I have been blessed with over abundance. I have started writing this entry at 1AM because I can't sleep. Being tired does not always lead to sleeping. Today I was patting myself on the back as I went to put the next to last (ha) of clean brown alpaca with its similar lot in the studio. While there, I decided to address the problem of garbage bags of alpaca springing "unexplained" holes by re-bagging them. It was then I discovered that, in addition to another bag of white, which I had expected, I had another bag and a half of brown and only half a bag of black. Alpaca has a true black unlike most wools aside from shetland, so I don't mind the relatively short staple length of the black. But all this very filthy brown! A lot more prep work on it before it's usable. This lot at least (the half bag) is long lustorous locks, with shine and a length of 4-5". I have dealt of this type of alpaca before and I haven't come to grips with carding it. It's either spin from the lock (a recipe for uneven results) or carding thru the drum carder but having to cut the longest locks. If any one would like some truly filthy brown alpaca to try their finishing techniques on, please leave me a comment. I haven't felt like knitting but I finished the brown/beige Regia cotton/wool blend socks. Started spinning a lovely hand-dyed hank of Optim from Conjoined Creations in jewel tones. Feels very much like silk and don't know how it will ply.

Other chores accomplished today included cleaning out the gutters along the driveway of tea-tree debris, which breaks down rapidly to sprout weeds, spreading snail bait to protect seedlings, cutting asparagus, going to the supermarket, fixing the remote sensor for my indoor/outdoor weather station (no mean feat), rejoicing in the return of my ill lawn mower to I can now cut the meadow which has sprouted in the back. I now have more seedlings to plant and lawn to mow. The tomatoes are doing well and the early peas are blooming and all the beans have sprouted. I have cukes and pumpkins to plant and maybe more tomatoes, altho there are 8 already, mostly not red ones but orange, black and Green Zebra (my fabourite flavour wise). There's always weeding and mulch and fertiliser. This time of year I'm flat out.

Due to giving us Melbourne Cup day off and taking Monday as leave, I have a large window to get sll this done, despite temperatures predicted for 30C and late thunderstorms. It threatened that today causing me to rush out and take in the laundry but then no precipittion followed the thunder.

I went to the movies earlier in the week and have been listening to the audio-book for The Time Traveler's Wife, in anticipation of seeing it. Altho I am pleased to see Eric Bana as the male lead, I am dubious about the transition from printed to film. The two characters have very amusing internal voices and the whimsy of that cannnot be translated easily to film. I gave up on the sci fi I was reading as it had too much physics in it and trying to follow it (whether it was real physics or make believe) msde my head hurt. Instead I am reading Owen Parry's Rebels of Babylon. I've read quite a few of his but have missed a couple. Another plug for Better World Books, since I picked up a novel that turned out to be the 3rd in a trilogy and Better World had just what I needed, and a sale of 3 books for $15. All recycled library books which I like because it's sometimes hard to hold dense paperbacks.

I am hoping Blogger will let me post some photos without losing them, which it often does. At left is my new front porch which replaced a very bizarre structure left by the previous owners. It had two levels, with a half-a**ed pergola overhead, was made with the wrong sort of wood, constructed poorly, and the steps were merely piles of bricks. The new porch has a handrail and only two steps and is all at one level so it makes getting large things in and out a bit easier. I was ashamed of the old one when the occupational assessment team came to the house post surgery; the bricks and no handrail were an accident waiting to happen. My back steps have also been replaced. And there is much sun because I am standing where my monster "pencil pine" or tall narrow juniper used to be. It was beginning to heave the pavers and causing a trip hazard. There is a pile of woodchips where it was. When I shift the chips to the front and assess the hole, I want to plant a deciduous shade tree (not too big) because the left window is the living room and it faces west without the shield that my street tree gives the rest of the house.

Next at right is a heap of clean brown alpaca that I washed
last night. I spent about 4 TV nights sorting out the nasty
bits and flick cardings the ends of the most promising locks. It's much shorter than the white, rarely getting over 2" in length. I have also been spinning the rest of the white batts I had made and filled up another bobbin. I have lots of white to card, and now brown as well. The brown was just as filthy as the white was; the first wash water was the same colour as the fibre. There is another 3/4 of a trashbag full to go.And lastly but never least is The Imp. She spends most evenings on my lap while I watch TV and has never interfered with fibre tasks. If I leave the comfort of my recliner and therefore remove her, this is what I am shown when I return. And do not think she wants her belly rubbed. She most adamantly does not and I have to wrestle her out of the chair so I can reclaim it.

