This has been a busy week but most of it has been online or on the phone. I haven't mentioned that I intend on taking a two month trip to the states in October-November. I am trying to pace myself, there will be no Civil War battlefields, I am having stops at each end before flying home because I remember how much pain I was in waiting for the last flight to Canberra in the Qantas club lounge in Sydney. So I have been busy booking flights, hotels, cars etc. Why now? Because the Aussie dollar is at record highs against the US dollar. It's always a guessing game on whether it will get better or worse, but I don't remember having this favourable an exchange rate ever, but I only knew it every day since I've lived here, because the nightly news always includes the exchange rate. It effects imports, exports, and all our dealings overseas and Australia lives on foreign trade. We don't manufacture a lot but export vast amounts of minerals and food, so the exchange rate is of interest to any business who has off-shore interests. So I was busy taking advantage of the exchange rate by paying for things now.

I'm starting with a course at The Weavers School in Washington State, then visit various friends and family in the east, and end with a cruise with my mother-in-law for seven days through Hawaii. I've always wanted to see Hawaii, and especially the volcanoes on the Big Island. If my optometrist can fit me with goggles, I want to snorkel as well, because I adore snorkeling and badly sunburned the backs of my legs floating above the Great Barrier Reef years ago. There were a few slip ups in booking the trip planning, in not finding a flight to get me from point A to Point B in time to make a connection. However, that is all good for my legs to be forced to rest.

I have successfully navigated a year of living from my stash (except sock yarn), and I suppose technically that's still true. However, yesterday a friend came to me at work offering me two large shopping bags of yarn. "No! Take it away!" I cried. Then I saw one was full of mohair. So I looked at that bag and there are several 100gm balls of Patons Luxury Mohair in white and dark blue, and some dark blue Miraggio at the bottom. I knit a jumper out of it for one of the children in England a few years ago and really liked it--it's soft and a combination of chenille and boucle. So I reluctantly took it. I had just pulled out of the stash the making for 2 winter projects: Philosopher's Wool to try my first real fair isle and I intend to steek an make a cardigan, and some very neutral grey wool that's relatively light compared to what I've been knitting. I also want an all purpose neutrally coloured cardigan I could wear to work or out and about in general and I have a pattern for one with simple cables, and pockets (very important). I also pulled out a few single special skeins for a few hats and/or scarves. I am on the home stretch on the Regia wool/cotton socks. I am brokenhearted that my toe went through the end of my new Panda Cotton socks. No doubt because I was in a hurry and jammed my feet into my shoes. I hate fixing sock toes, which I used to do regularly for the Bear.

I am listening to a podcast about the possums in New Zealand which was introduced in 1837 as a fur industry source. It has now devastated the ecology to the islands and is therefore the reason being harvested (yes, I mean killing) and why you can buy possum blend yarn. It is very warm and very soft. I have stopped feeding possums because I began to find it a chore rather than an amusement. I know I can always get them back by supplying them with bananas.

This post is about books. There are books in every room of this house, reference books, popular fiction, BBBBs (Big Boring Bedtime Books), books I've read but have special meaning to me. I admit I am getting rid of the Bear's massive stash of books, but he never threw away a book. Never. Back to the 1960's. And he bought and read books like you or I eat popcorn. There were a lot of books we both loved and those of course are kept, but I don't need a 1960's copy of Airport nor many of his other old leftovers. I've kept a select few of his Civil War books (the 3 volume Shelby Foote opus), bird books, and so on. Enough to fill many bookcases but not falling out onto the floor or stacking up in the corners.

I finished two books recently I haven't reported on. Sheri Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country was terrific. I had read another novel by her, Grass, and was impressed so bought more. She writes what I have to describe as feminist science fiction and that is how she is labeled. The Gate to Women's Country has a surprise ending, one that you begin to guess at in the last third of the book but the final revelation is more than I was anticipating. Written so it's a page turner that you are reluctant to put down, I can recommend it highly. I have just gone out and bought several of her other books.

On the topic of buying books, I also recommend Better World Books, especially for used books. They have a huge stock, charge reasonable shipping to overseas addresses and their profits go to charity, supporting literacy and libraries. They are cheerful, personal and great to deal with. I found them through Amazon, but now go directly to them.

The other book I read was The Olive Harvest by Carol Drinkwater, which was a loan from a good friend. It was obvious that I should have read the preceding books first, but it was easy enough to figure out who was who. It was a page turner too, but, despite the glowing reviews, I wished she had a better editor. The prose needed a blue pencil to chop out cliches, overused terminology, too many trips to the thesaurus, etc. But it is a sensitive story I could relate to, of a woman trying to keep her Provencal olive farm afloat when her husband leaves her to pursue demands of his career. I wanted to tell her that people who sustain head injuries are not right for a long time afterwards, but apparently the French just told her to let him rest, which of course he refused to do. At any rate, everything turns out well in the end, even if I couldn't figure out where the money was coming from. The earlier books, no doubt.

Two books of the many I went to for help in dealing with my overwhelming grief on losing my dearest Bear were of real use. I read a lot of "widow books" which really didn't help me. They were full of things about how to handle children, when to start dating (!), and very short on the grief aspect. The two good ones are Understanding Grief by Alan Wolfelt and How to go on Living when Someone you Love Dies by Therese Rando. They are specifically targeted at grief, not about financial arrangements or other tangential issues. Yes, the only real "cure" for grief is time, but understanding why you are tearing your hair out in the middle of the night I found reassuring. I still grieve every day and I expect I will for a long long time. I still wake up expecting him to be here, I wait for him to come home, I just cannot get my head around the concept that my wonderful, comforting, aggravating, messy husband can possibly be dead. His ashes are right where I see them every day, but I still cannot understand how he could have died. Does this make sense? It's like one part of me just can't understand how I got to this place. The books analyze the various aspects of a relationship and the changes that happen and get you to think about specifics instead of just crying (which I still do). My body is still dealing with the stress of the event and I haven't been able to work a full 15 hour week for a while, being in pain, or not sleeping or some other hindrance to functionality. I also cannot keep up with household tasks on my own. There is just too much to do and I can't do it all. When the garden shuts down, I hope to catch my breath.

