One of the things about spinning that was not adequated explained to me (or that I didn't adequately grasp) is the importance of fibre preparation. [If you are a new spinner, I recommend you viewing the video/DVDs available from Victorian Videos from Mabel Stowe or Patsy Zawistoski. These may be available from your guild or you can rent them.] I am not referring to washing raw fibre but what you should do with even the most commerical of tops or rovings or whathever the dealer sold it as. If you are processing wool yourself you will have all the steps of washing, drying, carding or combing or flicking but I am talking about commercially prepared roving. At the most basic when you take a hunk of roving to spin and pull off a section to spin (never cut), you sould again split it lengthwise, and sometimes split it again. Roving gets compressed for and during shipment taking all the air out of it and making the fibres try to stick together. The photo at left shows a length of my Brown Sheep mill end roving as pulled out of the bag, compressed. You could just twist the roving and get a form of thick rope that would hold together pretty well. Splitting it down to smaller sections opens it up. Then you should grasp the end in one hand and move the other hand a bit beyond the length of individual fibres and gently pull, drawing it out lengthwise. This will make it loads easier to spin. Go down the length of the segment and pull the whole way, lengthening the segment but not to the extent that you are pulling it apart, just letting the fibres slide past each other more easily. The photo at right shows the roving after being split and-pre-drafted; you can now see the pattern of my sofa through the wool. Then, depending how thoroughly your roving has been processed you can do what somebody called "monkey grooming". You've seen monkeys going over each other's fur, picking out what I shall call nasty bits. Your roving might need some grooming to remove noils (little balls of fibre that got tangled up in carding), and second cuts (short pieces of wool that occur where the shearer started and then went back for a second go at the fleece), and our beloved VM (vegetable matter). I am totally surprised that the Brown Sheep mill end roving I am spinning still has the occasional bit of weed or grass seed. I would have thought by this time there would be nothing left. Commercial wool scourers treat wool through a sulfuric acid process that should remove all VM. If your wool was processed at home or, even as we see in as commercial a business as Brown Sheep, there can still bit of grass. This is why Australian Quarantine is so leery about importing wool, and I don't blame them as one of those weed seeds could be a noxious pest that could cause millions of dollars to eradicate. So I pine for wool that I can only afford as raw fleece, and doesn't occur in Australia. Shetland, Icelandic, Wensleydale, Blue Faced Leicester... And here are the last 3 balls of discount Opal that arrived today. The centre one is really red, not pink.

I haven't posted in a while for no good reason. Not enough hours in the day. Today my IBS (irritable bowel syndrome, another companion of FMS) is making a brief visit, just enough to make me want to stay near facilities. Dinner was bread & butter. The senior cat is driving me batty. I let her sleep with me because it's winter and I feel sorry for her because the Imp gets so much attention. But she's a big cat and when she insists on sitting on me, my leg muscles complain after a while and she acts all hurt and indignant when I ask her to get down so I can move. When she comes to bed she frequently has to be awakened from where she's been sleeping on a heating vent to come to my bedroom and then she comes to the door and just sits looking in. I practically have to coax her to cross the threshold. Then there is this heavy lump usually in the middle of the bed. I have to close the door or the Imp would either use me as a jumping castle, pick on the senior cat provoking a middle of the night cat-fight on top of me, or lick my neck (she likes licking the Bear's ankles when she sleeps with him). If we have to use the litter box in the night we wake Mummy up to let us out and then scratch on the door to be let back in. This is why I am a cat lover....

On the knitting front I have done about 8" on my MIL's Eros scarf and either because of the way this ball was dyed or because I am knitting it a bit wider than mine, it is displaying nice broad stripes of colour, turquoise, lavender, purple in shiney viscose dots against the black binder. I have finished a pair of socks for The Bear in a boring navy fleck and cast on a pair for me in Trekking in a purples and blues colourway. I am using my new rosewood dpns which are a bit longer than I normally use but are so pleasing. I listened to the Knitcast at work today and was drooling at the description of the luxury yarns on sale at the Naked Sheep in Toronto. It was my first notice of the Sea Silk yarn from Handmaiden. Sounds scrumptious, but then all their yarns are. I also stumbled upon Honeypot yarns online but they don't seem to have much of a retail presence yet. Their colour mixes are to die (dye) for and the fibres are deluxe. I wish sometimes I were more of a spendthrift and bought luxury yarns, like silk and cashmere and angora but my New England purse snaps shut at the prices. I got my 2 discounted Opal balls, one is Zebra which I couldn't resist.

A brief post regarding footy and Australian English. Pictured is Brett Kirk, or course nicknamed "Captain" Kirk and indeed, one of the Swans'team catains this year. He is tenacious, fearless, the hard ball getter. Stats on tackles are fantastic and I think he is definitely worthy of his nickname. As you know I am reading Shake Down the Thunder which is the story of the Swans, told in interviews with players and people around the team. It is fascinating to know the inside feelings and tactics, such as the fact that they practiced last minute goaling so that Nick Davis's goal in the St Kilda final was not as freaky as it seemed but still magic. Now a quote from Kirky, "I copped one early and basically had a hole in my head that required 15 stitxhes. I felt pretty ordinary for a while but that's footy." So, to any non-AFL fans, you don't leave the ground if you are hurt; they swaddle your head up with bandages so you don't bleed on anyone and you continue to play. Only if you are carried off in a stretcher and are taken to hospital are you out of the match. That's not totally true but close. Notice also the use of the work "ordinary". Ordinary means not very good as opposed to the American meaning of not special, basic, vanilla, generic. "An ordinary day" here means pretty awful as opposed to a day like any other. "That meal was pretty ordinary" means you'll never go back to that restaurant rather than it wasn't anything special but acceptable. Aussies still think American English has completely overrun Australian idioms. They don't even know what is Australian and what isn't. I saw a book about "lost Australian turns of speech" and right on the cover was "It's snowing down south" which any American lady of a certain age knows means "your slip is showing". It may be dying because nobody wears a slip anymore but it's not uniquely Australian.

I have actually been quite busy fibre-wise. I have almost finished carding the grey from the spotted fleece. Lastly there is the white to card. Tonight I wound off the recently spun Wendy Dennis's hand-dyed Polwarth and the photo does not do it justice. It has a lovely silky hand to it and there is a very subtle interplay of blue, rose and a grey/green. I hope there is enough to make a lace scarf. I am very pleased since I aimed for a finer weight yarn than I usually spin and it looks nice, but it has not been washed so I don't know how it will bloom when it hits water. I really liked this Polwarth and I have some dark brown but I will be on the look-out for more in Bendigo. I have another lot of Wendy Dennis's hand-dyed in the stash

I also received my shipment of mill ends from Brown Fleece as sold by The Sheep Shed Studio and I am very pleased (maybe I'm just easily pleased). I have a pound each of mostly black with grey stripes (pictured) and a pound of mostly grey with black stripes. I also got a pound of purple superwash which may end up socks.

I am definitely off the yarn diet as I have bought a number of balls of Opal sock yarn at what I consider steal prices. Opal and Trekking are my two favourite sock yarns and while I try everything, they still rank at the top. I also found a place in Canada off loading ends of Philosopher's Wool at half price. I know that people think there are "nicer" wools than theirs for fair isle, but I've got the book and I love the designs and I want to give it a go with wool I know is made for the designs. There wasn't a complete colour range but I got navy and a lighter blue, two shades of raspberry and light grey to play with. I figure if I don't buy a kit or some other pre-planned fair isle thing I'll never get around to actually doing it.

And guess what? The Imp just brought me a sheep! She has been trying to removing its stuffing for days but I keep putting it back.

I surrender to the High school meme floating about (try Googling it) partly because of some private stuff going on in my life. Any questions regarding high school have 2 answers, up to senior year when I was happily in NY and senior year when I was unhappily in FLA.

1. Who was your best friend? In NY, Wendy and Patti who went to the movies with me every weekend, and who listened to the same music and talked on the phone endlessly. In Fla, I didn't have any.

