Disgusted and Disheartened

Last Friday I celebrated the end of the work week thinking things could not get much worse, and then along rolled Monday. This is just a touch of what I heard this week in the halls and such from or about groups of 12 and 13 year olds in my building:

"When my mother took me to the gynecologist for birth control, you would not believe..

"Oh, that guy's a porno star. Of course I'm sure, I watch at least two of those movies a week!"

"My mother took my phone away, cuz she found the text messages and pictures of me...and she called me a slut."

"Did you notice something strange about student X this morning? The bus driver believed she had marijuana on her and we cannot find it in her locker."

"You have to show up for homeroom or they call your parents, but after that we can take off."

"What do you mean you have to call the police because my kid got caught showing porn to another kid?"

"How was I supposed to do my homework if I never went home last night?"

"It doesn't matter, her mother doesn't care what she does!" "She's right, she really doesn't."

"Why is that table set all fancy?" "Fancy? It's just a normal setting for dinner." "Oh, we never eat at our table, I just take it up to my room and eat there."

And one wonders why they are never excited about school.

One Happy Family

Tuesday evening the gang at Raveloe Fibers celebrated the Chinese New Year with its annual Happy Family Event. Our friend and shop owner, Linda, picks up an awesome dinner from Tin Tin to begin our festivities.

After dinner each participant spreads 3 oz of fiber from their personal stash on the table. A totally random selection ranging from natural suri alpaca, creamy soy silk, to rainbow dyed llama. From there we moved to the Rainbow Theme selected by Linda. ROY G. BIV hit the table in order, one color at a time.

Then the fun of rolling the lot into a lovely crayola colored log. We each left with 6 ounces of colorful roving ready for the drum carder. One pass through and it is simply gorgeous!

We spent the remainder of the evening talking about all the ways to prepare and spin. Erica and I chose random grabs of fiber and ran it through the drum carder; from there we are thinking of plying it with black to make the color really pop! Others are planning on selectively pulling out colors to create specific stripes. Our friend, Phyllis, will be blending hers with a cream to white roving before carding.