I know I have mentioned in the past that one of the things the Bear promised me was parrots in my back yard but it seems recently that I have been overwhelmed by the life around me. A week or so ago I had a long eye to eye viewing of a male king parrot (left) whom I have been hearing around the neighbourhood. I think they are the most charming and dignified of our local birds. Aside from their call being a ear-piercing CHEEP!, they are rather large with long tails and are not known for the antics that some of the others do. When I get the opportunity to have a long gaze, I can't help it. We used to feed parrots in our former home but now I am not encouraging any into my garden.

The one who is chomping on my pears at the moment of the eastern rosella pictured at right. If I am in the yard bending over picking beans and don't move much, they go right on eating all of 5 meters away. I'll give them the fruit that's up too high for me to reach. They do eat each pear quite thoroughly and pears are the only fruit that attracts them.

The one species I could do without is the sulfur-crested cockatoo. Yes, on occasion they perform circus tricks by hanging upside down on the telephone wires, but mostly they fly around and shriek. The babies are out of the nest now and they are as big as the parents but not as nimble and have slightly less extensive crests. I watched a parent and child in the gum tree next door this week as the mother eyed me off and decided I wasn't a threat while the child demanded to be fed. The parent eventually regurgitated something for the offspring. These cockies are the ones that eat my plums, and can rip half the foliage off in the process. There is a flock of about 30-40 that call this little patch of Canberra home and, when they head out in the AM or come home around 8 PM, their combined screeching makes it difficult to carry on a conversation. This is one parrot I could do without in my backyard.


I haven't had a good week pain-wise. My legs kill me every morning no matter what I did the day before. My vertigo is worse and I seem to have a headache that has settled in permanently. This was not helped by my hitting my head on the corner of the dryer. Today I added irritated eyes to the mix so all I did was talk to a bathroom renovator and then lie down. I think the threading of my loom is ready to weave but I am having trouble getting even tension. My big loom (the 45" countermarche) is out of imprisonment in a storage locker and will soon have space in the back bedroom (to be rechristened "the studio"). Unfortunately, bringing the loom home also meant bringing home 3 bags of alpaca. I have been carding while alpaca again, trying to make a dent. The Imp was a slut with the plumbers this morning and I think one of them wanted to carry her off. When she is good she is very very good...

FO! FO! FO! The red top is finally done! It's supposed to have crocheted edging around the sleeves and bottom as well as the neckline and I didn't get that far in the interests of wearing it on Thursday. I'm not sure I want to add it anyway because the sleeves exactly hit the bend of my arm now and I'm afraid of puffiness if I make them longer and I would lose the stretchy bottom. You can't see that the yarn is a cotton & acrylic almost chenille. Very fluffy and cool. Was impossible to sew ends in--they just broke. It is merely 4x1 rib. I feel sort of empty nester without it there nagging me. I have my vest half done which I can get back to now. I'm then going to start my first fair isle with Philosopher's Wool but I can't decide which design to make.

I got some sock knitting in today while waiting to see the dr., but given that I did not get up at 6 to be there at 7 when he arrived, but got there at 8, I had nearly 2 hours to wait. My legs were once more killing me, this time from going from one end of the mall to the other and back again on Thursday, but I had a large check to deposit (finally!) and the helpful teller who is herding the paperwork to change the name on the house was there and made sure we had everything we had to have. Then I went to claim on health insurance, tried to find something left worth buying at Oxfam (who are closing their store near me, boo hiss), bought a piece of swordfish, bought 3 Krispy Kremes, and bought some of the rice crackers I like that my local supermarket refuses to stock. When I got home I realized I had misplaced the folder with all the paperwork for the name change, including the original of the death certificate and will. Very large expletive. So after the dr's office, I retraced my steps and the folks at Oxfam had it, on their last day of business. Whew! Bet that was good for my legs, eh? Went back to bed until I felt in condition to go grocery shop.

Tomorrow I will be getting the loom out of storage, but I haven't moved the single bed out yet so I can't put it together yet. Meanwhile I'll paint my to-be-guest bedroom pale yellow to match several sheet sets in blue and yellow. After I strip one wall of pink wallpaper. I will also make another and hopefully the last batch of pickle relish.

This is an apology blog posting. I seem to be constantly chasing my tail. If I feel like I've actually accomplished a significant proportion of what I planned to do in any one day, my body slaps me down hard the next. It's usually due to being on my feet too much and then my legs hurt. This results in either poor sleep, or a very sore wake up & delayed getting out of bed, or all of the above. I can't garden sitting down. I'm not wheelchair-bound so I must do the walking at the markets to shop for things like fish (the only decent selection) and a wider variety of fruits (I have enough veg to last me I think). I must do grocery shopping on my feet. I must clear my bedroom windows of red-back spider webs and spray to try and keep them away on my feet. I must pick pears that are starting to fall off the tree on my feet (the rosellas have discovered them and there is much chortling by colourful Eastern rosellas 2 feet from my rear bedroom window; cat TV). I've got the studio in the making further along and I'll try to get the bits & pieces of my loom out of storage in the next day or 2 so I can move the big pieces when I can get access to a trailer. I haven't yet sleyed the reed on the 4 shaft loom. I am sewing my red top together and hope to wear it either Thursday or next week.