I have spent my weekend ironing, shopping, gardening, sleeping, and yesterday suddenly was struck by a desire to work on my 4 shaft loom. I had to rethread it once more and sley the reed at the same time, but it didn't terrify me the way it used to. The studio is still a mess so no photos of that yet. My little furry assistant helped out by knocking most of what was on the table between the looms on the floor.

I mentioned before my love affair with rock. I have been watching a BBC series called "The Seven Ages of Rock" and I cannot get my head around what they are talking about. I know the Brits have a completely different view of rock than Americans do, and naturally the Brits claimed they invented it. The first show was the birth of rock and supposedly covered 1965-1969. According to this show The Who were the first real rock band, there were no American bands mentioned except for the black blues artists who influenced bands like the Stones. There was not even a passing mention of that band from Liverpool known as the Beatles. The second show was about art rock which supposedly included psychedelia altho drugs are hardly mentioned in either show. The bands covered were Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Velvet Underground, Roxy Music and early Genesis. That's it. When talking about the idea of concept albums or music being dramatic, nobody seems to remember Tommy by the previously mentioned band The Who and I distinctly remember the furor it sparked in the early 1970's. What about Sgt. Pepper? I don't know if I want to watch the rest of this series altho there are some wonderful interviews. Watching Jack Bruce describe how he came up for the opening riff for "Sunshine of your love" was worth the pain, also to find out that Ginger Baker is still alive.

You will only get the drivel of my brain since things have been deadly boring here at chez Swanknitter. I lost all of last week to a lurgie (ain't that a lovely bit of Aussie slang? Means bug or virus or whatever's going around). At the end of the week I was delighted to notice that my legs didn't hurt. Hurray! A cure for fibro--simply stay in bed all the time! When I said this to my GP yesterday (with heavy sarcasm), he said some people do just that. Because all activity hurts, they just retreat into being an invalid. I'd go stir crazy if I tried that. I got so frustrated when I was home recovering from my knee surgery and I couldn't go dig in the garden or even work around the house. Still, I didn't like waking up to sore legs this AM.

We have had about a week of heavy overcast skies and prediction of rain daily (just to give lie to my pronouncement about the lovely sunny winter days here in Canberra). We haven't had a drop of rain until today. And of course it rains today because I have a very industrious tradesman replacing my front porch. No power tools in the rain please. He is also going to replace the steps to the back deck which I now know were not made to code, with the last step being 3 cm too high. I always thought what last step was a doozy but now I know why.

I have been listening to a great backlog of Bush Telegraph podcasts and there were a series from the outskirts of Lake Eyre. When we (H2 and I) were madly in love with Australia, we devoured the whole Arthur Upfield series about the half-caste detective Napoleon Bonaparte. The Boney mysteries are now viewed at worst as racist and at best dated and patronizing, but for us they gave intriguing snapshots of life in various places like Broome, as they were in the 1930's when the mysteries were written. There was one written about the channel country and the sudden floods that could isolate vast areas of what had been desert. This year, floods in Queensland sparked what happens only about once a decade now, the flooding of Lake Eyre. It's a salt lake, 15 meters below sea level and when it floods, thousands of birds magically appear to breed. They even arrive before the water by some bird ESP so far undiscovered. I wish I could have seen it. Here's lovely shot of the lake in flood. If you Google "Lake Eyre flood birds" you'll get more info. Thus it is not strange that at least one Aboriginal group has as their totem animal the pelican, when they are hundreds of miles from the ocean.

So far I love my Macbook, and have become somewhat addicted to the trackpad. There are still a few manoeuvres that are a bit difficult, like when you are trying my move things all the way across the screen for instance, but the trackpad is very sensitive and I miss the scrolling ability when I go back to a PC. I have not been able to synch my bookkeeping files from the PC to the MAC but I may close out at the end of the fiscal year and start new.

