Anticipation

This week is interesting for several reasons... My little Jamie turned 4 today. We celebrated with pizza for dinner, ice cream for dessert and we'll have a little gathering with cake on Monday with my parents and a few friends before we leave on our trip. That's right folks... Phil and I are going on a real vacation. No parenting responsibilities for four whole days... Can you believe it? I can hardly wait - It's our 10th anniversary on the 22nd and we're going to fly away, eat out, relax on the beach, and well, you know. It's going to be so nice to forget all our cares for awhile and just spend time absorbed with one another again - I am very excited. There's so much to do beforehand, although most of the things I'm packing never see the light of day in our climate. I am hoping to buy a new dress before we go, but we'll see.

The deck is done and I've spent several days spinning and reading there, enjoying that glorious sunshine that's been coming out from behind the clouds.

We used Trex for the top and ended up with a very good deal because Phil had bought Choice Dek when it went on sale at Lowe's thinking it was the 2008 stuff, and instead it was the 2006 batch that we had read was extremely prone to mildew. He took it back and got 20% off on the Trex which we liked better anyway. Phil even put in some fancy-work... I'm impressed.

I finished spinning Kristin's contest fiber last night which means it's time for me to get back to a project I'm supposed to be working on for my friend, Tandy. I'm spinning up some alpaca and wool for her so she can design a jacket with it. The fiber is lovely and it's been kinda fun to use my hand-carders for blending, but it's not dyed (all natural white and grey) which makes it a little less tempting after finishing something like this...

Someone else participating in the contest called it "Neptune's Dream" which I think is perfect. This is a 2-ply and I got about 318 yards total. Not sure what I'm going to with it, but probably it will be a small shawl to wear with jeans. If I break up the grey stuff by working on some bold colors in between, it shouldn't get too tedious... the alpaca really is nice to work with and I'm happy to be doing something for Tandy who is an all-around generous person. If only I had more time to spin!