I get very depressed sometimes listening to Stash and Burn because Jenny and Nicole seem to knit a lot faster than I do. I'm lucky to get one sweater done in 2-3 months not a matter of weeks. I know I spin and do other stuff, but they reel off the number of sweaters they plan on making and they know them all by name and I'm saying to myself "I think I want to knit a cardigan with cables and maybe pockets" while they're saying "I really like the Ashley cardigan in IK winter 04 issue." Duh. Do they really remember this stuff? Do they have the patterns all indexed? I wish I did.The only organization I have made is to gather up all the bits of photocopied or printouts from Knitty and put them in page protector sleeves and put them in note books. But there are years of knitting magazines, and shelves of books all that have something in them I want to make. One of my latest Amazon purchases was Knitting Little Luxuries by Louisa Harding and I think the only thing I will actually make out of it is the tabard with the diagonal cable. I love that, but all the angora makes my nose twitch even if it is soft.

The road to hell is paved with overexpectations of one's abilities. I painted myself into the corner of Saturday and Sunday for warping the loom by saying "How long can it take?" and ignoring the little voice reminding me how slow I was at threading the loom in class. So I spent 4 hours threading the thing after not being happy about how the warp was all scrunched together on the back beam. My loom only has about 4" between the back beam and the heddles, so there isn't a lot of room to arrange the warp. So I unwound it, re-raddled it, spread it out before winding on and wound on again. There aren't any fancy warp designs, just stripes. I just threaded plain weave but I made the same threading errors over and over. You can't thread the third heddle if the fourth is in front of it (in order). Make sure you didn't push the new heddles to be threaded so far over than they are now snuggled up to the already threaded ones and you pull out another instead. And so it went. I think most of the heddles outside the centre 4" have never been used on this loom.

I fully intended to go back at it on Sunday but I had forgotten that the girls were going blackberrying on Sunday morning. After that adventure (I didn't fall in a hole! I only got a little scratched because the berries were right there asking to be picked!), I had lunch, a shower, and a bit of a lie-down. Then something irrational flipped in my brain and I suddenly couldn't live another day surrounded by boxes of books, so I decided to shift the bookcases by myself. What was I thinking? Yes, I had done it before but not at the end of the day. So I did it and yes I have many fewer boxes of books to look at because most of the ones for my bedroom are now in their new location. And boy was I sore the next day which of course was my first day back at work. And after that I had to go grocery shopping because I was out of cat food and that's just not on. Tues I had my stitches out. Ick. It's now Weds and I am still sore.

Book reports: Peter Hamilton's The Dreaming Void. I know this is the first of a new trilogy and by the time the next book arrives I will have forgotten all the characters.which is what happened with his last trilogy. I found this one something i wanted to continue. The disparate character were all beginning to slot into place, even tho I hadn't read the preceding trilogy which I think would have explained the chronology a bit better. I really liked his Greg Mandel series, and the following ones less so. There may come a point where I find them too much work and move on to somebody new. Next up Sherry Tepper's Gate to the Women's Country.

Napoleon's Buttons ; How 17 molecules Changed history. This was my latest BBB and I found it fascinating even tho I didn't "get" the bit about molecular structures. (Mr. Snow, my high school chemistry teacher,, would be so disappointed). Each molecule is introduced in its social context, why this commodity (soap, spices) was commercially important, and how it was discovered and refined with what results. A very good read even if you don't understand chemical bonds.

Well, I'm getting there, little by little. Here is my first warp ready to go on the loom. One book advised that new weavers to make lots of short warps in their early days so you get over your fear of warping and get the physical side of the process down so it's not so intimidating. This is only 5/2 (I think) cotton from mill ends bought on ebay and the colours do not match anything I own, but they're what I had the most of and wouldn't mind using as a learning tool. I spent this morning making a raddle but I think I will have to get a better one made using harder wood because this one threatened to split as I was pounding in nails and hoping I wasn't nailing it to my kitchen benchtop. We are supposed to have one more day of 34C which means I will try and do this early in the morning.

Today I got 3 parcels but one was an M bag addressed to me but containing Martha Stewart books for somebody in Malaysia. I wonder how Martha handled Muslim holy days. The other two were socks yarn (bad knitter, naughty knitter) but when I heard about Noro sock yarns, how could I resist? I also picked up a couple of lairy red yarns from On Line and Opal. More red socks are needed. The photo does not do any sort of justice to the gorgeous colours of the Noro; the left one is greens and blues with a shot of god and white, while the one on the right is purples and golds shading to red. I almost am afraid to actually knit with Noro because it costs so much. I nearly passed out laughing at a sweater patter knit with 20+ balls of Noro. My pockets ain't that deep.

In the AM I made plum jam, which made an exceedingly small dent in the bowl of plums I had picked. I foisted some off on my Tongan neighbour and the tree is still loaded. Use of bird netting means I have fully ripe plums on the tree for the first time, but it also means I have a bloody lot of them as well. Anyone in Canberra want plums? Will trade for sock yarn (no, naughty knitter).

I am halfway through the second sleeve of the red top so I may have it done to wear to work next week. Then I can go back to sock knitting and finish my wool vest and start my fair isle.

The Imp got out twice today. I have routinely taken to shutting her up in the guest bedroom when I go out the back but sometimes even after I think she is obeying at the front, she zooms out. The second time it was night and I had gone out to feed the possums and I said to her that I had half a mind to leave her out there. Them Mum & bub possums arrived and she was entranced and I think intended to jump them (that could only end badly) so I scooped her up and threw her back inside. The thing is, she doesn't really like it outside and makes it very easy to capture her. It's just her Burmese devil inside that likes running amuck.

This blog is not meant to be weekly, it just seems to turn out that way. If I had that direct brain to computer wifi capability I dream about, I would post daily. "Computer, personal log, star date...." Otherwise it takes something to stop me in my hurtling around to do it. Today yesterday hit me while standing in a queue at Bunnings (Home Depot) so I am taking a small pause before going back at it.