2. What sports did you play? None, either place.

3. What kind of car did you drive? In NY I wasn't legal to drive. In Fla, my mother's wide-track Pontiac, 1959 model.

4. It's Friday night, where are you? At home, watching TV with my parents. I didn't (wasn't allowed to) date.

5. Were you a pary animal? You must be kidding.

6. Were you in the "in" crowd? See no. 5. Academically I was close to the top in my class in both places but that doesn't make you popular.

7. Did you even skip school? Nope. Too afraid of screwing up my grades.

8. Ever smoke a cigarette? Yep. My father owned stock in American Tobacco and I snitched his free samples at 16. It was love at first drag and I smoked until I was 30.

9. Were you a nerd? I suppose so, if grades counted. Fashion-wise I made all my own clothes and made Vogue copies of the latest fashions.

10. Did you ever get suspended/expelled? Never. I was a Good Girl.

11.Can you sing the alma mater? Not to either one. Not even a glimmer of a memory.

12. Who was your favourite teacher? In NY, probably Mr. Snow, the chemistry teacher. I don't remember the names of my Fla teachers.

13. Favourite class? In NY French or English; in Fla, Humanities.

14.What was you School's full name? Eastchester High School, Manatee County High School

15. School Mascot? Eagles; Hurricanes

16. Did you go to the Prom? No.

17. If you could go back and do it over, would you? No, and I'd opt out of the senior year in Fla and go straight into college, which I could have done, but didn't know it at the time.

18. What do you remember most about graduation? The excrutiating sun-burn I had on my shoulders due to partying too long in the sun at the senior beach party (the only party I went to in Fla because the whole class went)

19. Favourite memory of your senior year? The guy in front of me in home room who was nice to the new girl and let me make up stories about us as a couple to send back north. In retrospect, I think he was gay!

20. Were you ever posted on the senior wall? What's a senior wall?

21. Did you have a job your senior year? No.

22. Who did you date? Nobody.

23. Where did you go most often for lunch? The classroom where we had Humanities next period; a bunch of kids hung out there instead of going to lunch.

24. Have you gained weight since then? My word, yes. I thought I was fat in high school, but baby look at me now!

25. What did you do after graduation? Go to college across the state and had a wonderful time.

26 What year did you graduate? 1966.

Why am I trying to post while The Imp is asleep like a baby on my left arm and shoulder? She may be small for a cat but she still weighs a bit. There. I extracted the claws from my shoulder and put her down. As another sign of her deep devotion, the sheep was right outside the shower when I opened the door to get out this AM.

I am going to veer slightly off the course fibrewise to another passion which is needlepoint (sometimes called tapestry but that gets confused with "real" tapestry which is a weaving art such as practiced by the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, whose products I can only gawk at). At left is the secord of three panels in an Anchor kit of pictures of tropical fish. It is about half done which means the kit is half done since one panel is complete. I didn't realize (or hid my eyes) that the whole thing was counted and my eyes don't do counted very well these days. But this kit is rather forgiving because nobody will know if one bit of weed is a few stitches off. I have done all four of my dining room charis in different designs (done back in the states while watching NFL before I discovered AFL which gives you no time to do any craft) and lots of pillows that I have mostly given away. I recently added to my very small stash of tapestry kits (really only one) buying an Ehrmann kit (at right) on sale. I have done two of their Kaffe Fassett kits which I bought while in Birmingham UK on a business trip in 1988 but they were given away and I can't afford his current work. Ah for the days of better exchange rates! When one lives outside the US/UK world one is always aware of the exchange rates, and they appear in the nightly news so you know exactly where they are. When the Aussie dollar goes up I race off the buy stuff and when it's down I keep my plastic in its place.

I mentioned my eyes and someone had commented on the presence of kerataconus in the list of ailments. It is a congenital corneal defect which causes the cornea to bulge out of its normal curve. This causes blurred and/or double vision which slowly degrades over a period of years; I was diagnosed in 1984. While it runs in families, I have few relatives and no full siblings. It is correctable for a while by gas-permeable (rigid) contact lenses but at some point some people with the condition reach the point where vision is no longer correctable for the work they do. I deal with computer data bases all day and must be able to read print in a variety of sizes and conditions. Computer software has come a long way in being able to customize fonts and sizes but most of us can remember the days when it was one size, in green on black. When my vision could only be corrected to 20/100, my doctor (at the Ohio State University Eye Hospital) operated to give me corneal grafts in both eyes (1989 & 1990). Now my vision is corrected (under ideal conditions in the optomotrist's chair) to 20/20 but one contact is adjusted for distance and the other for close and I still need reading glasses for close work. Therefore, counted work is difficult and it takes an hour to do about one square inch of the fish canvas. I gave up my work as a photographer. I was good enough that I was encouraged to turn pro and I was tempted but was too chicken to give up my paycheck. I sold a number of my photos, but when I could no longer see to focus my enlarger in the darkroom, I gave it up and bought an autofocus camera. Now the digital equivalent is beyond my means at the moment, but I hope to have something better than what I am currently dealing with (Kodak 3MG pixel).

The bear just returned from a trip to the hardware store with a present (which obviously didn't come from the hardware store), a new book by Jim Main about the Swans winning the AFL Premierseship last year. Yes, Shake Down the Thunder comes from the Notre Dame fight song, which has been altered to fit the Swans. This is one of those footy history mysteries as to why the All-Australian AFL (or formerly VFL) teams all have American tunes as their club songs. Do not ask me because I don't know. The Swans eventually lost Saturday's match by 2 points. I am not all that upset because they were due for a loss and the middle of the SCG was a mix of swimming pool and mud bath. I feel sorry for J who chose that match for her first Swans match in Sydney but then I have say through a gfew like that in that ground.

The Swannies are slogging it out with the Saints at the SCG in a downpour and I got so angry at the refereeing that I turned it off. One too many decisions which when done by the opposition is fine but when the Swans do it, it results in a free kick to the other side. Any match played in a downpour in not a game of skill and AFL is a skill sport not a brute force sport like NFL or gridiron as it is called here. Akin to trying to play a passing game in a blizzard.

Since we have a wet long weekend, I have done exciting things like re-organize my knitting needles (all circulars in steel, bamboo, rosewood, ebony, etc.) and find a pattern for S's Christmas present. He's an 8 and I wanted an Aran but not an excessive Aran. Why do so many children's knitting patterns stop before or at size 8? Even the patterns that had adult versions had an enormous gap between the largest child's size and the smallest adult. I ended up with a semi-vintage Paton's booklet from the 70's with all the children looking surly in the photos. The yarn is bottle green superwash. I salvaged some really heavy-duty plastic sleeves for knitting patterns from some discarded material at the library. They won't disintegrate easily.

I found needles to knit my MIL a scarf out of Plymouth Eros after she admired mine. Hers will be greens and blues as mine was blues and purples. I have a real thing at the moment for ribbon and railroad yarns. But I am SO over eyelash yarn.

I also got TWO packages from Amazon today, one of which contained Deb Menz's Color in Spinning which I have been pining for for when it was out of print and finally bought, as well as Yarns to Dye for so I am keen to dye something. I have done some dyeing before but never in a controlled fashion. While I love to buy the richly dyed roving seen at fibre fests, I am often disappointed that the colours mingle so when spun. I almost prefer to hand-dye yarns rather than the roving but both give wonderful results in different ways. Trying to dye roving so that the resulting spun yarn will not only look good on its own but also maintain its colourway when knitted into a garment sometimes seems too hard. Deb had many swatches in her book and I had a hard time imagining them in garments, or which garments would suit which colour combination. Thus I have books on dyeing roving, dyeing yarn, knitting with handpainted yarn, etc. Try to put all the pieces together from plain wool to finished garment will be a goal when I tavckle one of those lumps of white wool.

I know I said that I adored podcasts. Well, I listened to one knitting one yesterday that was so bad I wanted to scream. It sounded like a 6th grade book report, both in the content and the delivery. I will not name names because I am too polite but I will not listen again. If that's the best that can be produced I am ashamed of the the knitting community which produces wonderful blogs.

