Good morning!  Yesterday I went out to the studio and finished up some projects, like washing the fleece I had dyed on Saturday. Also, because I was going to my friend, Steve’s in the afternoon to spin with some other folks, I thought it would be a good time to lay out my dyeing trays for dip dyeing, so I put a dozen skeins of a fingering weight rayon boucle in to dye. While I was laughing and enjoying the company of my friends, Betty and Steve, the color was wicking up the skein, producing more beauty for my eyes to behold.

I decided to go out about 7:30 this morning when I was filling the bird feeders and the door to the studio was just looking at me.  Last night, I told Jim, I think I’ll take a day off Monday.  I have to finish watching the dvd from Quick Books, the most boring, sleep producing teaching I have ever had to sit through.  We also need to do a test run of the credit card thingamajig that hooks up to my computer so I can take plastic money.  There are a lot of book keeping chores I need to attend to.  My house studio is a mess.  In addition to the sewing table being in the middle of the small room, I had to empty out the closet so the plumber could run the water line to the barn through it.  Some of that still needs to be dealt with.

I should be able to discipline myself to do all of these things, plus satisfy my creative urge.  I want to do messy things in the studio today, things that I can’t do when I am open to the public.  So I think I will go ahead, go out and get my hands dirty, and later today I’ll do the boring, in the house stuff.  Balance.

I want to go garage saleing with my sister, too.  Sometime this week I am going to do that.  I plan on taking a couple of boxes of my collectibles that we never unpacked and give them to her to sell in her booth at the Livingston Antique Mall in Howell.  It will be a good way to finally rid myself of stuff that I have collected for the past forty years, have no desire to display, and don’t want to bother selling.  I have a collection of bird salt and pepper shakers.  Why?  I like birds, and they are so cute, but this is ridiculous.  I will go through them and save the ones I really love.  The rest, adios pajaro.

What does taking a day off mean, really?  Does it mean staying in my pj’s, no make up, sitting in front of the TV?  God, what a waste.  For me, anyway.  First of all, I feel so at the end of my days!  I only have, at the very most, 20 years left.  That will be gone at the blink of an eye.  So if I really believe that my days are dwindling, how can I, in good conscience, waste one day?

We all know what happens the second you say something like that out loud.  You get a cold, or have to go to jury duty, or something happens that makes it impossible for you to work.  Satan, get behind me!

So what is my goal for today?  I want to do something fun, for one thing.   It will probably have to be something I can do alone, because as what often happens when I get the hankering for fun, Jim has to work a long day.  This week, they are rebilling and paying affiliates, so that means he will be glued to the computer and his banker’s ear at least 12 hours a day.

Yesterday at the spin in, one of the women, Char, had a shawl she had knit out of the Cormo yarn she had spun from her own sheep.  It is a gorgeous, lace shawl, and the catch is she did it on her knitting machine.  I have a knitting machine!  But I don’t know how to use it.  So maybe a fun day would be trying to figure that out.  The machine comes in four, heavy boxes.  This sounds like a week off project, not a day off.

I also have an antique sock knitting machine.  I last had that out about five years ago.  The pair of socks I made on it is referred to by Jim as the $1000 pair of socks.  I know it would make him feel so much better if I actually used the darn thing.  Maybe today….

The old Union Rug Loom in the studio has never had a warp on it.  I want to warp it using my new used AVL warping wheel, also never used by moi.  Jim put a dvd player out in the studio so I can watch the dvd and try doing it.  My friend Bettes gave me a lesson on it before I moved, but it is so intimidating.  There are tensioning devices and other scary looking apparatus that need to be adjusted.  Maybe I could do that today.

I also want to card up some of the lovely fleece I dyed on Saturday.  While I was waiting for it to cook, I found a ten year old Merino fleece in my stash of fleeces.  The locks were as stiff as a board and I considered throwing it out rather than wasting my time with it.  But what the heck, I was just waiting, so I put part of it in hot, hot water with ammonia and Dawn detergent, and it is so lovely now!   The catch is that my carder won’t do fine wool.  So it needs to carded by hand.  Just the thing for a day off.

So there are so many exciting and fun things to do, I don’t know where to start.  My neighbor just called to come and look at his newest design, so I am off to his studio!  Spending time with friends is really the best day off, anyway.