Combing, Carding, Computers and College Kids

That pretty much sums up this past week. Evan is home from Davis for a visit, and a few of his friends came too. Its okay, he did check with us first. So for the last few nights, we've had anywhere from 1 to 7 additional bodies about the house. I'd envisioned tents in the back yard. Silly me. After all, its a big back yard, and we have tents, sleeping bags and so on. Silly me. What really happened? Bodies draped across various bits of furniture in the family room. It was like having a bunch of 2-legged, house-trained puppies sleeping over, they just sort of curled up some place and slept for the night. The kids are helpful and appreciative and pleasant, and I'm very happy they came to visit, giving me the chance to meet more of Evan's friends.

During the quiet mornings, while the college students were still sleeping, I've been out on the back patio working with fleece. Combing some Shetland into top, and then drum carding the leftover bits into batts. I love working with this fleece this way. The combing really takes advantage of the long staple length, and helps me sort out the cut ends, which I inadvertently felted a bit during the washing stages. Most of the stuff left over from combing flows smoothly onto the drum carder, making lovely batts. So I now have top for fine worsted style spinning and batts for bulkier woolen style spinning.  I might also use some of each for novelty type spinning, as I try to decide whether or not to keep my Ashford Traveler.

That's right. I've scarcely used the Traveler since Blondie the Pocket Wheel showed up, and I feel a little bit bad about that. Hoping to find a niche use for the Traveler, I set her up with a jumbo flyer and bobbin, thinking that she'd do well at bulky and novelty yarn spinning. But I haven't really tested my theory. So a few days ago I spun a batt on each wheel, experimenting with fat woolen style and thick and thin novelty. Now I need to ply up some samples. And then probably repeat a few times, and make a decision.

In the meantime, I have a computer to fix. Ryan's desktop quit working earlier this week. Tech support usually falls to me, not because I'm good at it, but because I have more time for tinkering than DH. DH actually graduated college as a double E, those many years ago, and one would think better suited for trouble shooting computer problems, yes?  But many times fixing a computer is a hunch and removing and replacing parts until the non-functioning hardware is identified. My hunch said "its the motherboard" but DH said "power supply" so I trotted off to the big techie store and brought home a new power supply, and a new hard drive, just in case.

Well, it wasn't either of those things, and if I'd followed my hunch and removed the motherboard and looked it, I could've saved myself an extra trip to the techie store to return the un-needed power supply and hard drive. The overheated spot on the motherboard was easy to see, once I'd pulled it out of the case. Will I ever learn to heed my hunches? Today, the parts ordered from my favorite online techie store arrive, and if all goes well, we'll here the happy humming of Ryan's computer by evening.