I suppose having a post being mostly fibre-related is a bit of a shock. First off I received one of my parcels from Elann containing some Katia Twist which is supposed to match up (not exactly I know but close enough to make it interesting) with some of the same I bought on our last trip to the States. I also ordered a Katia pattern book which has lots of interesting summer itrms in both DK and heavier cotton weights. I am going to have to find an alternative outlet for the wool I have, and am producing, because I have come to realize that in the Australian climate there is more opportunity to wear T-shirts than Aran jumpers, no matter how much I love Aran jumpers. I still have the one my mother knitted for me 30 years ago and because I take very good care of my knitted items, it is still in fine condition. Therefore I don't need another, do I?

I have also been informed of a forth-coming e-magazine called Fiber Femmes, which is due to start publication on July 1. For some reason I put my hand up and they want an article on the WW2 socks. I was going to photocopy the pattern booklet for my uniform reconstructor. He said I should knit more and sell them on eBay! As if anyone could pay me enough for my time to repeat the exercise. Knowing what I know now, it will not happen again because these aren't just garden variety socks!

I am in serious love with my iPod. I wonder what I ever did without it, and just listening to CDs on a portable player is not the same thing. Let alone that with 30GB I can load more CDs than I could carry, there is all the additional content available. I do not have a video-enabled iPod but then I can't imagine watching video on that teeny screen. But audio-books and podcasts are simply more than I had expected. I just updated my darling with all the regular ones I listen to such as NPR's science and health shows, and the ABC Radio National equivalents and then branched out to look for knitting content. I already knew that Knitcast existed and Knitting Review's podcast. For some reason Cast On's podcast refuses to download and I don't what step of the process is hung up. The first episode of Knitcast I listened to was not impressive. Ann Budd is a designer I know, and I think her spiral bound pattern book is one I have used several times since it covers all sizes and weight of yarn if you just want a generic pattern. (I tend to knit complicated patterns out of plain yarns and plain designs out of fancy yarns so this book comes in handy when you have a yarn you want to show off and just need a basic pattern) But the podcast sound was pretty bad and the questions asked didn't really interest me. Unless someone has an unusual way
they learned to knit like Kaffe Fassett, who learned to knit on a train, finding out that somebody learned from an aunt of a grandmother isn't particularly interesting. I'd like to know what kinds of things a Famous Knitter learned first and what kinds of garments excite them or what designs bore them to tears. If they have a favourite fibre and why. If they like to knit summer things or even like to knit in the summer. I knit all year round and may knit cotton in the winter and wool in the summer (which sorta makes sense if you are knitting for the next season). (BTW, I just saw that Opal has cotton sock yarn and I can't wait to get some!) So I was unimpressed with that interview but I will certainly continue to listen. One of my many health issues is tinnitus, which manifests itself in me as very high frequency whistle/cricket sounds. It is always there but I have checked and it doesn't get better or worse when I am exposed to noise. Actually I was thinking how noisy the footy match was (just in general and including the drunken lout sitting near us who kept yelling for Barry Hall to get back in the goal square) but when we came home the tinnitus was less rather than more. So I was worried for a while that having headphones on most of the time would make it worse, but it doesn't seem to. Listening to a podcast while you are ironing or carding wool is a very pleasant thing to do.

Sometimes yarn shopping can be a hazardous sport, especially if you have certain physical weaknesses. C told me the LYS was having a sale, so of course I had to go check things out to see if I could score a bargain. Their sale bins have been the source of many goodies. So I went and pawed through piles of bags of yarn trying to find something the I liked, that there was enough of to knit a jumper, and that I could afford. Unfortunately, the only stuff I really liked was some Zara but at $10 a ball even at 20% off that was too steep for me when there is plenty in the stash. I saw lots of other, cheaper yarns I liked but there were 7 balls of that and 6 of this. So an hour of standing yielded nothing but 3 balls of sock yarn. The grey is for the Bear and surprisingly he says he wouldn't mind the black/blue/green stripe. This from a man who demands the plainest jumpers I can bring myself to knit. Socks apparently can be any colour. No doubt because he wears elastic sided boots most of the time and they don't show. At any rate I then had to go to the chemist (drugstore) and by the time I got home my legs were screaming. That was Monday. Tues I worked and slogged trolleys of books around despite my legs screaming, and then went out to lunch with J. We had a good long chat and since we were at Canberra's cheese cafe, Silo, I had a goat & ewe cheese plate for lunch and 2 of the 3 cheeses were blue. Served with Silo's delightful bread this was a gourmet lunch. I had watched a couple of episodes of "Cheese slices" on cable and my mouth was waiting for some really nice cheese, a sad weakness when you are trying to watch your weight. Silo's slices are very thin and the blue cheese fills the mouth so you don't mind. By the time I got home my legs were so sore I crawled into bed and stayed there until 8PM and skipped dinner.

I got the newsletter from the Australian Bush Heritage people (see link to right) and their latest acquisition is not all that far from Bendigo. Since we are contemplating retiring to the area, I read it carefully and then though that I should consult them when we are going to look at land. They know how to assess land for things like weed infestations, damage from grazing, what vegetation is native and what not. This is all new to me and I know very little about Victorian native ecosystems so I had better get advice. I am so looking forward to our trip in July, not just for the wool show, but we have a meeting set up with a real estate agent to start the process of looking for land, and we have lots more exploring in the neighbourhood to do. I found an orchard that grows 10 varieties of apples and a winery that also makes fruit liqueurs so there is lots to find out if this will be our new stomping ground.

Round 10: Not only did the boys win, but we watched them at Manuka Oval in Canberra along with the largest footy crowd ever at Manuka (14,900) . This is another of those "home" games by a non-resident team, in this case the Kangaroos who have made an attempt to become "Canberra's AFL team" except hardly anybody goes except when they play the Swans. Thier contract for this arrangement is up at the end of this season and one of the commentators was so brilliant as to mention that if the Swans played here more often, there would be bigger crowds. Duh. I will admit that the number of Roos supporters has increased over the years altho they are still vastly outnumbered by Swans fans. We had not-wonderful seats, staring into the sun all day but the folks in the shade must have been very chilly. Swans tore away in the first quarter, went to sleep in the second and third, got an earful from Roosy at 3/4 time and came out and wrestled the game back after being down by 37 points. When they play well they are unstoppable and the Roos only got ahead because the Swans played like they didn't care for most of 2 quarters (as well as some really doubtful umpiring calls). I thought it was strange that they were continuing to advertise on TV for people to come out and "support AFL in Canberra" all week when I knew the match was sold out. They meant "support the Roos in Canberra" but I don't think that will make money. Above you see Adam Goodes (at left) kicking for goal, and (at right) some match play with Michael O'Loughlin closest to the camera. As always go here for all the footy details. Those of you unfamiliar with the league may be very confused by the word "Roos." As a collective noun it applied the the (formerly North Melbourne) Kangaroos. As a singular name, and as in "Roosy" it refers to our head coach, Paul Roos. When he was a player, whever he got the ball the crowd would yell "Roooooooos!" which some might confuse people thinking that we were booing. He is immensely popular with fans and players. Everyone has a nickname in footy. Roos becomes Roosy.

And I have washed the socks and now will ponder how to dye them to get them the proper colour for the WW2 uniform. All I can say is that soldiers must have had awfully skinny legs in those days!

This will not be a long post but I had to pass on this photo for cat-lovers. It was on a page of wacky Japanese design ideas. I think the look on the cat's face sums it up pretty good. "You expect me to dust?"

Also had a mad dash out the back when The Imp decided to follow the Bear outside when he went to hang laundry. Fortunately the smell of the BBQ was so intriguing that she didn't get very far. The thought of her in the big wide world is a terrifying one. She has now gutted the sheep and removed one eye.

I have both bad news and good news. The bad is that there has been a death in the family and I am pretty down about it and the good news is that I finished knitting the WW2 socks. My not jumping up and down should indicate my low feeling at this moment. Getting the news when in the middle of a migraine made everything worse.

