Pepo Passion: Art yarn and Coeur D'Alene

Reenie of Material Whirled sent me the most amazing package for the Hush Hush Handspun Hootenanny. Inspired by one of my favorite paintings by Eyvind Earle, she created the most gorgeous exciting yarn I've ever stroked in my greedy little hands. I've looked admiringly at photos of art yarns on the web. I'm really a plain jane spinner, smooth even and thin. My "novelty" yarns are more textured boucles or fluffy/curly mohair locks or beaded yarns but they're still kind of all the same from beginning to end. Reenie's yarn on the other hand....supercoils, bold color, sparkle...I LOVE it! And she made a coordinating batt that is breathtakingly beautiful and also sent some super soft black baby alpaca roving and beads and thread to match. There was even tea to drink while spinning/knitting and a booklet of patterns for things to make with art yarn. She's amazing...go see her stuff!

I've been restraining myself from knitting with the yarn until I spin a coordinating yarn out of the batt, so I brought the batt along with me for our mini-vacation at Lake Coeur D'Alene. I started pulling it into roving in the airport which was insanely pleasurable (seeing it become roving, not the waiting in the airport). The early morning flight was quite frigid with the air conditioning blasting and all, so I was glad I hadn't gotten far in pulling roving as there was enough batt left to warm my poor frozen unsocked footsies. (Kim's survival guide: always carry wool.) Despite my toes, the plane ride was fine and I got some beautiful shots.

Eastern Washington and Idaho were beautiful and there were more spectacular clouds.

Aaron's family has a little cabin on the lake that his grandfather and uncle built. We had a very relaxing time paddling around in the canoe, reading, and otherwise lazing about. I read three or four books in the first couple days, including two excellent ones: "A Thousand Pieces of Gold" by Ruthanne Lum McCunn and "Snow Falling on Cedars" by David Guterson. In the evenings we took turns cooking scrumptious meals, read and played board games.