Oooh - spinning wheels

DH had the day off from work, and it was Super Saturday at Sears (store opened at 7 AM), so his Mum picked us up at 6:45 and off we went to Carlingwood. I wandered around a bit, but didn't see anything I couldn't live without. You know you're a fibre addict when you look at sweaters and think you could make it better :P I ended up getting a free makeup from the Clinique counter. Note to self: never get makeup done by a winter - especially one with really dark eyeshadow on. She did a great job, aside from the fact that the silver lid base stood out far too much. She gave me blue eyeshadow to match my shirt... why do they do that? Neutrals would have been a much better choice, but makeup ladies keep trying to match my makeup to my clothes. Like the time a girl gave me deep red lipstick to match my shirt... I don't want my face to colour coordinate exactly with my outfit - I want it to blend...

When I met up with my Hubby, he asked "What happened to your face?"... not a good sign. Anyway, he asked me to go to the 3rd floor and check out some curtains and stay there until he came to get me. He had seen some things he wanted to get for me, but didn't want to chance me finding him with an armful of goodies. He's such a cutie :) He's really big on the whole Surprise aspect of Christmas. I'm more of the Requested & Handcrafted sort. Which reminds me - his sister asked for a pair of mitts - I'll have to run out to YF again - such a chore ;)

After Sears, we dropped off his Mum and ran off with the van to the Carelton Place Used Book Store (half an hour away). We stumbled across a Community Living Used Book Depot with extremely cheap books (donated). I found an early print of Colour Me Beautiful (I still can't figure out what season I am :P ), DH found over a dozen Tom Clancy and sci fi novels. We dropped off some books at the CP book store, then ran off to find a yarn shop I had heard about somewhere in Carleton Place. After a few wrong turns, we arrived at the Mississipi Mills Black Sheep yarn store - the only store around that carries spinning wheels.

The lady who owned the shop was absolutely charming. If you live in the Ottawa area and love fibres, you simply must visit this store. She took the time to explain to my overwhelmed DH why one would ever want to take the time to spin yarn instead of just buying it from the store. She said that spinning roving was at least half the price of store bought yarn, and if you buy a fleece and clean/card it yourself, it's even cheaper. She made a great case for my desire to buy a spinning wheel. However, the $500CDN price tag on the Louet S17 was way out of our price range. Maybe if I had've expressed interest well ahead of Christmas (before our trip to Sears), I might have been able to convince DH to give me only the spinning wheel. Unfortunately, my inability to stick with one project for more than a couple months would hamper any argument for such an expensive piece of equipment...

We got back into Ottawa just in time for DH to drop me off at the Millar's with CheeseWedge's 3rd birthday. I was finally able to give her the deep purple and floral dress that's been hanging in our closet for a year - DH was very happy about that :)

When I got home, I spent the evening looking for spinning wheel patterns. The Louet might be out of my price range, but I was certain I could make a decent wheel for less than $100. After 4 hours of searching for a plan and trying to figure out exactly how a flyer works, I've decided to go to the library on Monday and pick up a book on designing a spinning wheel from an old bike. I don't have an old bike on hand, but I figure it will be me the dimensions for the flyer. I still don't get how it works in combination with a double treadle...