Of course, I'm still sitting here, reading blogs, throwing the stupid sheep for The Imp to fetch and give me to throw again. At one point she was standing on Della's keyboard with her rear end in my face lashing me with her tail. Does this mean something beyond she is demented?

I had to post this picture. I will not name the fibre purveyor who is selling this. It is priced at $26.00US and the site doesn't give a weight. Now, I understand the lure to the non-spinner of hand-crafted yarn but what the heck are you supposed to make out of this lump of stuff? I cannot begin to express (in a genteel and non-pornographic way) what I think of this crap. It gives a bad name to people who spend large amounts of time hand-crafting gorgeous yarns to have this stuff sold as "unique" and "one of a kind" (I certainly hope so) but in my opinion it's akin to someone selling the pot your 6-year-old made in craft class as equally unique and hand-crafted. This stuff masquerading as art yarn outrages me. Maybe I ought to set up a fancy web-site and sell my overspun and mistakes as one-of-a-kind art yarns. Stop ranting now.

The Imp is driving me mad this morning. I think it's because she found a long-lost toy, a Christmas tree ornament of a sheep. When I went back to bed this morning after taking my meds (I don't work Weds) she brought her sheep to savage on top of me. She has twice this morning made the excrutiating noise that is her all-purpose vocalization, meaning "I am not happy." Usually when I tell she can't do something she dearly wants to do like jump to the top of the shower screen at an inconvenient moment, or get into the rubbish bin, she will look at me and make this gut-wrenching squall. So this morning I am being presented with the sheep at every moment, no matter what I'm doing (unloading the washing machine, etc.) Right now she is sitting at my feet to the right and the sheep is to my left and she is debating pouncing on it.

One of the lists I belong to has been on a discussion of woolen vs worsted and long draw. Since I am self taught, I learned what works for me and produces the kind of yarn I like to knit with which turns out to be semi-worsted. Inch-worm type drafting and no spin entering the drafting triangle. Nice fluffy yarns are warm and can show off some kinds of fibers but I am a fan of Aran knitting and textures that need a yarn to show off their ins-and-outs so woolen is not my preferred spinning method. I have done it when I finally spun my first black Shetland (taking a photo of black wool is a bit hard), but when I'm spining 4' long fine fibres, worsted is the way to go. I still can't get my head around long draw but I think I'd have to see someone do it.

There's also a discussion of how many fleeces is too many. Many of the spinners on this list are far more advanced than I, have been at it longer, and do more of it than I have time to. So many talk about having more than 10 whole fleeces in their stash, which makes mine seem puny. I still am not sure whether you are supposed to wash the fleece before long-term storage as I have seen firm "rules" saying both yes and no. I only have one unwashed fleece and it was purchased 2 weeks ago so maybe I still count as a newbie. We'll see after we go to the Wool show in Bendigo in July. I can really fall in love with wool but I need to find an outlet for the excess. Maybe an eBay sale would work if I can't knit it all. So why am I blogging instead of doing something fibre-related?

Health note: the only medical advice my rheumatologist gave me was that I could safely increase the dosage of one of my meds to reduce pain. So I am doing such, but the down side is that it makes me extremely drowsy unless I am doing something that totally occupies my brain. So yesterday I fell asleep during the news on TV and the day before I fell asleep reading my email. I am becoming a big consumer of podcasts as I have discovered that listening to a podcast at work makes the day fly by. When I am just processing books, my brain is on automatic pilot so having someone talking to me is nice.

Round 9: I am watching the Swannies play Hawthorn on Foxtel (Australian pseudo-cable TV) because the network has inexplicably once again decided that Canberra is not in the Sydney footy demographic and is therefore broadcasting the other match on tonight. I have already had an earful from my good buddy J on this subject (I knew who it was on the phone the minute it rang). So far the Swannies are easily ahead but not walloping them (yet, she says hopefully).

I have been less than regular in posting and this is mostly because I have been in a lot of pain and haven't felt like writing to say such. My friend C came over on Friday and we talked craft and I showed her my most recent purchases and it all came home to me how much craft stuff I have and how I wish I had more time to do it. And time is further limited by how my body wants to behave when I have time. Would I rather take a nap or card fibre? Knit or read? I have turned the heel on the damn sock and am picking up the gusset stitches: the end is in sight, so to speak. I am so eager to knit something else. And I'd even like to get back to spinning my English Leicester again. I will tell this tale to give you an idea of my spinning over-reaching. I like unusual sheep and find merino boring (as has already been established) so for some reason I got into my head that I'd like to spin some English Leiscester. I found a nice breeder in Victoria and bought 2 kilos of raw fleece from her. In retrospect, I realize now how clean it was. But that was my first experience with raw fleece, beautiful lustrous locks of EL. I washed it in mesh bags. I tried flick carding the ends and spinning the locks which was very time consuming, although I was quite satisfied with the results. Then I saw Mabel Ross's video on spinning and used her technique of making mini-roving out of flick-carding and attentuating locks, drawing them out into roving-like bundles and spinning from that. I like that technique much better and spun more than way, but there are still quite a few locks yet to process. I also sent a kilo off for commercial processing just to see what they would do with longwool and, to my surprise, it returned as pencil roving on plastic bobbin-like things.So that remains to be spun as well and takes up a lot of room in my stash. Of course, EL no matter how well spun is not something for knitting everyday garments out of, which is another reason I look longingly at my loom. It is a 4-shaft table loom that I bought used from the Guild for $400 but have yet to do anything with (The Imp goes and hides in it when I yell at her). I am aching to practice on it. When I think of the magic of seeing fabric appear, I can hardly wait although I know it won't happen perfectly the first time. I must learn to practice!

Book report: Big Boring Bedtime Book: White Mughals: by William Dalrymple. I have read every one of his previous books but they were all travel related. This is his first solid, academically-grounded (and studded with footnotes) straight non-fiction. While the topic is one that I always find interesting (India and once again culture contact), because it is more straight non-fiction, it doesn't exactly whip along. But that's fine for a BBB. Fun book: the third in the Thousand Cultures series (sci-fi): The Merchants of Souls by John Barnes. I couldn't remember anything of the first two except for the facts that I read them and liked them until I checked them out on-line and refreshed my memory. So far, it is as good as the others. I have a terrible memory for book titles and have frequently bought the same book twice because I couldn't remember I had already bought it.

The Bear is home and I have no cats fighting over me and I got the first decent night's sleep in a week, although I kept waking up because the side I was lying on hurt and I'd roll over until that side hurt. Repeat till dawn.

I was catching up with my reading this morning and was reading an article about the new movie about September 11. It began by describing how the TV networks decided after a week to stop replaying the footage of the attacks on the TwinTowers. The writer of the article seemed to think that this has made Americans to somehow forget or bury the images, to have been unable to grieve or express their rage and horror at what happened. Now I am not living in the US, and that day has other special significance because of unrelated things going on in my life, but the images of the planes flying into the buildings is burned into my memory and I can barely think about it without tears welling up. Notice how I never had to say anything more than "September 11" and we were all on the same page? I don't understand how the author could think that just because there are now fierce arguments in NYC about the new buildings for Ground Zero (another one of those phrases we instantly identify) that people have somehow forgotten why there is a Ground Zero. I remember the months after the attacks and how gutwrenching it was. Although my husband bought a book of the firefighters' stories of that day, I still can't bear to read some of the material that came out of it. I can't speak for the entire population of the US, but personally I don't need to see the footage to trigger the emotions of that day. I also remember how, in the days that followed, in order to somehow channel our grief that many of us turned to our knitting. It was not only a soothing activity, but it somehow channelled some of our grief and horror out of our hearts and into the yarn, allowing us to cope with life. It didn't matter what we knit or how it turned out. I also remember that the re-birth of knitting as a popular hobby got a big boost around the same time and I don't think it was all the arrival of novelty yarns. September 11 is an emotional trigger for much of the population of the planet. It changed everything, from how we think about security to whether we can knit on airplanes to whom we trust and whom we are suspcious of, for good reason or bad. I won't be watching that movie now. Maybe in five or ten years.

