Not in that it’s been a week since I last posted. It’s been that kind of week… My father-in-law died suddenly of a heart attack a year ago. You might remember my husband’s family is filled with Texas A&M Aggies. If you haven’t gone to that school or love someone who did, you won’t get it. It’s an Aggie thing. It is a deep love for their Alma Mater. One of their many traditions is Aggie Muster where they honor all the Ags that passed away during the previous year. My father-in-law was one of the honorees at College Station this year. With the ceremony looming, today is his birthday and the anniversary of his death is on Tuesday…. well… it’s been a week.
He was an amazing man. The line at his wake went outside and around the building where people stood for hours in the Laredo heat to wish us all their condolences and share their stories of him with us. For four hours we stood and shook hands, hugged, cried and laughed as we listened to story after story about how he touched someone’s life. He was stubborn… oh was he stubborn… lol, but he’d do anything for anyone and he was well known to be fair and honest. He was always watching out for those less fortunate than himself and he was a big believer in second chances. I put together his display for Aggie Muster, so it was a big trip down memory lane. Pretty therapeutic actually. I was able to watch the live stream of the ceremony and it was beautiful. I’m sure my father-in-law was smiling down at his beloved family and Texas A&M. It was a good thing, I think, for my family to share their love of my father-in-law with people that visited the reflections display. My favorite picture of the day was one my husband took of three Cadets looking at the display. I couldn’t help but think how much my father-in-law would have loved to have met them and they would have gotten such a kick out of talking to him about his old Corps days.
In the fiber front I’ve been spinning. A lot. Like almost every day. I’ve been playing around with different fiber preps. My new favorite is taking perfectly good combed top and making it into fauxlags (not really rolags because they aren’t carded). I just pull off a piece of the top, put it on to one of the hand cards as if I was going to card it, but I take two dowels, one on top, one underneath and roll it off. I have to tell you, it’s a DREAM to spin. It is so fun and gratifying to pull that fauxlag out of it’s tube form into a roving. It’s like watching a cheese pull on lasagna. Besides using perfectly good top, this method is great for top that you’ve dyed and, ehem, got a little webby…. 😉 for these I did card a little, so I guess technically they are real rolags, not fauxlags. You don’t even need to use a handcard to do this. You could just spread the fiber out and roll it between the two dowels, but I think the handcard makes it easier to get it into a tight little roll. After I roll it off the hand card, I squeeze my fingers around the fiber around the dowels and twist in the direction it was rolled. It tightens everything up nicely.
I plan on weaving today. Hoping my back will cooperate and I can enjoy getting several towels done on the Dorothy’s Dozen warp that I shared the other day.