Back home again.

The boys are safely esconced with friends having a very Tom Sawyerish holiday, you know fishing, swimming, just at the bottom of the paddock. So it's very quiet at home, which is just as well as I'm recovering from having driven 11 hours in two days to both accomplish the quiet and get to deliver my Summer School class.

The class went very well and the adjustments I made worked out well and the aim of the class - using the multicoloured tops successfully - was achieved....hooray. As always lovely people and all of them willing to give everything a try.

These are the samples I showed them of the different results you get when you used different

preparation and spinning methods.

I started with this beautiful top.

The first three methods were then spinning without thinking.

1. Worsted spinning, short lengths.

2. Worsted spinning, full, long, length.

3. Just because, I carded the top to really mix it up.

Then I got sensible and actively tried to get a good result

1. I stripped the top of each colour. Well not quite, this is a difficult top and the stripes of colour are quite thin. I did my best.

2. I used the fold over finger method of spinning. This is a semi-woollen method of spinning which allows you to go through the top stripe by stripe.

3. I used the same technique as before, just had a longer bit of top. This made it more difficult to manage and, didn't seem to make much difference.

Finally, I spun a wonderful slubby yarn and a reasonably thick single.