My sister finds my blog simultaneously "boring" and too personal. She doesn't understand how I could share my persoanl feelings with just anybody who chooses to look at his page. I can't address the "boring" part because I think that is simply different personalities. The personal part is that the blog allows me to express some thoughts that I would express with any friend if we were sitting down for a cuppa. I haven't said anything in this blog that I wouldn't say to any person had we had a chance to sit and chat. The bits about my health are there for a specific reason, to describe what it's like to live with chronic illness and fibromyalgia specifically. If you don't care for my opinions you can always click away or leave a comment.

Whew. I just got back from the annual wool festival at Canberra's Old Bus Depot Markets. The building is a cavernous warehouse and every Sunday is full of fascinating stuff. This was the wool weekend and I spent my $150 in 90 minutes and came home. (The Bear is off at a conference this week) In addition to the pictured fibre items, I bought 2 small used paperback books, a pair of dangly black bead earrings and a gorgeous crystalline glazed bowl from a guy whom I think I've already purchased several items from. Whenever he has a new colour of glaze I buy a bowl. This one is porcelain, square with gold crystals. I don't trust this camera to do it justice. I am quickly learning the limitations of this camera but can't afford the quality one I want.

So what fibre did I buy? The left big bag is 1.6 kg of raw fleece, merino cross pale grey from the NE Victorian coloured sheep folks. The right bag is merino cross roving from a wool grower from Tasmania who has recently moved to Yass and is selling off his wool. It is washed roving but has quite a bit of VM in it. Little darker grey than the other but lighter than the other greys I have ($30/kg). The 2 balls of wool, burgundy and green, front left, are from the Yarn Barn and I see socks in their future. $5/100gm. The pink bag on the top is hand-dyed Wensleydale. The skein below it is mohair boucle which I am hoping blends with the kid mohair I bought in Rhinebeck last October (it does!). It came from Coloured Jules. The 2 little packets to the right are silk from Fiberworks as I need to learn to spin silk.

Round 8: The Swannies won again, this time against the Bulldogs at one of those weird things: a "home" game for the Dogs at the SCG. The crowd (32,000) was 90% Swans supporters but officially it was a Dogs home match. They got whupped by my boys altho the Swans' kicking was not as accurate as last week. I am loving watching Lewis Roberts-Thompson bloom as a footy player. From a gangly kid who didn't know what to do with the ball, he has learned, bulked up in weight, and become a real force as a defender. Has a great long kick to clear the ball from the back line. Still has a lot to learn but he's doing so well. Now I cross my fingers he doesn't get injured. Paul Williams is having a great year as well and 300 matches hasn't slowed him down.

I spent quite some time fussing with Della as her display went all weird and them everything froze. I tried rebooting twice and nothing helped but now suddenly she's back to herself.

How is it that The Imp, sound asleep on the back of a chair in the living room, instantly knows when I get ready to change the sheets on my bed so she can "help" by posing charmingly between layers of sheets and blankets? Is there some secret cat alarm that goes off when I shake out a sheet? And how can a cat go from being a compact round furry ball to an extremely long snake-like thing? She just came thundering into the living room with those hard feet and raced the circumference. I believe she is having a spell of post-shit euphoria.

The fibre-related task today wasn't stash fondling but carding the spotted fleece. As mentioned before I have separated the all white and the all not-white-but-not-quite-black and am left with a large amount of somewhere-in-the-middle grey wool. I carded 2 batts of it today setting aside the really light grey bits to do separately. This fleece has a staple length of 4-5" and is extremely fine and getting it off the carder is a battle. In case you don't believe that I really have a spotted fleece, here's a lock and the batts. Pardon the mess but I'm sure there are other people out there whose dining room tables are covered in software documentation, chainsaw oil, and wool.
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I was just looking as someone's blog where the knitter had a link to show their stash. I'm sorry but if you can take photos of the handful of items in your stash and post them individually, that does not count as a stash. That is a small collection of things in waiting but I don't even think it's a stash until you are into multiple plastic storage boxes. The acronym SABLE (stash acquisition beyond life expectancy) was coined for a reason and few tasteful skeins of angora do not a stash make. Earlier in the evening I was searching kitchen cabinets for chocolate in sheer desperation due to knitting the damn WW2 sock. (And I am so good that there is no chocolate in the house except baking chocolate so I had to make do with a bag of butterscotch chips) I have finished the calf shaping for the second sock so I am about half way. I am desperate to knit something other than this damn sock. Maybe tomorrow I'll fondle things in the stash and take some photos of some of the yummier things and we can have a poll about what I should knit next. Oh, but I have the hand-spun to knit a cardigan for J and some yummy kid mohair I want to combine with some cashmere blend into an Old Shale shawl. And I think I already want to take some black & turquoise alpaca for a vest out of a box. I wound off another skein of tan merino and have enough on bobbins to ply another so I spun a little on the hand-dyed Polwarth so I can ply that. I am hoping it comes out lace-wieght so I can knit something out of "Lavish Lace" which was one of my most recent Amazon purchases. One of my goals this knitting year is to knit something lace and this book has patterns that look basic enough for me to try. I am also carding the mixed colour wool out of the spotted fleece. It is really soft and lovely.

Earlier this evening I was converting audio files. By that I mean I was taking the CDs that I had ripped from old audio-tapes, some bought as tapes and some recorded from CDs my ex-husband has, and pushing them through iTunes and loading them onto my iPod. Since they have no track labels I have to go online and try and match the songs to the albums and it's always helpful when I managed to combine multiple recordings onto one CD and have to reconstruct. But I managed to get The first Stone Roses, 2 Jesus Jones tapes, The Posies "Dear 23" and the Counting Crows "August and everything after" from one medium to another. I've also loaded several knitting podcasts which I must remember to listen to. I am sure the record industry wants to lock me up because they don't think I paid them enough for 20 years of listening to a tape of the Stone Roses bought in a petrol station in England in 1985 and listened to millions of times since. Of course when you're going back a certain number of years I have no option. The Posies aren't available via ITunes but I was amused to see that all the Jesus Jones recordings were re-issued in 2000.

I thought the other day when I was out communing with the berry bushes that I should have called it the Day of the Parrots because I think I saw or heard every kind of parrot we have locally while I was out. We of course had the noisy cockatoos who occupy our neighbourhood in flocks of about 30. They are especially fond of the nuts on the juniper tree in the front of the house and after a flock has been munching, my entry area is covered in half-eaten juniper nuts and sprigs of foliage. Charming. Mix in some possum poo.They screach and squawk and generally fly around making a racket. So welcome outside your bedroom window at dawn.

Then we have king parrots who sit and call to each ither (they travel in pairs). Their call is essentially a very piercing "CHEEP!" We didn't have king parrots here when we moved here so they are new to the mix.

We have both Eastern and Crimson rosellas, which are medium sized with long tails and a more musical chirping, chortling call. They are very colourful but they do like to eat my pears. Cheap entertainment for the Imp who likes to watch them eat pears.

Galahs (called roseate cockatoos in the San Diego Zoo) fly over on their way from one grazing area to another.. They travel in pairs or in a flock and eat seeds. I see them almost always on the playgrounds near here. They are not all that bright and frequently get run over because they stand in the road.

Also flying over are red-rumped parrots which are small, mostly green parrots which twitter rather than shriek. They also are seed-eaters and are found on the playgrounds.

On occasion we get black cockatoos and every now and then we have a stray corella. Despite the fact that the gang-gang cockatoo is the symbol of Canberra, they have not been seen aound here. I have seen them in the gum trees behind the NLA but never in our neighbourhood.

One of things the Bear promised me when he was courting me was parrots in my backyard. I thought that sounded very exotic and it would be a wonderful novelty. I have to admit that the novelty has not yet worn off even after 15 years. The Big White Birds are the only pests I'd like fewer of, even though they can be real clowns, doing somersaults on the phone lines and jumping up and down, but the noise and the mess have gotten boring.

To look at more pictures of back yard birds look here.