People who have known me a long time know I should really be kept away from sharp implements. I am constantly cutting myself; my ex bought me my first food processor so I wouldn't bleed into the cole slaw. I have even cut myself on display knives in kitchen supply stores. Yesterday I was trying to avoid my next door neighbour's visitor's singing along with the already loud Tongan choir music on the stereo by going into the garden and continuing my battle with couch and vinca under the pear tree, when a cross arm maneuver resulted in me burying the sharp end of the secateurs (pruning shears) in my left arm. It wasn't very wide, less than a cm (half an inch) but gaped rather nauseatingly and the secateurs were not clean. So I took myself off to the clinic where I got 3 stitches and a bandage which promptly tried to fall off so I taped it back on. I was chuffed that there was no pain this morning until in the queue at Bunnings I shifted the basket to my left arm to dig into my purse for money and OW! Now it hurts. Add this to the painful bruised buttock I got when I fell earlier in the day scouting for blackberries in the mountains and I am feeling battered. And not in the sense of ready to be fried.

I was at Bunnings to get nails for the raddle because the staples I got just didn't seem long enough. Unfortunately the staples they had that were long enough were all galvanized and probably not suited to separating warp treads so I got nails instead. Now I get the hit my fingers with a hammer. First wind a warp which shouldn't involve hurting myself. I have teal blue, true blue and burgundy 5/2 cotton and only aim for a dish towel. At this moment, sitting in my recliner I have a furry grey headrest who just yawned widely and stuck a foot in my ear.

I have no new excuses, just the same old ones. I feel like there are a million things I "ought" to be doing or actually really have to do, like go to the chemist or whatever. So I race around every day trying to fit all those things into my day and then get up and do it all over again, but inevitably I get one item behind that snowballs to 6 things behind and then a couple of nights I don't sleep well and then every one tells me how tired I look, so I'm on another two week time out. I already slept most of Saturday but it rained all day (! 40mm!) so I didn't miss much except watching it rain. I no longer feel like I've been pulling all-nighters and my email is sorta caught up mostly by deleting everything but the personal stuff. I just watched the end of season 6 of Gilmore Girls which was a teary one and I hate the thought of watching season 7 cuz there ain't no more. Like I have been holding back on watching season 3 of Battlestar Gallatica because then I won't have it all pristine and shiney waiting to be watched. I guess you're either a person who says Oh Goody! and jumps in or someone who waits as long as possible till you really need a good feeling and then indulge. I'm a waiter; I like to let things age and mellow until the right moment. I did get the second Ewan McGregor motorcycling adventure Long Way Down, which has a hard act to follow. I adore Ewan and watching him burst into song in Mongolia was one of the high points of Long Way Round, but Ewan on a BMW is hard to top even standing still. Too bad he's happily married with adorable children.

Now that I've slept I am not in pain past the normal. I was so tired that my vertigo really kicked in and I was lurching around in the stacks hanging on to the shelves as I passed. I probably should not have been on a stool to reach the top shelves but what's a girl to do? I find that fatigue makes the vertigo worse. Pain is back to background (hands) probably due to humidity. Last week I was moaning about the heat, this week we had one night of 13C. I think this country just has random acts of weather, not a climate per se. But then I heard it snowed in Baghdad this week.

The garden this afternoon produced lovely purple plums, blackberries, lots of tomatoes, a huge zucchini and a smaller one, beans and the main crop plums are about ready to be made into jam. The pear tree is also looking good and all this rain will mean nice fat fruit instead of puny fruit. I went to the markets today in all seriousness looking for celery seed for pickles, but also bought bananas for the possums, peaches, and rockmelons and fish. My next door neighbour had FOUR of my possums (including mum & bub) in her roof and they were relocated across the territory line, so possum activity is severely down. I had zucchini, beans, tomatoes, and swordfish for dinner.

This may be the kiss of death to put into electronic print but I feel like I'm getting the hang of living alone. This doesn't mean that an hour goes by without me missing him and sometimes planning meals around him and getting teary at the drop of a small hat, but the alone thing isn't quite so crushing any more. There's plenty of stuff to do, reading and gardening and getting ready to weave (I bought supplies to attempt to make my own raddle today) or card alpaca. The Imp is company most of the time when she isn't chasing bugs or doing other small grey cat things. I have only one task left in the never ending trail of paper and that's changing the name on the title of the house which took the intervention of a very helpful person at the bank who chased down what actually has to happen and how much it costs.

I am on the sleeves of the red summer top so I might wear it before cold weather hits. I've decided the next major project after the Japanese vest will be my first attempt at fair isle using Philosopher's Wool which I picked up cheap when somebody was clearing out stock. It's scratchier than I expected but I need a wear-around-the-house-in-winter cardigan since the one I have, which was one of my first knits, is showing its age. Besides I can't wait to try steeks.

Nobody need panic. I am alive and relatively well. Turns out that Sunday night I forgot to take my meds (how stupid can a chronically ill person be?) and then wondered why I felt like crap the next day. The entire week has been hot hot hot and today was supposedly 35C. A day for wearing my wonderful microfibre pants & top which I always get compliments on and is so cool especially when you are wrestling with a shopping trolley up a hill. My checkout person was a young African man and since you see so few black people here generally, I wasn't expecting one to be scanning barcodes at Woolies. We are getting many more African immigrants which I think is good and I'd like to be welcoming without sounding patronizing, so I don't say anything. For all I know he's lived here for years. To you American readers, I keep forgetting how different the racial mix is here. There are Ngunnawal Aboriginal people here but you don't see them at the supermarket, at least not my supermarket. There are Islander people, from Tonga (like my next door neighbour) or Samoa, or PNG (Papua New Guinea). There are Asians of every nationality. As I mentioned, a growing number of Africans. There are lots of Middle Eastern people, mostly Lebanese. There are lots of southern Europeans (Italians and Greeks, and people from the former Yugoslavia). There seem to be a growing number of Yanks (which is the generic for Americans, even if you are from South Carolina, I'm afraid). So it's really different from the US and things I expect (every restaurant of any ethnicity can serve you cappuccino, the Chinese restaurants are not run by people from China but probably Malaysia or Singapore, Indonesian food is common, like KFC and Macca's may sell satay something), I miss when I'm in the states. How do you live without crumpets, mango and passionfruit flavoured everything, vanilla slices, lamingtons, 25 flavours of sausages, kangaroo steak in your supermarket? All right, the last one I'll give up. I've found Woolies sells marinated kangaroo steak and it is simply superb, so tender you hardly need a knife and I buy $6AU worth and get at least 2 meals out of it. Despite what PETA might tell you, kangaroos are not endangered, but they can become so numerous and pressed for food that they come into the city and end up dead by the side of the road. I much prefer a cleanly killed (roo shooters do it with a single bullet to the head) game animal, and unlike many Aussies I don't have Skippy nostalgia (an old TV show where Skippy the Kangaroo always saved the day like Lassie only more so). So I love trawling American supermarkets when I'm in the States, but I couldn't live without at least the crumpets and Singapore noodles.

