I Spoke Too Soon

After raving yesterday about how great things were going, this morning it all came back to bite me in the butt. It wasn't any one thing, just a bunch of little things. Let's start from the beginning shall we.

7:30 Cat wants me to feed her so she steps on my face to wake me up. (In retrospect this kind of makes me laugh.) Feed cat, go back to bed.

8:00 Wake up to see if I got an email from my private lesson student who was sick on Monday and may have to cancel today. No email.

9:15 Drag self out of bed. Check email. A response. He is coming today. Decide to stay up because I need to reskein and label yarn before going to see my mom.

9:30 Begin redesigning all labels.

10:00 Finish labels. Put skein of yarn on PVC swift to be wound into a ball. Once it's in ball form I will rewind it onto the swift then twist and label it.

10:05 Realize I began pulling from the wrong end of the yarn. And that the PVC pipe swift sucks at being a swift. It won't turn fast enough and is pulling the yarn.

10:10 Start trying to wind from other end. Realize you had the right end the first time. Yarn begins to tangle.

10:30 * Wind a little yarn onto ball winder, take ball of yarn off the winder, wind by hand through the tangled parts, re-wind onto the ball winder, repeat from * 3-5 times. Decide to finish winding mass o' tangled yarn by hand.

11:00 Take a break to make reservations for birthday dinner with friends on Friday. Find out that there are 5 other large parties there so can't make reservations. They will have to make room for us when we come. Fantastic. (Please note sarcasm.)

11:05 Continue hand winding yarn.

11:30 Teach private percussion lesson.

12:30 Eat lunch.

1:00 Call mom and tell her you got tangled up (literally) this morning and are running late to hang out with her. She tells me not to worry about coming over. She's had a rough morning too. Her inside kitty's heart murmur is worse and a friend's baby boy died of some as yet unknown genetic disease that almost killed his big sister 2 years earlier.

1:15 Finish hand winding 1st skein of yarn. Pull out old, wooden, hand made swift to finish making other balls of yarn. Will use PVC swift (now PVC skeiner only) to make hanks.

1:30-3:30 Finish winding other sock yarn into neat hanks for selling.

3:35 Decide to re-skein lace weight.

3:37 After winding a tiny bit of the lace weight into a ball realize this is going to take a long time and contemplate scrapping the idea. Realize it might be easier to wind yarn from old, wooden swift onto PVC skeiner.

3:38-4:00 Tinker with getting the set up between the swift and skeiner right so that the swift will turn smoothly and the skeiner will catch the yarn correctly.

4:00 Handle on skeiner breaks. Wonder if the screw has been stripped. Realize the screw is fine, it's just been turned so many times in the PVC pipe it's made a bigger hole and now just turns and turns in the little hole without being grippy. This happens, of course, after you already have several, several yards of yarn wound and cannot take the arms of the windmill off to remove the broken handle.
Picture of broke a$$ handle.

4:02-5:15 Continue to mollycoddle yarn onto skeiner. Handle flops in the way. Turn the windmill by hand. Yarn snags on old, wooden swift. Pieces of swift are literally flying off. Stop and stoop to fix swift, then yarn, then start turning skeiner again. Yarn begins to fly off skeiner in loops because it's too tight and is pushing the first few rows over the caps and off into mid-air. Pray that this will just work long enough to finish this one skein. Also, say a lot of words that are unbecoming of a lady.

5:16 Decide never to reskein lace again (unless there is machinery involved).

5:17 Remember that sometimes, when your life is moving in the right direction, Satan will try and attack you the hardest. Feel bad about the curse words. Pray for forgiveness and some relief from horrible, broken equipment. (Not that I feel like some spiritual vigilante armed with dye, yarn, and set of needles but I have prayed a lot about my little business and seen some wonderful results. So maybe I am a spiritual warrior of the yarn-y persuasion.)

5:18-5:35 Picture and label all yarn. (I'd post a picture off all the new colors I dyed, which were really lovely, btw, but the light was terrible and I need to fix them.)

5:37 Feed screaming cat.

5:43 Rush to knit night.

6:00-8:15 Sell lots of yarn, hang out with friends, finish left front of test knit sweater (see below), chat, drink frappacino, have a good time, make up for most of the crappy morning.
8:30 Drive through Wendy's and get Caesar salad for dinner.

8:45 Eat.

9:05-9:45 Upload pictures, cuddle with cat, write blog post.