as well. This is considerably more technical, there are tests to pass and qualifications must be renewed annually. I passed my chemical monitoring lab test, and in late July, will do macroinvertebrate id training. This is where you learn to id all the little crawlies in the stream bed, for census. I like little crawlies, streams, and data geekishness in general, so I am happy with this new direction.