All I can say is I'm tired of the heat. Tomorrow is furniture moving day and it promises to be either hot or thunderstorms. Of course, the garden is happy and I have yellow & green, red & green, and black & red striped tomatoes. More beans than I can get rid of, will need to make zucchini pickle relish soon, and my blackberries are starting to ripen. Evenings are spent knitting/spinning/cleaning alpaca and watching Gilmore Girls. I think I like the show because I like the idea of their closeness, but only the idea. I'd go crazy being that close to any relative but then I had a weird childhood.

Book report: The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. Excellent, horrifying, amazing, engrossing, frightening. I cannot say much without giving away the plot but the story is mesmerizing and I wanted to read it every second. The characters are believable and personable and you feel like you know them, but there is a sense of foreboding because you know from the beginning that something went wrong. Just so you know, not all extraterrestrials are like ET and never take things at face value when you are on a new planet.

Scrap all that stuff about being brave and putting on a happy face and being a role model for chronic pain. Today I'm a mess. I miss my dear Bear so much and trying to get his stuff ready to move (should the furniture movers actually show up this time) just brought back so many memories. I can still hear his cheesy jokes and our own secret language of movie references, fractured French/Spanish/Latin, set pieces rolled out for occasions, etc., his funny faces and cuddling arms, his demand for one last kiss before I left for work. All that loaded on a day of incredible pain that none of my drugs helped. So I lie in bed when the outside temperature is around 34C and try to read or sleep or resist the attentions of very hot cat who wants to curl up with me. I am so lonely in this house and while I have lots of friends, they aren't here all the time like he as. Am I supposed to go on grieving forever? Find a quick replacement (I'm too old to train a new husband)? When will the heartache be bearable? How do I cope with this loss on top of a painful condition like FMS? It is all too much for me some days. I'd give anything for another day with him. I'd give anything for a day without physical pain. Neither seems likely. The only way I function is to build a wall around him and a wall around the pain in my mind. I doubt that's the right thing to do according to mental health professionals and look what happens when the walls fall down. Please let this pass and give me strength to go on living tomorrow and put today in the past.

Here is the first batt off the drumcarder of the white alpaca I have been cleaning (i.e., sweating blood over) that was in the 3 trashbags of filthy fibre.. It is soft as a cloud and pure white. I have almost a trashbag full of clean fibre to card, and a smaller amount of black that I have decided would be easier to spin carded than from the lock. The fibre was free but the processing has taken up so much time it would probably cost as much as cashmere. I also found in the stash some other bags of unwashed alpaca of a different colour to process.

My main new year's resolution (besides losing another 10 kg) is not to buy any more fibre. I Inventoried the stash because I couldn't remember what was in it and was appalled and surprised and delirious with all the stuff I uncovered. Things I had bought twice because I couldn't remember what I had, things that I bought when I was a new spinner and bought everything in sight. I have a weakness for naturally coloured beasts and rare breeds which is how I wound up with 2 pounds of Wensleydale and 2 of Jacob.I discovered the wool I am spinning at the moment from Ewe Give Me the Knits is really Bendigo Ready-spin in a colour they call Damson. So I have 1.5 kg of it: enough for as jumper with lots of cables. I'm trying to sell off some of it and bid adieu to about half of it this morning. My last purchase of the year was 2 oz of pygora/merino from Chimera Creek Ranch which is easily as soft as the cashmere I have bought and cheaper.

I have to relate a funny (to me) story from the post office. I went to pick up the package that turned out to be the pygora and they couldn't find it. There was a new person behind the counter and she insisted that the parcel had already been picked up the day before. I had been in to pick up 2 parcels the previous day and she served me and had checked my ID. She kept telling the parcel bloke that a young lady had been in to pick it up and they kept asking me if I had a daughter. Obviously, they found it eventually, but I was stifling giggles at me being remembered as young. I must look (to her at least) a lot younger than the almost 60 I am. Must be the long hair and jeans.

I post this picture as inspirational to new spinners (and may I say how delighted I am that there seem to be new spinners every day). The front mess Is my first handspun. I despaired of ever learning control of my spinning. The back two are my most recent that are headed for the dyepot. Left is one ply merino and one ply kid mohair, and the cake is BFL.

Oh, and my hand has been fixed. I broke down and called my Bowen therapist who graciously allowed me to come over when she was technically on holiday and she loosened up the offending muscle in my arm so I can now move my thumb. I am trying to keep it from seizing up again and I think babying it was the wrong idea. Thank you, D.

Happy 2008! I cannot express enough how much I hope that this year will not be as horrible as last year was, although not watching the clock turn over with the Bear next to me was somewhat sad. Emotionally I am doing OK. My dear MIL came down for the weekend but she brought with her a change in weather I could have done without. We have left the cold and damp of our unusual December to hit 34C both days. So much for all the things I had hope to do with her in the garden because it was too bloody hot to do much of anything. Two loads of laundry, a batch of strawberry & rhubarb jam, and enormous amounts of green beans. The beans have all gone into the freezer, but I have the flat Italian beans I love so much to eat fresh.