A brief rant before I sign off. I have been surfing and reading knitting blogs and various other things and I get so P-Oed at all these patterns and directions (US-centric) that think they are generic and call for a ball of Noro or Cascade or even Koigu. Do you guys have any idea that NONE of those yarns are an option here? I don't know if there is a store in Australia that sells them (maybe in Melbourne) but certainly none in Canberra. One of the reasons I learned to spin is because of the scarceness of anything interesting to knit with. Yes, I have a LYS that carries some of the latest glitzy Italian stuff but what I wouldn't give for a cotton blend or some silk or something a little interesting that doesn't cost $12 a ball. And as far as bamboo or linen! Nowhere here folks! Makes me damn grumpy when Classic Elite releases a new yarn that's cotton & silk & nylon and I won't see it. Grumble grumble

Writing a blog, I suppose, involves the bad as well as the good. Today was a bad day. Full of pain and self-recrimination and tears in my boss's office. Yesterday I felt no pay-back pain from my berry pruning so I did some more. Big mistake. I was exhausted as the evening wore on, went to bed early, woke up in pain and, goading myself to get at it, got up at 6.30 and dutifully washed my hair and dried it. (To those of my friends who don't know this because you haven't seen me recently, I have grown my hair long again, and it's down below my shoulder blades and straight). At that point I realized there was no way I was going to put myself behind the wheel of a car and drive to work so I called my boss and left a message that I would be in late and went back to bed for 2 hours. I finally pried myself up and got to work at 10, left at 12 for an appointment with my rheumatologist to discuss my impending disability review and the debatable prospect of knee replacement. Tears of frustration shed. Got back to work at 2 and cried in my boss's office. I was eating my lunch when IT announced that ALL library systems would be coming down in 10 minutes. At that point I decided to go home.

Now it's mid-evening and I feel somewhat better. I had a cuddle with The Imp and we played fetch with a twist-tie for a while.

I was pondering my fascination with rare sheed breeds. Why when merino is so cheap and plentiful do I go off looking for CVM or Wensleydale? I can't figure it out myself except I've always been one for trying weird stuff. I haven't spun much of what weird wool I've got yet because I have been trying to make a dent in the stash and spin the kilo lots rather than the samples but I must get over that and spin some samples just for fun. I need to learn to spin different fibres and so far it's just been merino, Corriedale, Polwarth and Romney/mohair blend. And all that white wool that needs to be dyed and spun, or spun and dyed. I'm inclined to spin first and dye later maybe because I think otherwise the space-dyed roving ends up as dispersed colour, tweedy rather than rich. Both methods work with different results and I am worried as well about felting roving because I've bought too much hand-dyed that was close to felted.

Round 7: CHEER CHEER THE RED AND THE WHITE!! The Swannies absolutlely thrashed the Richmond Tigers by 118 points on Saturday. They were playing like the well-oiled machine we saw in operation last year and the commentators are falling over themselves saying that the team will have back-to-back premierships. I'm not so sure about that but it was a delight to see them firing well. Even Mick managed to kick straight and Barry kicked 4. A very pleasing outcome and in a few weeks they will be playing here so I better hustle to get tickets.

After a sluggish start to today I spent an hour or so with my dear berry bushes. I have only begun the process of cutting out last year's canes and tying the new growth up but after the glut in December/January last year I let them to themselves and now they are all tangled together. So it's partly untangling thorny spaphetti and partly general garden clean-up. The mixed berry jam is known widely and kelps fund my charities, besides providing bowls of berries & cream in summer. The sylvan berries are the worst because they are so "vigourous" and left to their own devices would take over everything else. I will have to look up what I do to blackberries since this si the first year there has been anything to prune.

I was full of ambition to clean while the Bear was out shopping but my back was screaming so I did non-bending-over cleaning, made a pot of green tea, put the bread machine churning Italian country style. We are madly in love with the bread machine mixes from You can Bake it but discovered them just as they left Canberra. Now one of our stops when in Melboourne (besides USA Foods) is their shop. Wonderful pumpernickel, mixed grain and the Bear's favourite crusty white. I know I can put their yeast in the bread machine with their mix and 300ml of water and 4 hours later a gorgeous loaf of bread will pop out. We have a constant battle over bread. I like chewy; he likes crusty.

Book report: I have almost finished Maximum City and have decided it was well worth it. Becaus the author is an ex-pat Indian, he was able to get inside the culture, to mingle with the gangsters, the police, the sex workers, even work on a Bollywood movie, and describe it in a way that a Westerner, even Eric Newby or William Dalrymple, never could. I love reading about India because I know I will never go there. It is the same as my fascination with China, especially how the new China has transformed itself. I am always insterested in cultures changing and clashing. I like reading about that in Japan as well but I don't much like the patriarchal old Japan, despite its beautiful art and craft. I have Silken threads checked out of the library as I continue to plunder the riches of our collection. Unfortunately so many of the things I want are in Asian languages and are the property of the Asian Collections people.

Swannies play Richmond today. Paul WIlliams' 300th match.

I must have really had my nose to the grindstone this past week and need some serious updates.

Round 6: Can you believe it's taken me this long to post that my boys won AGAIN!! and this time we flogged the hated Brisbane Lions. I have said before Brisbane has gotten old and slow and they showed it one more time this weekend. It is why the once feared Lions and Bombers are at the bottom of the ladder after 6 rounds. Stupid Jason Akermanis was his usual self and punched Crouchy in front of the world, got reported and then got off in the Tribunal AGAIN. Somebody has again started the rumour that Sydney wants him and I can't think of a soul less likely to play the team-style flow that Sydney has perfected than the grandstanding look-at-me Akermanis. To quote Roosy "Given his age I think everyone would concede he still has some really good football ahead of him, but it is not like he is going to play for another 10 years. From our point of view we will just wait and see what happens over the course of the season." Why would we want an injury-laden 30-year old? Our oldest player, Paul Williams, couldn't be further away from Akermanis in all areas of style of play. Apparently Brisbane is having problems as well because hte salaries they are paying their older players prevents them from recruiting. Darling Jason has been cut from the Lions' side this week.

I had another hard day at work yesterday running around with trolleys of books and pamphlets, etc. Posted Mother's Day present to B, books to BFLB, and birthday presents to Princess A. I had a list of "best books for middle elementary readers" and couldn't find a single one in Dymocks. I have no idea how to recognize a book suitable for an 8-year old but I found 3 that were by the same authors. It's gotten to the point where I can't rememebr what I've sent. I try to buy Australian books but it's hard to find those that don't scream it by being Aboriginal dreamtime stories.

I decided to include a token photo of the second WW2 sock because otherwise there would be precious little knitting con tent to this blog. I knit on it every day which included ripping out an inch of ribbing because I discovered I had soemwhere along the line started knitting in the wrong direction. No one would ever know except I go back and try and straighten errant stitches and it turned out than one such stitch was a twist going in the wrong direction. I know i am not trying to match commercial socks exactly but I'd like them to be as close to perfect as possible once Ian has his uniform together. He is currently hunting for a mannikin he can afford so if anybody outthere has a mannikin, let me know!

I have been informed to discard the jumper mentioned earlier in the blog and I have added a link to Thomas Mann's reply paper for any librarians out there who read this.

When I came home yesterday I noticed that our street tree, an Argyll apple, is blooming. A lesson on eucalypts in now in order. There are 500 species of eucalypts and they grow everywhere from rainforest to snow. They are not deciduous, but drop leaves all years round and can restrict themselves during drought by dropping whole branches. There is some species blooming all year round to feed all the birds who feed on nectar or the bugs that live on the leaves. Our street tree is the only gum tree we have and it is large but certainly not as big as some of the biggest gums. It has rough reddish bark and pale silvery leaves with creamy-white fluffy flowers. I have no idea why its common name is apple but it might have something to do with the quality of the wood. Argyll comes from the area we live in where it is native. Canberra originally planted "exotics" (non-native) trees as street trees and the older suburbs have flowering cherries, or oaks. There are oaks around a street near us. Now only natives are planted. The idiots who owned our house when we bought it attempted to plant things like lilacs and flowering cherries under a gum tree which is insane, because gums are very good at getting every drop of water that they can reach and nothing much grows under them.

