I'm going to wind up with a million spindles, aren't I....

Honestly, I blame my cousin.

We went to Rhinebeck in October--my first time there!--and she was all, oh, do you want to learn to spin? Super casually, of course. DESPITE KNOWING IT WAS LIKE CRACK. 

One spindle and two bumps of hand dyed blue faced leicester later, she showed me how to begin with a leader, give the spindle a good solid twirl and then park it between my knees and draft out the fiber.  Addicted.

My very first handspun, wildly uneven but pretty! It took me a while to decide what to make out of it.  A while and 4 oz of green BFL top, a membership in the Spunky Eclectic fiber club, and a stack of hand dyed silk hankies later.... 

And now, I'm spending lunch looking at Golding ring spindles, rim weighted with brass and metals and with amazing carvings on the whorls.  Would you LOOK at these amazing things? Who wouldn't want one?

Yeah, I'm going to wind up with at least one.  Any bets on how long before I get a wheel?

the origins of the name

I did promise I'd explain the name kumquatmay, didn't I.

I've used kumquatmay as a handle off and on since at least 2002, maybe earlier? My previous interwebs usernames were wildly uncreative plays on my actual name. And by plays, I mean my actual name with some numbers.  

Finally, I looked at my bookshelf--and I can vividly remember the evening I actually did this, in my old apartment in Jersey.  I can even remember WHERE on the shelf I looked and saw Cynthia D. Grant's YA novel Kumquat May, I'll Always Love You.

It pubbed in 1986, and I'm pretty sure I read it some time shortly after that. And unlike my obsession with Laura Ingalls Wilder, I didn't reread it annually, but it certainly stuck with me. It's about a girl whose flaky mom left a few years earlier, and she's been living on her own ever since, convincing everyone in the town that her mom is still around.  Check it out on Good Reads.

This is the edition I have, same cover and all.  Like so many 80s YA books, the cover makes it feel way more lighthearted than it really is. 

And so, kumquatmay was born, on various social medias.  Hell, it's the username I used on the online dating site where I met my eventual husband, JBB! And now it's my site-site. 

So thanks, Cynthia D. Grant for giving me a book that would stick in my head for decades, and lending me a turn of phrase for even longer.

everyone likes to sleep right?

who doesn't want to nap? WHO, I ask you? The little that's who.

Going from two solid two-to-three hour naps a day to one-far-too-short-because-I-refuse-to-sleep-when-there-are-people-around-and-things-to-hit-and-scream-at nap is the WORST.

THE. WORST. 

look more admin stuff!

Because I am lazy, and use feed readers almost exclusively (miss you Google Reader. RIP.), and am an enabler for others, go look in the sidebar for ways to follow me.  I even figured out how to add a feedly button and a bloglovin thingamabob.  

Yeah, I know this is blogging 101, but bear with me. I'm old.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Welcome!

Looks like I caved to peer pressure, and am starting this blog here at kumquatmay.net.  After a year or so of having my coworkers nag me into starting a blog, here we are. They wanted me to call it "It's so easy!" because I say that a lot when describing a project or random tip.  But that is a little too 70s country rock, even for me who loves me some Linda Rondstadt.

What is kumquatmay going to be? Yeah, that's a good question.  Frankly, I'm not really sure how to categorize it either.  A little bit of knitting and spinning.  A little bit of cooking and boozy beverages. A bit of the random stuff I find on the interwebs. A bit of the random knowledge I have acquired.

So yeah, I guess I'm starting a blog. Whoo?  Next up, I'll explain the name!