So much for good intentions. I had a very up and down week sleeping, usually too much rather than not enough. I am still plowing through stuff to get to the point where I can bring my loom home. Once I can get the Salvos to take the wardrobes and bed head, I can get the Bear's room carpeted, then painted, then, then then... Very slowly until I get a real income. We had a humongous thunderstorm last night and 35 mm of rain and unfortunately a very small roof leak again right over my bed. Enough for a spot of damp. I did check a couple of times during the evening but saw nothing so this might have been in the middle of the night. Please no roof repairs now!

Yesterday I took my boss to the local gem and mineral show which was great fun. I have to admit to having expensive taste. On one of my first trips to Australia I discovered the yellow sapphire and fell instantly in love. Very expensive. So aside from oohing and aahing over interesting minerals, I was drooling over $1200 yellow sapphires despite having 2 other sapphires on my hands, a blue on the left and a green/blue/yellow parti-coloured on the right. My boss and I bought 2 half of a fossil (photo to come), but nothing else.

Today I decided it wasn't going to rain again and did laundry, got petrol for the lawn mower and mowed the lawn. The rain has made all the veggies very happy and I have plain green beans, flat Italian beans and climbing limas all coming up as well as tomatoes and pumpkin, melon and zucchini. I think a couple more cucumbers wouldn't go amiss. And the berries are flowering or actively making berries. There are even some strawberries with colour. And lots of snails. As I write I hear a king parrot calling.

All week I have been debating taking Tactile Travel's week in Lombardy seeing the luxury spinning mills, the slow food movement and Lake Como. One minute I'm gung ho, the next I wonder how I can do it on my own when everyday life is sometimes beyond me. I would never get the Bear on a tour of Italy and I don't know what traveling alone with diminished strength would be like.

In the evenings I have been trying to process more alpaca, and flick carding clumps of alpaca long enough to be spinnable and discarding the short and excessively dirty bits. I have a plump mesh laundry bag to wash and the dregs of 2 trashbags to go. When I bring the loom back I also bring back 2 bags of alpaca so something has to go.