Where have I been? Monday I worked my buns off. Tues I slept all day with a migraine. Weds I worked my buns off. Thursday I worked my buns off. This morning I pried myself out of bed in order to be at my GP's office when he arrived at 8 AM and he phoned in sick. So I came home and crawled into bed and went back to sleep. I have been feeling vaguely headachey, nauseated and lacking in energy. But my hands don't hurt! Dry weather is good for one thing at least. And now you get photos courtesy of my wonderful new camera. First off is the scarf I knit for my MIL from Plymouth Eros which is a ladder or railroad yarn or shiney little flecks of colour with black binder. I had already done one for me in blues and purples which was admired so I offered another. 6mm needles, 25 stitches, knit till you run out of yarn. BTW, I think you will see a lot of the bench on my front porch and my sofa since they are in areas which get natural light. Next we have the famous WW2 socks which I dyed this past weekend with blue to counteract the orange that was showing instead of brown. They have a faint blue cast and the dye didn't make it all the way into the ribs but at least they aren't orange any more.

And lastly we have English Leiscester. I was casting about for what to spin next. I found some more of the Wendy Dennis hand-dyed Polwarth in a different colourway and said Yippee! Then I found out that it was partially felted, full of noils and VM and took an incredible amount of monkey grooming before spinning. Sometimes i really like monkey grooming as it's a mindless task, but I felt like spinning. So I pulled out the bag of EL.
Would you believe I bought 2 or 3 kilos of it? In general it was very clean and when washed is these lovely glossy locks. You can spin from the locks, flicking each end open with a flick carder (dog brush) but I find spinning each lock tedious so I do the mini-roving technique taught by Mabel Ross which turns a batch of 3-4 locks into a little roving which is easy to spin. I had some already prepared which I spun last night and a bag full of locks to flick into rovings. I also have a kilo commercially prepared and on big bobbins which take up a lot of room in the stash. When I go to Bendigo I am buying a real inkle loom and I intend weaving straps with the EL.

So besides work (cleaning up books in 329.994 and 570.994 (Australian politics and Australian natural history to those Dewey-challenged) and working on my 500 page printout of invalid name headings), sleep, and fibre, not much has happened here. We are having frosty and foggy mornings around freezing that by noon have cleared to bright sun and blue skies and temperatures around 50F.