Committed

Did you ever realize how many different meanings there are for the word committed? First there is Committed as in "I committed a crime" Then there is committed as in "Once you step out of the plane, you are committed to parachuting" And then there is the committed that is attatched to the word asylum. As in"We had to have her committed to the asylum." There may be other meanings, but they didn't come to mind yesterday while I was winding a ball of yarn. Sounds pretty innocent that. Winding a ball of yarn. I have a swift, I have a ball winder. What I don't have is a swift that will take a skein of linen that is almost 2 yards in circumference. I had purchased two skeins of that linen years ago and of course in to the stash they went. One is a lovely deep red, the other is black. At our local weavers group meeting a few months ago, some one came up with a brilliant idea to have a yarn swap. And I inherited two skeins of the same kind of linen that I had in my stash excecpt in a medium and a dark orange. The three look stunning together and the black add some nice highlights. BOING!!! Project in mind! Strike while the irons hot! ( I swear that my daughter will get her chance at the loom) Then yesterday, I thought " I'll get the "ball" rolling and get these things balled up before I have to pick up the kids. Half an hour is plenty of time to make three balls" ( I had already made the black into a hand wound ball in the dark distant past before I had my wonderful ball winder.) Out comes the swift, out comes the ball winder, out come the beautiful red linen. I try to fit it on the swift but to no avail. The skein is HUGE! Maybe if I set the swift up so that the yarn hangs vertically in stead of horizontally, I can get It going with out too much fuss. Hmmmm. It seems a little off exactly vertical but maybe it won't make much of a difference. Gentle reader, 2 degrees off vertical does make a difference when you are dealing with 500+ yards of linen in a humongous hank. The thing kept falling off in dribs and drabs, the yarn got tangled around the shaft, which was horizontal, I can't even describe the tangling that took place. Needless to say I had to quickly abandon the ball winder idea and started winding by hand because I had to keep ducking the ball through the tangles. So what started out to be a quick 15 minute project turned into one that took about two hours and included leaving to get kids, waking the sleeping baby, starting homework, keeping the awake baby off the skein so that my mess wouldn't get any worse. I was committed to finishing the ball making process because my "studio" (haha) is the living room that is also the playroom for the kids. In politically correct terms, We are spacially challenged. My kingdom for a room with a door. I would have dearly loved to shut the door and walk away. I would have come back and finished, I swear. About half way through the ball making process, I thought that I should have been committee for thinking that my harebrained idea would work in 15 minutes or less.

I still have two monster skeins to wind. Any suggestions?