A fibre update: I have almost finished the socks for my boss and by some sock magic, the stripes are duplicating themselves in exactly the same places even tho I didn't make any attempt to make them do so. I tried on CAW after putting the turtleneck in and found that, when the shoulder drop was figured in, the sleeves would be the right length. So the first sleeve got cast off and I'm knitting the second. Since the rest of the jumper is already constructed, all that will be left is sewing the the sleeves and doing the side seams. I am decreasing for the armholes on the back of the ribbon shell. I got one of the huge bags of processed roving, now to be called Robin's wool after the owner of the sheep it came from. I am not totally happy with my spinning so far but I will have to spin and ply a bit and wash it to see if I like the results. The loom is for sale on eBay but the only interest I've had is from somebody who wanted me to lower the price.

I have been grasping for something to post since it's not very exciting here at home. I've watched a lot of DVDs and Foxtel. I am in love with Clive Owen. I am reading Sherri Tepper's The Companions which, as all of her books are, is wonderful even if some of the main characters are dogs. I have almost finished my latest BBBB which is House of Rain by Craig Childs. This is an exceedingly readable description, told in the first person, about "what happened to the Anasazi." I put that in quotes because the book describes where they went and why. He literally walked hundreds of miles across the American Southwest and then northern Mexico following their tracks, some of which had been documented and some that had not. He describes in beautifully written prose what daily life was like between 400 and 1400 A.D. in these areas and his affinity with deserts and knowledge of the interconnection of water and people makes this book a 5 star. I may go back and read his other books. The Southwest is one place I've never been but would like to see.

The photo above is the only recent fibre I can show you. The three white skeins are my production of alpaca from the spinning I was doing pre-surgery. I washed them yesterday and I found it interesting that wet alpaca smells like wet hair: like a beauty salon after several shampoos, and not like wet wool. I am thinking of dyeing one skein red and knitting a Swans scarf out of it. The weaving is a dish towel from Laura Fry. Not that I would ever use it as a dish towel, but I admire her weaving and her knowledge which she freely shares with even novices like me. The towel is a twill in cotton and linen and is what I wish I could weave some day.

Post-surgery update: I am doing very well on the knee rehab. Walked yesterday again and want to make it 2 houses down where there is a footpath (sidewalk) to the next street over. My street has no footpaths and walking in the street or gutter can be a bit nervewracking with cars whizzing by and broken pavement. My back has been killing me but I think it's a result of unusual sleeping positions and soon I will clear out the bed of extra padding and go back to normal. Having one weak knee and a sore back makes moving around the house a bit challenging at times but I am managing.

You know you've got strange priorities when you buy a new bedside lamp because your cat doesn't like the one you have. My faithful halogen bedside lamp died (the base cracked and fell apart). The Imp loved the old lamp as she used it as a heat lamp and/or spotlight on her beauty. I replaced it with a squat table lamp from the guest bed room but she couldn't get the same effect from a lamp whose shade she could barely fit under, although she tried. She also seemed to believe she must go under the shade to get to the window sill. So I went to K-Mart today and bought a new lamp just like the old one and she immediately went and sat under it looking very pleased. The things we do...

I had a mammogram a couple of weeks ago and just got a call from the clinic and they want me back to look at some "small calcification" in my left breast. I will not panic. My mother died of breast cancer. My half sister is currently undergoing chemo for breast cancer. I will not panic yet.

I finished washing one bag of alpaca! The next bag has extremely long locks and I have questioned its breed. 8" long but just as dirty if not more so. I'd show a photo but pure white fibre is a bit difficult to photograph!

My throat is still very sore. I went to the medical clinic (packed at 5 PM on a Sunday, go figure) and waited 2.5 hours to see a GP who looked at my throat and said "Very red" (Duh), wrote me a script for antibiotics and said bye. A) I think all the GPs bar one in the practice are afraid of me because they know I have a complicated medical history, B) he didn't really listen to my description of what happened but thought (red throat=strep->antibiotics). It is slightly better today and I also got some soluble Panadol which help me take the rest of my meds. Stayed home from work partly because I was tired and partly because I hate croaking at people who still want to talk even tho I can't. Ate yoghurt and frozen yoghurt and fruit (watermelon was good).

Before I went to the clinic I dabbled in the garden, spreading snail bait, weeding out vinca, killing ants and tried unsuccessfully to spray my homemade animal deterrent on the berry plants since something (guess what) is eating the leaves. They can't reach the berries because they hang down low but they eat the f**king leaves off. And after I give them bananas, the ungrateful wretches. But the upside was I picked my first strawberries! Yippee! Now all I need is some cream. In my ear all the time is the Bear's voice ("strawbs") and I really needed a hug for my sore throat.

