I decided to do some spinning over the weekend.  Two full spools of Romney singles had been waiting for weeks to be plied, and I needed to empty those bobbins if I wanted to spin more singles of any type.  Plying is not my favorite part of making yarn– I have an unsubstantiated faith in the idea that plying is much faster than spinning and I always feel shocked and betrayed when that turns out not to be true.  So, once again, I set myself up for the fall.

I thought it went pretty well until I had  wound off the finished 2-ply yarn and removed it from the skeinwinder.  Suddenly it sprang out from all angles like the old snake-in-a-can joke, twisting back upon itself in millions of little loopbacks,  looking more like the Medusa than usable yarn.  It was wilder than Michelle Gee’s hair in sixth grade and had more twists than a Coen brothers film.  I had underspun the singles and then overplied them, creating a substance even a collapse-weave fanatic would find challenging, if not impossible, to use.  Perhaps I should dub it “energized” and sell it for lots of money…

Clearly I need to practice my spinning technique. 

I was amused to read yesterday in the paper about past inaugurations, particularly Nixon’s second inauguration in 1973.  I was there, actually, with my girl scout troop, but I was totally unaware of the plight of the birds.  In an effort to keep pigeons from pooping on the parade, somebody came up with the plan to spray all the trees with roost repellant.  The idea was that the substance would feel unpleasant to the birds’ feet, and they would fly away.  Instead, the birds found it to be quite tasty, but also quite lethal.  They ate it greedily, and died.

Instead of pigeon droppings, the parade encountered dropping pigeons.  And this, as we all know, set the course for the ensuing presidency.