I had planned on Christmas dinner at the home of a friend, and was careful not to overdo the previous day, but I slept poorly and woke up in tremendous pain. So reluctantly I had to stay home and sleep instead of enjoying turkey and ham and all the associated goodies. The reason I haven't blogged and why I haven't done most of the things I had planned, like warping the loom, is that I am suffering from a lot of pain in my right hand. I cannot tell whether it is muscle, joint, or nerve. I have tried not using the computer, not knitting, not spinning, and nothing makes it go away. It is especially linked to movements of my thumb. This morning I woke up without pain and thought perhaps I'd fixed it but I soon found out I just hadn't moved it in a way that made my thumb scream. It's frequently unanticipated movements that set it off. I've tried all my usual potions and rubs to no avail. I may try an ice pack today and see if that helps but so much for getting things done over the summer break. Hot weather also makes me extremely sleepy for some reason, so I nap through the heat of the afternoon.

The Imp surprised me again on Sunday when I was preparing to grill a couple of fillet steaks for MIL and I. The grocery store had packaged in a little snippet of extra meat, only about an inch square. I held it up and asked, "I wonder what they thought I was supposed to do with this", at which point the Imp let out a wail like somebody had stuck a sharp object in her. She has a most unmusical voice, not as deep as a Siamese but about as pleasant. At any rate, the cat that refuses all cat food except fish, ate the piece of steak, cut in smaller pieces, with what passes for pleasure.

Enough with the rain already! It is now close to hurricane conditions, with pouring rain, strong gusty winds and the occasional lightning and thunder. At this time of the year we are usually flat in front of the TV watching cricket but the first test vs India was washed out yesterday and I don't know whether this wet stuff is moving or not. It started yesterday evening and has been raining all night and is still going at 11.30. This is not a Canberra summer, but then I don't have to water the garden.

I finally finished the Panda Cotton socks. I liked the yarn and now knowing how much yarn was in the balls I could gave made them a little longer. I am now casting on some Regia cotton/wool in grays and white and aim to finish them and the red cotton top before the warm weather is over. Having said that, our only hot days so far were in November and we've had night down to 10C.

This is also what I have been doing and have many more to go. When the supermarket has a tray (box) of 12 mangoes for $15 you buy it, make mango jam out of half of them and eat the other half. MMmmm, mangoes..(imagine Homer Simpson voice). When I innocently planted loganberry and boysenberry plants I did not anticipate that they would be laden with berries that more or less all ripen at once. So I make mixed berry jam which is now world famous. If I have extra strawberries they go in; if I have raspberries, they go in as well. The small jars are honey lemon jelly. J gives me huge bags of lemons when her tree overachieves and because Australian honey is so yummy, I found the recipe for this jelly, which is to die for on crumpets. I make jam for gifts, for home consumption and to distribute to the world through my annual sale at the NLA. I encourage donations and the results go to charity. I have apricots calling to me and more berries (and I've made 2 batches of the berry already).

This came in the mail this week from Lone Star Arts: 2 hanks of superwash roving, one called Go Spurs which I assume refers to a sports team, the middle one is Hula for obvious reasons, and the sock yarn in Neapolitan. Do you all remember when ice cream only came in cardboard boxes and flavours were strictly limited (unless you went to Howard Johnson) and the carton of Neapolitan always seemed to lose its chocolate first (at least it did in my house)? So the sock yarn is brown, white, and pink. I haven't spun in ages being knitting obsessed with only time out for alpaca. So I pulled out a 500gm lump of merino cross in a colourway called Amethyst from Ewe Give me the Knits which is a blend of colours that ends up purple, but not solid. I do so love to spin but it just creates more knitting yarn. Must warp that loom.

Book reports: The Root of the Wild Madder was certainly interesting from a traveling point of view, when the author is wandering over Iran and parts of Afghanistan looking for his heart carpet. There is lots of stuff about Persian culture going back before Islam, and discussions on the languages of carpets. Now, while I love Oriental carpets and I too prefer handmade natural dyed tribal rugs, this book seems to be on a higher plane than simply either the making of the carpets or the carpet business except parenthetically. It's got more about how a carpet speaks to you or not on a sort of mystical level. There was very little about madder or any natural dyeing at all, or even a in depth description of the carpet making process; the author refers to to other books about carpets for that. So if you are interested in ancient Persian poetry and the mystical nature of carpets, this is the book. I felt a little let down because I thought there would be more about the process.

The Terminator Gene by Ian Irvine is as you would suspect by the title about a virus that is developed to be released making all males sterile to rid the planet of humanity after global warming raised the oceans 6 meters, because the maniac in power believes that is the only way to restore Earth to its natural state. That said, the author pours every bit of action-adventure stuff he could think of into the plot is excruciating detail. The story ends with the levees around New Orleans collapsing and the heroic rescue of the population by hundreds of volunteer chopper pilots and the bad guy falls out of a helicopter holding the canisters of virus that end up buried in the Mississippi mud. Had I been the editor of this I would have removed many irrelevant sections. I was disappointed because it started out well and is also Aussie sci-fi. I only give it a B-.

This is just an interim pop-up of my head to let anyone who cares know that I am in fact all right. Tues I got the good news from ACT Breast Screening that no malignancies were found in either the calcium deposits nor the surrounding tissue. I had a feeling in my gut that it was going to be clear but guts can be wrong. I'm glad to have a clean bill of health but can now look forward to boob smashing annually.

I have felt particularly unwell this week, in constant pain that wouldn't shake off. I spent 2 hours waiting to see my GP before he goes on Christmas break so I can get my meds. When I left the clinic my back was very unhappy and this continued till today when I finally got the time for a session of Bowen therapy and feel much looser now. I have several batches of jam waiting to be made and I simply couldn't stand up long enough to do it. So I laid down a lot, in the company of the Imp, not really taking naps but just getting off those sore legs and giving my back a rest. I feel much better at this point. We have had soggy wet weather for weeks which doesn't help; humidity drives my pain level up significantly. Today we actually saw the sun, which only made it more sticky. Now it's raining again and the same of forecast for the next several days. After so many years with dry conditions this feels very weird. Even without a drought we don't get this much rain for such long stretches. Naturally the garden wants to grow like weeds which are also growing. And the lawn needs to be mowed if it ever stops raining long enough to mow. I've had zucchini from the garden and have picked peas, but not enough to make a meal.

