Bamboo is being spun:



I've been spinning the very slippery fiber from the fold which has worked well.  It's giving me good control of the fiber.

I'm starting to get my stressed out pre-cruise feelings.  I'm going to sea April 8-14 for some deep sea coral work and I always get stressed before going to sea.  There is SO much to plan, purchase, organize, pack, transport, load, stage, and accomplish.  Plus, crap always breaks, fails, gets lost, etc.  Putting $35K or more worth of equipment into 500m of water is nerve wracking because you never know if it's going to come back up!  And believe me, I know from experience that ocean doesn't like to let go of what you put into it.

Quick story - Back in 1999 I was part of a team of scientists assessing the impact of Hurricane Floyd in North Carolina.  Massive flooding had occurred during the hurricane, hundreds of homes damaged, livestock killed, etc.  We had two teams operating on the river in two separate boats just a few weeks after the hurricane had come through.  I had spent the evening before we went into the field training my counterpart, Kevin, on the other boat how to use the $15K worth of water monitoring equipment.  The one thing I said over and over was 'Don't forget the safety line, you need the safety line to bring the package back up.'  Near the end of the next day we pulled our boats up to each other and Kevin had this sick look on his face.  He had lost the equipment because he had forgotten the safety line.  Apparently, when he realized what he had done they were only in 10 feet of water.  He decided to go into the river after it.  This was the same river we were surveying because of overflowed manure ponds, dead and floating farm animals, and all the pollutants that flow out of wrecked homes.  He stripped to his underwear and went in the black, tannic water that was so turbid you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.  He never did find it, but I could only be so angry at him after his insane gesture of going into that river hoping to find the equipment on the riverbed.  It also helped that he bought me many beers that evening out of quilt.