A change in the weather, some plans and my state of mind

As a little relief from all the complaining I've done about our horrible, hot weather this summer, I just want to say that it's been heavenly for the past week or so.  We had some rain and then a cool front and it's been 50's and 60's at night and 70's and 80's for daytime temperatures.  Sheep, lambs, alpacas, dogs and I have all been so much more comfortable.  It's forecast to be back up in the high 80's by next weekend,  but this little reprieve has given me hope that I can hang on until autumn weather arrives.

(Can you see why they are looking that way?  It's Carson!)

We had planned a little get-away over the weekend. We were going to take a trip down to Asheville on Saturday morning, spending some time wandering around the River Arts District and looking forward to having Lori Therault give us a tour of her pottery studio and point us in the direction of other places to check out.  On Sunday, we were going to make the short drive out to Echoview Fiber Mill to pick up the finished yarn from the wool and alpaca fiber I had delivered to them not long ago  and then have a leisurely afternoon in Asheville, or maybe head over to Snowbird Mountain Lodge for the night and come home sometime on Monday.  Instead, life happened and it became increasingly obvious that our get-away was not going to happen without enough accompanying stress to cancel out any benefits.  Sometimes, it's hard to give up on a plan and I have been known to push on through, but this time I did not and it was a good thing.

I ended up driving to Echoview on Monday, once again making the trip down and back in one day.  This time, I got an early start ( 6 am ) and was back home by around 7 pm.  All I can say is that I'm in LOVE with my new yarn!  I cannot recommend Echoview highly enough to do them justice.  As I wrote before, their facilities are beautiful and their people are just so, so thoughtful and anxious to please.  Marcia was a joy to work with and I felt they all truly cared about producing the nicest yarn possible.   I made myself finish up a small project ( kiddie hat and mittens ) that I started over the weekend and immediately knit up a gauge swatch with the new yarn.  It's a light and squishy two-ply worsted weight, in what I think is a gorgeous oatmeal color.  I do plan to over-dye most of it, but am going to knit a sweater for myself in the natural color.   I'm hoping to get the dye pot fired up a little later this week and will post pictures when I have some things to show.  I've already selected the pattern for my sweater - it's Hallett's Ledge.  I know I should absolutely not start another project, but my rationale is that I really, really should have a knitted sample for folks to look at, if they are considering buying some of my yarn.  Right?  I thought so!