I have been pondering this week the concept of where I go from here in my life. I've never been a single woman, much less a nearly 60 year old single woman living in Canberra. I realize now that he's not coming back no matter how much I miss him, but I don't quite what to do with myself. Yes, I know, I have a zillion interests and passions and friends but I don't know whether I just keep going day by day, filling in gaps with whatever comes to hand (classes, traveling, fibre working) or plan towards some goal. When the Bear was alive we were so focussed on getting our land and then getting ready to sell this house and move to our dream home. Now that that plan has been shattered, I am a little unsure whether I make a new plan or just keep putting one foot in front of the other. No pressure except that which I choose to put on myself. Right now it's still a day by day sort of life,

I did find that I can move one of the wardrobes that is supposed to go to the tip (actually to the recycling facility attached to it) so I can get behind it and strip off the pink girly wallpaper that the Bear lived with for 14 years. Since it was only applied to one wall and then under a window, it's not a huge task to remove it. The former owners of this house were very fond of wallpaper but applied it so poorly that it is very easy to remove. Once the furniture is removed I can get the new carpet laid and built-in wardrobe installed. Then paint applied and a new guest bedroom is born. My dear MIL will have to put up with a work in progress when she come to visit next week for a few days.

I had a thoroughly unpleasant morning (4 whole hours) having my left mammary gland pressed into many different positions ranging from uncomfortable to down right painful. Then I had an ultrasound of my right breast because they thought they felt something there but it was only scar tissue from my reduction surgery. Then they X rayed some more. The calcifications show a change in tissue, since they weren't on my last scan. They could be just calcium (old age) or they could be a marker for other tissue tissue change that is not benign. Mine is at the very extreme top of the left one so they had a hard time getting an image clear enough so that they could get it out by biopsy. Eventually it was successful, They removed all the calcium in the biopsy and I am sore and bandaged am am supposed to take it easy this weekend. Today I feel like a wet kitten, which may be the aftereffects of being cheerful all during the procedure, going back to work for the division Christmas party, driving to the other end of town to my therapist and then coming home. My dinner consisted of nibbles from the party, 3 Krispy Kremes, and a Cornetto. I go back in 5 days for the results. I think with my family history you have to take everything slightly off as serious which is good, but I wasn't prepared for feeling this bad. Old age sucks.

Now I will have a lie-down with the grey cat (hopefully without the wrestling matches we sometimes have for control of the middle of the bed).

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!

This will be short since my MIL will call at 8.01. I so overslept today. Did not wake up till 11AM which put all plans for today out the window. I know my MIL will say I needed it and that may well be true, but I'm going have to start setting the alarm clock on weekends. I got up, ate breakfast, got dressed and mowed the lawn, weeding and mulching as I went. While I really don't much like mowing the lawn (we don't have acres of grass like I was used to in Ohio) the garden looks so super since we've got so much rain in the past few weeks. The berries are coming in 2 weeks early and I may have to make jam tomorrow. There's still edging and fighting back mint (I might get one of those flame thrower weeders, whatcha think?) and vinca and more pruning but in general everything is green and growing. Also need to kill snails.

I had planned to attend the first Swans social event of the season with was a picnic in Queanbeyan, but that is a long drive and my schedule was already shot to hell. The handsome Irishman was coming but Craig Bolton pulled out maybe because he knew I meant to chastise him. He got a lot of votes in the Swans' best & fairest so maybe he improved in the second part of the season when I couldn't watch. I have to stop being afraid of my house and of the Swans just because they remind me of the Bear. Life does go on and there are lots of things to do where I can't allow survivor's guilt to keep me from the things I love. I finished up watching the end of season 3 of Enterprise. In retrospect I wish they hadn't canceled it because it was going in an interesting direction and had lots of time travel which is a thread of sci-fi I love. Real stunner of a season end; just when you thought everything was safe... I have Stargate Atlantis Season 3 and Battlestar Galactica Season 3 so the dearth of summer TV won't bother me. Yes, all of those arouse survivor guilt that he can't watch them with me. Have to imagine him in the other chair making faces at me. The "shock horror" face, and all the rest. I never realized during our electronic courtship how silly he was in the flesh. A pleasant surprise.

It has been a thoroughly dreadful week. A wet and stormy weekend (I am most grateful for the rain but it didn't help my mood) which led to 1) missing the Bear terribly, and 2) stupidly climbing up in the pear tree in trying to prune it which led to very painful ankles, knees and hands the next day. The issue with missing the Bear I think came from spending too much time in his den where all the air molecules must have been breathed by him multiple times. I was totally miserable and even tried calling Lifeline where I got not very caring or thoughtful service but complaints from the person on the other end of the phone about how stressful his night had been. Excuse me, who is counseling whom? I just remembered I forgot to go to my therapist's appointment this afternoon. ARGH!!

In an effort to make up for missing Monday's work I worked three days straight and therefore was knackered by last night. I mentioned the hand pain I was having which I now think is a result of the poorly arranged position I am in keyboarding on Della in the living room. She sits waiting for me on a tapestry covered stool but there is no good place for the mouse and I get my wrists in weird positions. I need to either find a better position or move back to my bedroom where I used to use Della. Ergonomics is not just for the workplace. In trying to solve the Mystery of the Painful Wrists (don't you wish life was like a Nancy Drewe novel?) I've gone back to flick carding alpaca, with the goal of emptying at least one trashbag. The stuff I've got in this bag is beautifully soft and terribly dirty. The Senior cat likes me doing this because she can sit next to me on the couch while I do it.

