Fleece Survey & Other time management skills

Today is day 3 of 5 in the row of huge 14 hour days flying. I'm tired, I can only imagine how I'm going to feel Friday morning. Needless to say, nothing much is getting done on the spinning front. I've knit a few rows on my brown shetland shawl while sitting in the gaterooms waiting for planes but that's about it.

I did have the opportunity, thanks to a lovely fiber person, Jill, to take a class last Saturday. It was a wool and fleece survey class where we went to a wonderful Alpaca farm (A'paca Fun Farm) for a morning spent touching and learning about fleece. I met some wonderful fiber folks, got kissed on the cheek by an alpaca, and came home with 8 ounces of gorgeous alpaca rovings in a couple of colors that grabbed my eye, as well as 45 one ounce fleece samples from the class. I'm in the process of washing them one by one, and have even started to spin one, the Clun Forest. These are all different breeds, some rare and many I had never heard of, much less worked with in the past. We discussed each breed and fleece as we went through the class materials and touched the sample skeins that the teacher had brought. We received a notebook with pages to fill in information about each sample as we work with it. I can do this just a moment or two at a time, so I've been sneaking one into the wash water every time I go downstairs (like I'll do this morning before getting in the shower for work). I'm really enjoying this project, although I do have several bobbins that need their mates' spun so that I can play off them before they get too old to use! And I really want to get going with my exotic fiber headband. Perhaps this weekend will be one of spinning for me, I sure do hope so.