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First off, may I wax poetic about THE INTERNET and, of course, Della, and my iPod/iTunes. I am so wired I feel like I'm plugged into the world. I now have iTunes on Della and I suddenly discover it has a zillion radio stations to plug into offering all sorts of music. Now I'm trying to find the radio who knows what I like but doesn't play me music I already own! I find myself wanting this access wherever I am. I am getting closer to the ideal of the Star Trek version of being able to say to the air "Computer..." I have to type and plug in and search manually now but some day...

Speaking of which there is a "lively" (read vicious) debate going on in the research library world over a report commissioned and published by LC of the future of cataloguing in the Google age written by Karen Calhoun. I cannot say in a public forum how much I disagree with what she has said. Research libraries do not have an audience or a responsibility to people who are interested in what they can get online by a Google search. Thomas Mann has written a countering essay on behalf of the LC union and it's one of the few good things the union ever did, even if he can barely keep his contempt in check. At the risk of raising ire, I think Ms Calhoun got a bit too infected by the management exercises she did while at OCLC and is now trying to impart them to a completely different environment. One of the things we had the most trouble with when hiring for OCLC was to tell people that OCLC was not a library (where they came from) but a corporation that had to think of pricing and income streams, etc. A not-for-profit company so we weren't out to make money but we had to make enough to remain financially viable. Ms Calhoun sounds like she learned that lesson and took with her into the research library world. She seems to have forgotten that serious researchers don't rely on Google searches. I had to lecture research library directors 15 years ago that keyword searches would not help with foreign langauge materials that had no subject analysis. Using LCSH correctly is not easy. I know because I have taught hundreds of cataloguers in how to use it but it's that best we've got now and we (the library community) have over a hundred years of effort invested in these records. There will never be a day when everything will be available in an online form and I have no desire for ebooks. While I really love being hooked into the network I also love books. My account at Amazon and the thousands of dollars spent at Dymocks and other bookstore contest to that. How could anyone who does research or even works in such an environment come up with the crackpot ideas she has described? One would expect better than a "give up cataloguing" argument from someone with the background she supposedly carries.

I will rant if I get up a bigger head of steam. Today is my non-work day and I spent the morning at the mall buying gifts (Mother's day nightie for MIL and books for Princess A) as well as other errands. Australians don't "do errands" I have been informed. They "go to the shops" but have no overall term for all those miscellaneous tasks. I understand that the Tourism people's "Where the body hell are you?" campaign has raised eyebrows. It's a supreme example of the irreverance of Australians and their use of the language we call Strine. After being immersed in it for 15 years I can no longer remember when I am speaking Yank and when I'm speaking Strine. I am inclined to say "I'm knackered" when worn out or pronounce a broken item as "buggered" but I still haven't adopted "lurgie" (random infection or "bug"). I still sometimes have to ask the Bear for translations and I often don't get cultural/historical references to pop culture or politics but my work at the NLA helps out a lot. While I have never seen an episode of "Neighbours" and don't know any of the characters, I know where it exists.

The Bear had a cold this weekend so we didn't do much. I played with wool. He snuffled and coughed and played with computers muttering something about disc drive recalibration. All Greek to me. Sunday was windy and wet so we didn't want to be outside anyway. I noticed several branches down from our large street tree.

Last night I got about 4 hours of sleep (including a very late sleep in) due to the restlessnees of our elderly cat. She insists on spending the night with me but won't sleep. She keeps walking around on me or standing on my pillow. If I throw her out she can open my bedroom door and if I block it she just scratches at the door forever. I am very tired today, to the point of not being able to think real clearly and being quite sore. Sleep is essential to FMS folk and it has meant that sometimes my life revolves around getting enough sleep. I have taken pity on Miss Pink Nose when the Imp seems to be getting too much attention due to her forceful personality, but that's OK when Miss Pink Nose will sleep and not go through this all night roaming. She's pushing 15 but she has always been cranky. If she weren't so pretty, she'd get even less special treatment.

I spent the day cataloguing dreary educational pamphlets and cleaning up name authorities. I have a 500 page printout of headings in our system that match to the wrong (non-preferred) form of name from our authority file. It is grinding work but nobody is doing it but me.

Oy! All that hauling around of cow manure has taken its toll. I am very stiff this morning. Not tired which is a puzzle, just sore and stiff. This combination of medical conditions always throws up a surprise. There is no way for me to guess which bit of me will complain and after how much exercise. I obviously didn't do too much or I wouldn't be able to get out of bed.

On the knitting front I am still debating what to do about a sweater that BFLB started and I finished. It was knit in 3 pieces, 2 sleeves and the body which was knit from the botttom front, up and over the shoulders and down the back. The resulting sweater would fit someone about 6" shorter than I am. It reaches my waist but just barely and as long as I don't move and especially not bend over. The bottom ribbing is a twisted rib and the body is done on a knit/purl texture pattern. The yarn is Katia Montana wool/acrylic blend in a variegated greys and browns Should I take it apart and make it longer? Should I surrender to its desire to be short and put it in the bag for the Salvos? (US=Salvation army). I picked this yarn out before I knew how to knit and BFLB never finished it. A short digression on UFOs. I always finished what I have started. It may take me months but I never have more than 2 jumper sized projects going at once and a pair of socks for carry along. I may hate what I'm knitting but I either finish it or frog it. I am a process knitter; that is, I enjoy the process of knitting and don't feel strongly attached to the finished item unless it has some special meaning. Like the cashmere vest, whose yarn I bought in San Diego with Crystal just before she died. One would think that this jumper has that meaning given that BFLB was going to knit it for me before I could knit, it doesn't. And it's not as if I need another project. I am devoting myself to the WW2 socks until they are finished and then I have that just begun cardigan for J out of handspun. This is the Leaning Tower of Wool and does not include the box of sock wool or the heap of stuff for felting or the weaving materials or the spinning supplies (and there is a large box on the botton and the small one on top is scarf-only). I used to have this in the back bedroom but had to move it when we had company and now I have it where I look at it every day (next to my bed) and I like it there. I look at things and plan and plot. I have not added anything to it in many months except handspun. I have a itch to knit something Scandinavian or Fair Isle but I would have to buy wool and I am on a yarn diet until I get rid of at least one box. There. I said it in public and now I cannot hide from this promise. There is in the mail some yarn from Elann but part of it is to match something already in the stash and the other is some red cotton for a summer top. I have a jumper to knit for S's Christmas present but that will come out of the stash. Stop blogging and start knitting! And I still don't know what to do with the too-short jumper.

I am back inside recovering from a session in the garden and two loads of laundry. In Australia one always hangs one's laundry outside on the ubiquitous Hills Hoist. Today was sunny and altho I had to scrape frost off the windscreen when I went to the doctor at 7.30, it is now about 55F and lightly breezy. If I manage to get up early enough, I can see my dr in 20 minutes, it seems, since I cannot make an appointment and otherwise have to wait. So two loads of sheets, jeans etc.went on the line. I decided to get off my bum and do some of the garden work I had been putting off so I dumped a bag of cow manure on the 2 new plum trees, then put half a bale of lucerne (alfalfa) on their patch. I then removed the tomato stakes from one of the other patches, dug up the weeds, collected two more butternut pumpkins and dumped a bag of cow manure on that patch. I finished cutting off the dead asparagus fronds and dumped a bag of cow manure on their patch and put the other half of the bale of lucerne on it. By this time my back was sore, the laundry was dry and I called it a day. I had the drip hose running on the asparagus bed while I was doing all of this. It doesn't move; I garden around it. I was going to draw a picture of the garden but discovered that Della has no drawing software on her (yet) so that will have to wait.

