It is official: Owlet is walking. We have decided to formally confirm it as of Saturday. She’s been doing about three steps solo from here to there for a few weeks, of course, but Saturday she was following her brother around as he played with the cat and a remote-controlled R2D2, trying so hard to keep up with one hand along the wall or a table… until she finally got fed up, and just started walking determinedly after them. And now there’s no stopping her.

Saturday night was also the first time we left the kids alone with a non-family member babysitting them. Everything was peaceful and there were no hiccoughs. That’s a huge milestone for us, and opens up so many possibilities. Yay!

Among the wonderful things I received for my birthday, I got my very first pair of handknit socks from Ceri, about which I am positively giddy. It’s a lovely leaf pattern knit in a yellow and green Koigu yarn, the exact colours of willow leaves turning to yellow in fall. I adore them and I really ought to photograph them. I now need to start stalking the thrift shops for the perfect pair of shoes to wear with them.

Sparky is loving camp. There was an unfortunate beginning on the first day where the bell rang suddenly to signal the start of the day, and as he was already feeling trepidatious because he didn’t know what to expect and knew no one, he ended up in tears running after his first teacher and the rest of his little class as they all moved off casually, but the rest of his day was brilliant and he adores it. (I put a lucky penny loaded with love and kisses into his shoe to help him through the first couple of days, and I am told that it helped.) I wish we could afford to send him for all six weeks.

We’re working on slowing Owlet down when she eats. Most of the time she remembers to sign for more once she’s stuffed something in her mouth, so that’s an improvement. The other day we were in the car and I was passing bits of toasted bagel back to her. We had a run of green lights so there was a lull in the passing. She started making the “more” sign, but I didn’t see her, of course, because she faces backward and I was driving. She got very annoyed at me and started squawking to make me look up and see her making the exaggerated motion through the rear-view mirror. Hey, Mum, I’m doing everything right, and you’re not feeding me! What kind of reinforcement is this?

The Tour de Fleece spinning continues, and ends this coming Sunday. I plied and skeined my Teeswater samples, and I quite like them. In the top photo, the woollen-spun two-ply is on the left, and the semi-worsted two-ply on the right; in the lower photo, with the customary penny for comparison, the semi-worsted is on the top and the woollen on the bottom:

Stats for posterity:
Woollen: 16 wpi single, 10 wpi two-ply, 11g, about 28 yards
Semi-worsted: 36 wpi single, 20 wpi two-ply, 13g, about 75 yards

I don’t think I’m going to make it to the corespinning, because it would take a lot of time to find the right core yarn and decide on the fibre with which to wrap it, but today I started spinning my sample of the Cormo/silk blend Bonnie did that has been sitting in my stash for a couple of years now, and oh dear my. Zomg, people. Cormo. Cormo/silk. It’s like… like… spinning clouds. Or butter. Or buttery clouds. (But not cloudy butter.) It’s so soft. I was fully expecting to do just a couple of grams today, but it wanted to be spun really, really finely and really quickly, so I blazed through it at high speed and now I have just a couple of grams left to go. And then I think I’ll chain-ply it, because it doesn’t want to be a two-ply, and I’m not winding it off onto three separate bobbins for a three-ply.

And here is a spinning story for you.

I was setting up to spin the last of the drafted Teeswater. Owlet came up to me and gently touched the nests of fibre on my lap. “Baa,” she said. (She has previously made the connection that the fluffy white stuff I spin is sheep. Or maybe just that it’s white and fluffy like the baas in her books.) “Yes, baa,” I agreed. She watched me spin for a while, getting all over the wheel as she always does, yanking on the Scotch tension cord, getting her hands thwacked by the flyer and the hooks as they spun, grabbing the footmen, and trying to stick her finger into the metal orifice as the single disappeared into it. Finally, to distract her, I said, “Where’s Owlet’s Baa? Where’s your sheep?” (A friend’s daughter gave her a little stuffed lamb dressed up in an Easter bunny suit, which she calls Baa, like all other sheep.) Without hesitating, she turned around and looked at where it was in a small basket of toys, then trundled off to get it. I got to concentrate on the Teeswater for a minute before she was back. “Baa,” she said, and pushed the toy at the orifice.

She pushed the sheep at the orifice. Where I was feeding the wool. The white, fluffy baa is spun, and goes to be fed onto the bobbin.

True story. The level of comprehension and complexity of connection involved astound me.