Yarn Abuse

Last year at Stitches Midwest, you may remember, I purchased this:
Hemp yarn for a lovely top from Interweave Knits. It's done in the round, and there is no stitch pattern, so I thought that it would make a nice project to take to work, because it's small and simple.

Hemp, like linen, can be quite stiff when first spun. Somewhere along the line I read that this could be helped if you got the yarn wet and beat it against something hard. So that's what I did. I soaked the yarn in my bathroom sink and beat it against the side of the tub. Fuzz flew off of it. I think I did a good job.

Here it is drying:


And all wound into balls:It's not terribly soft, but it's not stiff either. I made a swatch and it wasn't uncomfortable. I can't wait to finish this project, because the inside of the ball bands specifically say to "toss" it in the dryer. I'll be sure to do exactly that.

Today my friends from culinary school Maureen and Julie and I went on the Budweiser Brewery Tour. It was a lot of fun.

This is Rick:
He was out for his daily trip outside.

This is the stall of a horse named Bill:
Actually, this doesn't do it justice because you can't see the floor. The hay was stacked about two feet high. Whenever I see or hear of Clydesdales I remember how excited my father would get when we would see them at the Minnesota state fair (or maybe he was just trying to convince us to be excited), and I remember one year it was raining, and one of them fell over and it was a big deal because they're big horses, and they're all hitched together. My dad's name is Bill, so that's why I took a picture of this particular stall. [Hi Dad!]

And I got this in the mail today:
I never considered that my debit card was boring, but when I had the opportunity to spice it up, I did.