An update on the reading matter. "A Black Sheep" being a scholarly editionis is printed on very high-quality clay coated paper and weighs a ton so when I got about a third of the way through I could no longer hold it comfortably in bed so I had to put it aside. "Gould's Book of Fish" just didn't grab me despite its rave reviews. It is a style I would call "picaresque" and that style does not appeal to me. It came in the house as a used book and so it may exit. Instead I am finishing "Maximum City" by Suketa Mehta about Bombay (or Mumbai). I got stuck in the chapter about the sex life of Bombay and put it down but I have now skipped that chapter and am reading about "Bollywood". I really would like to see more of this genre but the only thing I've seen is the no-doubt watered down "Bride & Prejudice" which I greatly enjoyed. Maximum city is written by an ex-pat Indian who returns to Bombay and tried to describe it as both an insider and as someone who knows the rest of the world and can therefore be more balanced. I have enjoyed it so far, although it is more autobiographical than what I was expecting, which was more straight non-fiction. I picked from the bookcase "Flash" by L.E. Modesitt, which is a futuristic thriller and so far quite enjoyable in a action-themed way. As I look at the bookcase, the shelves are actually bowed with the weight of books unread.

Hope my muscles don't pay too hard a price for my hauling around bags of cow manure. I should probably lie down for an hour before the news comes on.

Work, home, dinner, TV & spinning. How repetitive life can be. And my relatives ask why I don't write? I did receive a package yesterday which was an eBay purchase from 3 months ago. I now digress into the pros and cons of eBay. This purchase was 8 oz of moorit Shetland roving, 8 oz of Wensleydale roving and some Cushings dye. Straightforward order from a vendor who apparently had a good rating. I ordered, paid via Paypal and order sent. As an aside I wish to make a plug for Paypal which is a very nifty invention and makes things so much easier for money transfers especially from those of us who do not live in the US. Banks have made it incredibly difficult to change currency and charge horrible fees to do so. Paypal makes it all so easy and I think their fees are totally reasonable. End of plug. Although I paid for airmail postage, my items did not arrive. I emailed the vendor who promised that he would fill my order even tho I didn't ask for insurance on the parcel. So why did the parcel take so long? If he paid for airmail postage, he didn't mark the parcel as airmail. People outside the US do not always make the connection of how much difference in shipping times (2 weeks vs 3 months) this can make. Secondly the vendor got cute and labeled the customs declaration as "doll making supplies" for reasons I can only guess at. Stupidity. Of course, Quarantine opened it (they might have anyway); it was perfectly legal if marked as "hand-spinning wool" and I hope I don't now have (another) mark against me with Quarantine. I am very careful about what I import and have asked questions about everything. I did not anticipate that 3 whole allspice would cause them to confiscate pickling spice, but who could have known that? Back to eBay: I have gotten a lot of absolutely wonderful spinning stuff from eBay vendors and the worst transaction was the one just described. I have been an eBay vendor to de-stash and de-accession craft books and I think in general it's a wonderful marketplace. I view transactions just as carefully as I would any other "blind" transaction and am suspicious of a lot. However, there are vendors online I have to restrain myself when viewing their site because I want nearly everything. There is one vendor Highland Cottage Crafts from whom I've bought a lot and sells great stuff, everything from Downs wool for socks to camel/silk/alpaca blends. At any rate, purchase completed, even if a lengthy one, and stuff to add to the stash, along with the black part of the spotted fleece which I finished carding. I now have to get all the dark hairs out of the white part (oh, what fun that shall be) and then card the grey and white portions.

It appears that the reason the Bear didn't want me to buy a fleece in Robertson was he thought I was going to send it away for processing and that is expensive. I have now assured him that the only reason I sent the earlier fleeces to be processed was that they were way too dirty for me to process myself. Full of stuff like shredded feed sacks that don't wash out. If a fleece is generally clean I don't mind washing it and that's what I bought the carder for.

I also got a package of books from Amazon last week: 2 lace knitting books I'll address later and Mary Thomas's knitting book which is a Dover reprint (cheap) and is one of the most thorough and clear books on knitting I have seen. Beginners' books show beginning stuff, lace books show lace, etc, This book does it all. This in combination with Barbara Walker's stitch directories could enable you to knit just about anything. Add Sweater Wizard and your imagination and anything is possible.

I went out wandering knitting blogs again and was reading Knits with cats (don't we all?) and had to take the Southern-ness test and managed a decent score which must mean something since I am writing at a great distance from the South. I only was adopted, living south of the Mason-Dixon line for 12 years and was married to a Southern gentleman for 12 years being adopted into his family. They never ate grits so I don't consider that a defining point but I'd kill for Carolina bar-B-Q (the smoked vinegary kind, not the tomatoey Texas kind). I finally got the Bear to understand about iced tea and the importance of pie in the diet. I also know I would never be able to live through a southern summer as the humidity would kill me. But I can have fantasies about Virginia ham and biscuits, can't I? Have to only be fantasies as there is NO Smithfield-style ham here!!

And we are talking about why we knit? I can't imagine life without some sort of fibre related craft in it, whether it's sewing, quilting, needlepoint, knitting and someday weaving. Knitting is portable, practical, wearable by every person under some circumstance. I've needlepointed everything in sight (including 4 dining room chairs), but socks and any other piece of clothing can be knit for everyone and even those I don't know. Transforming string or even bags of fluff into clothing is a great gift and, as somebody said, what else would I do while watching TV? Besides eat.....

Round 5: How could I have forgotten to post that the Swannies won!!?? I must have been sick! Against a rejuvenated Geelong they played more like they used to and the defense really cracked down. Jude Bolton played a blinder. According to the Australian, they had a team blame sharing session (which sounds like what Roosy would cook up) where the players told each other where they were screwing up rather than the coach dumping on people. This made them commit to play as a team again and it showed. If only Mick could kick straight! He kicked 1.4 and missed easy goals right in front. Had he been running backwards kicking over his head he probably would have made it but in front of goal is too easy. We are just out of the eight and play Brisbane this week who are looking very sorry and sad. I cannot complain when Brisbane gets old and tired after all the years they walloped the Swannies.

I had a crap weekend feeling unwell the whole time. Passing cold I think. It got very crowded in bed with both cats wanting to keep Mummy company. I didn't even had the energy to read. Back to work today, but we had a soggy weekend so I didn't miss anything except going to the Guild's annual show. I am ambivalent about the show. It is a big deal to the people who are active in the Guild but I haven't been knocked out by anything in it for the past few years. There were things that I liked but are either beyond my technical capabilties and always will be, or things I would like to do but I'm not there yet. Then there are the things that I can't even put a name to. Fibre Things. Art. I have far too much of a pragmatic bent to ever do anything just to make an artistic statement. I haven't the time or money to spend on things that can't be used. I hate even practice because it takes time and materials, even when I know I will benefit from practicing before I charge in an something new. Time is something that I feel is very finite; that I (and everyone else) has a limited amount of days/hours/minutes on this earth and I need to be careful how I spend those hours. Since I have gotten seriously sick, time is even more precious to me and I really get angry when I am laid low and have to watch that time dribble away, never to be recaptured. On the other hand, I have also learned that there are occasions with my health when I really can't and shouldn't try to do anything. Sometimes I just have to rest, even if that only means I lie down for 45 minutes. That may be enough to recharge my batteries, and if I insist on pushing on, I often fall in a heap and lose more than those 45 minutes to severe pain or illness.

The Guild show is also for hand spun items and I haven't used a lot of my hand-spun yet, but I do have a cardigan that has one sleeve about 3/4 finished that I will go back to after the WW2 socks. I have bits and pieces on handspun, enough to make several jumpers. But the time to knit was lacking, especially this summer when we had so many dreadfully hot days. I don't mind knitting in the summer but when the temperature gotes about 35C I can't do anything. There was a lot of lying in front of a fan with a cold drink this summer. Last year I sold some hand-spun in the Guild shop but things have tightened up this year and I didn't have anything to qualify. Someday I will get the loom set up; I am really looking foreward to that!

WW2 socks: I have finished the first one!! I also wound off the bobbin of tan merino I had plied (not to be confused with Dan Marino for any NFL fans out there). 325 yds of sport-weight. Someone insisted on getting into the photos. She's good about that. The socks are surprisingly skinny but I have followed the pattern religiously. Short foot too: only 7" from heel to start of toe decreases. They are shown next to a modern version of the socks which are not wool and therefore not authentic.