Whoosh!

That was the sound of time flying by. July was a blur of travel for weddings and packing for moving. After posting about the Tour de Fleece, my proud promise to spin every day of the tour was quickly plowed under by the realization that I had to make wedding presents, spend two weekends plus out of town, spin for the Hush Hush Hootenany and pack all my stuff in the space of a month.

The first wedding was in Portland. Aaron designed an elegant but simple fused glass soap dish for his friends. Since Aaron's family is in the Portland area, we flew into Portland a couple days early. We spent a day in Salem: lunched at his mom's house with his mother's mother, walked around the Salem Art Fair for a while, then visited his paternal grandparent's house, home to very small dogs.
The next day we went to the Portland farmer's market. Davis has a pretty good farmer's market, but Portland's was amazing. Yes the blueberries are really better in Oregon. We treated ourselves to some gluten-free sourdough bread, pheasant-bitter orange paté, Tumalo Tomme goat cheese and lots of blueberries. After a sadly short obligatory visit to Powells, we met up with Aaron's father and stepmother and managed to stuff some lunch and dessert from Deschutes Brewery into ourselves as well. It was quite a foody day. Even the sandcastle celebration had a food pyramid.
Dinner was a feast courtesy of Aaron's sister and boyfriend at their new house. We were too busy eating the delicious ribs, salmon, potato salad and biscuits to take pictures, but there was a brief pause before we started in on the gluten-free raw food cake.


Somehow, we didn't take any photos of the actual wedding, but I did take a lot of pictures of Aaron's dad and stepmother's kittens.

This is Cleo:
And this is Bea:Together:

We tore ourselves away from the kittens and Portland and flew back home to work for two days before driving down to Los Angeles for my friends Olivia and John's wedding. Making Aaron's wedding present for his friends was uncomplicated, but unfortunately my design style is not as elegantly sparse. I made Olivia and John a set of fused glass sushi dishes with a cherry blossom design inspired by their invitations. They actually turned out quite nicely though I forgot to photograph them. Somehow, though I'm quite comfortable with hot glass in a flame, coldworking glass makes me nervous. I don't like cutting glass, it's sharp. I prefer melting. Melting is a much nicer word than cutting.

Anyways, in Los Angeles, we spent a day at the Getty Center with my mom and my friend Mel who had flown in for the wedding.

There was a fantastic botanical illustration exhibit. Inspired, I took too many flower photos in the garden. It was a beautiful day. The sky was blue......as long as you didn't look too far in the distance.
We went out to dinner that evening with my brother and Anne, delicious japanese food. The next morning, Anne and Steve cooked us a magnificent brunch including stuffed omelet, smoked salmon, capers and greens.

Then we drove up to Ventura County for the wedding. I played with Olivia in a free jazz ensemble in Davis so some of us musicians brought our instruments to provide music over the cocktail hour. It was fantastic getting together with so many folks including those who've moved on from Davis.
I'm just not good at taking photos at weddings, too many other things to do. But one dance shot before I joined in...

Lest you think this remarkably long post is over, I did spin almost every day of the Tour de Fleece though I wasn't as productive as I'd hoped. Part of the problem was being away from my spinning wheel so much. I dyed up some merino/cashmere/nylon and made it into a batt for my amazing Hush Hush Handspun Hootenanny pal Abby for the unspun fiber part of the trade, and since she seems to work with lace and fingering weight yarn a lot, I decided to spin up her laceweight yarn out of the merino/seacell fiber I landscape dyed for her. The idea of this type of yarn was for it to slowly change colors to resemble the landscape it was inspired by. Since I wasn't at the wheel enough, I started spinning this on a little brass takhli. I'm much more of a wheel spinner than a spindle spinner, so this didn't go very fast. And I was spinning about 46-50wpi singles to become laceweight navajo ply (3 ply) yarn so 4 oz goes a long way at that size. I soon realized I was in trouble with time, but couldn't switch to the wheel until after getting back from Los Angeles. Even on the wheel it took me a while...this is the finished yarn.

Doesn't look like much, but it's 566 yards navajo plied yarn which is 1598 yards of singles. Which is a lot for me. Got to work on spinning faster...I dream of the Lendrum Saxony with the extra fast head. Hopefully when I finish my walnut fish spinning wheel (so much for finishing by the end of summer--I'm still working on relief carving the individual fish) it'll be nice and fast with the accelerating head.