Last night I plied one ply of merino with one ply of mohair to try as sock yarn. I was also naughty and bought a skien of sock yarn from Sonny and Shear Dream in color Smooshy sock yarn and Lorna's Laces roving. Why does there have to be roving from Lorna's Lace. My flesh is too weak to stop myself from buying it. I did have to chuckle at them claiming how fine 22 micron merino is. The top of the line is around 12 and there is drive to go below 10 microns.

I am beginning to lose interest in Steven Pinker's book. The first chapter was about categorizing verbs according to their actions and it was too much like Linguistics 101 and I have to admit that this analytical side of linguistics is always the part that I had a hard time getting interested in. So I flipped ahead to his chapter on metaphor which I had heard him discuss in a podcast. He was using as his example the introduction to the Declaration of Independence ("When in the course of human events...") and I was with him with "dissolve the bonds" and even some further examples, although I doubt even Thomas Jefferson was thinking about the Latin origins of currently used English words when he wrote them. But when he got to the etymology of "it" to discuss its use as metaphor, I lost it. I just don't believe that going deep into the etymology of pronouns reveals anything about how the brain creates metaphors or what those metaphors mean about human cognition. Here he had spent the whole first chapter discussing how a child has to learn how specific verbs fall into which class to know when they take objects or imply change of state, and then he thinks people are aware of the etymology of "it" as a metaphor? It's this type of line of reasoning that ultimately drove me out of the discipline (aside from the lack of jobs) because I could not work up enough intellectual energy to actually buy into this even enough to pass my comprehensive exams let alone teach it. I should have done my PhD here where you can narrow your field enough and there are no comprehensives (which in theory I think is a bad idea but would have given me an out).

Here are 2 of the 3 items I picked up at the post office today. At right is a Potluck Roving (colourway Iris) and the small cones at right are from Village Spin and Weave and the rest of the cones came from the ebayer Walnut Creek Yarn Company a great source of mill ends and other good stuff. I also got 2 reeds for the 2 looms, a 6 dent for the table loom and a fine one from the big loom. They are spotless stainless steel. I washed some of the alpaca I have been flick carding yesterday and it came up spotlessly white. Someone on some group said you could add Napi-sam to wash water to get white fleeces really white. I thought that a bit drastic so I used Oxy Action with my dish soap for the first wash and shampoo for the second.What I had thought was fawn is really white--you just have to get it clean!

Speaking of getting things clean, I found out via some folks who are trying to get some clean Shetland fleeces to me that they haven't even been mailed by the mill yet. We were under the impression that they were shipped in May, but in fact that was only when the mill sent samples to the USDA for the certificate needed to send them here. I am trying very hard to not mention the name of the mill because it's the only one who was even willing to try this route of me buying fleeces, them processing them and shipping to me with the correct paperwork. Apparently the mill wasn't too upset about the fact that 6 months have gone by without a response from the USDA. So the Shetland breeders are trying to light a fire under the mill owner to get the paperwork. I called Quarantine here, thinking it might be in some backlog and they said (to my surprise because this is contrary to what their web site says) that if the paperwork is correct, they don't even sample, but just send it on. I have 3 Shetland fleeces and a BFL in the hands of the mill and 2 more fleeces set aside (and paid for) to see if this process works. I now have been waiting for a year for my fleeces to be processed by the mill but nobody else is willing to do this for me so here I sit.

I didn't have a good start to the day. When I took my handful of pills this morning, I think one got stuck in my throat and it must have been something that was not meant to dissolve anywhere but my tummy. My throat burned like I had swallowed acid and closed up painfully. I can still (at 6PM) barely swallow so I don't know what I can eat. And of course I've lost my voice. I hope things settle down enough so I can take my evening meds.

After housework (like vacuuming) I spent the day in the yard, ridding the driveway edge of ivy, mulching the beans (and the peas who decided it wasn't too late after all to come up even if they are 2 months late), planting some portulaca in a big terra cotta tub and adding one more tomato to the mix. I planted some melon seeds where I pulled out the going-to-seed silverbeet.