Other various things that happened this week. I locked myself out of the house 3 days in a row and the last one happened when I had not yet returned my emergency key to its hidey hole. After calling a 24 hour locksmith I walked around to the front of the house and noticed I'd left the sliding door to the dining room wide open. Duh. Tonight I stepped on the Imp twice as she silently got directly behind me and suffered the consequences. I found in the course of my work toiling in the bowels (leaky ones at that) of the Library a relatively rare copy of a 19th century utopian novel valued at ~$300AU that nobody knew we had. I always feel like I should get a medal for these things because I find so many items we have no record of, just because I have a suspicious mind. I have hit the first lot of Arthur Upfield Bony mysteries and found several editions of various titles we didn't have records for. They are now judged politically incorrect at worst or simply dated at best, but I found them all great reads when I wanted to devour everything about Australia. Book report: Peter Corriss's Appeal Denied, the latest Cliff Hardy mystery which I enjoyed as always. I wish he would write more but they are the sort of thing one tries to read straight through in a day. I have started Terminator Gene by Ian Irvine which is sci-fi and even Aussie sci-fi. BBBB is Root of Wild Madder, which is very little about wild madder and more about the Iranian carpet trade and ancient Persian poetry. The Salvos finally showed up to pick up the furniture I had to offload and declined to take any of it. Thus all my plans for shifting furniture must go back on hold. They said it was too 70's and people didn't like it. This while we have been using it for 15 years in this house because it was all we had. Poor people must be getting fussy.

I tentatively say that the issues with resolving the death benefits from the Bear's superfunds will be happening soon. I will then be able to pay off the bills that have been piling up; I haven't even been able to pay for his funeral services due to lack of funds and had to borrow from my MIL to get the roof fixed.

I also am totally blown away by my blog statistics. Who are you people who read my drivel? When I see 20 page hits in a day I am really mystified. I must have more friends than I thought I did or have developed a cult following. If the latter is the case, see preceeding paragraph. Donations appreciated. Just joking folks. Send fibre.

A few words regarding sleep, fatigue, and fibromyalgia. It seems clear now from what I read that it has been proven that FMS folks have the problem that normal sleep doesn't work correctly in its role in refreshing and heal the body. We don't go into the deepest level of sleep completely, having alpha waves intruding into delta sleep. Therefore we wake up in the morning feeling worse than when we went to bed. I also awake stiff and in pain. As a result of this "unrefreshing" sleep, or independently as part of the whole syndrome, I am tired all the time. Stress makes all of this worse. I can sleep 8 hours, or even 12 hours and still wake up miserable. Today was one of those days when people kept telling me how awful I looked and I was even dozing over my lunch. Therefore I left at the 5 hour mark and came home and laid down to sleep. Of course, the roofers arrived and seemed mystified that I was sleeping again after sleeping half of yesterday. I sometimes feel like I spend half my life (or more) asleep or just dog tired. I heard someone on a podcast who had calculated (based on actuarial tables) how many days he had to live. Leaving aside I have no idea how FMS might (or might not) effect my life expectation, I can only think wistfully of how many of those days I have spent asleep or just plain tired. This is extremely frustrating to a person likes me with a zillion hobbies and other activities that I want to enjoy. Sometimes I feel like the sleeping patterns of the cats has infected me. They, however, don't have a job, do not have to shop for food, cook it, and have no hobbies besides occasionally savaging a toy and demanding my undivided attention when awake.

The Imp seems to get all the space in my blog so I decided to give The Senior Cat a chance to be centre stage for a change. She's 16 and the Bear and I acquired her as a RSPCA kitten when we moved into our first house together. She is getting arthritic and can barely manage to jump up on my chair and has a chesty cough that the vets can't diagnose. At the moment I can afford another 4-digit vet bill that resulted from her last visit. She is still very affectionate, loathes the Imp (for many good reasons), and after her brushing every Sunday morning, I put handful of her fur away for the day when I can blend it with some wool for a permanent reminder of her.


Some fibre content at long last. Sonny and Shear had some irresistible things available including Lorna's Laces rovings (why did they have invent this? I have no will power) at left and some lovely sock yarn at right called "Dream in color Smooshie" which it is and is superwash handpainted in coulourway "beach fog".


Lastly there is this beautiful bag which I think may become my default traveling bag, not just a knitting bag. It's from Scout's Swag and is messenger style, which I like both because it leaves your hands free and is more secure by going across your body rather than just over your shoulder or in your hand. While I have what I view as the perfect handbag, it does tend to fall off my shoulder if I'm carrying things. The bag was reviewed by Jennie and Nicole on Stash and Burn and when I looked at online I fell instantly in love. It's brown fine-wale corduroy with a not-too-loud lining. There is a zippered pouch on the flap, two flapped pouches on the outside, more on the inside and a divider to break up the inside. I could see the normal contents of your purse in one side and your knitting in the other side with those random but necessary accessories like scissors, crochet hook, stitch markers, etc, in the smaller pockets. It's big enough to hold substantial amounts of knitting. One beef I have with a lot of knitting bags is they are big enough when you start a project but when you get to the point where you have the whole front (or back) of the jumper, or both front and back if you need to match them up at some point, or if you want to carry more than one ball of wool with you, there's just not enough room. That's why I tend to use plastic shopping bags instead of purpose made knitting bags. My sock knitting bags are 1) a cheap make-up bag from K-Mart in a rather loud pink floral and 2) a cylindrical tapestry bag made of Laurel Burch cat fabric from Colorful Critters which both have room for 2 socks and all necessary things like tape measure, crochet hook, etc. My other projects, which up to now have rarely left the living room, they live in plastic shopping bags

Once again another week gets away from me. I am trying so hard to remember all the things I need to do each day (and usually forget one) that every second seems filled to the brim or I am so knackered that I fall asleep in my chair. The weekend's activities to sap my strength involved the garden, Saturday weeding and mulching and pruning. The 36mm of rain we got on Thursday makes everything look wonderful. The melon seeds I planted have sprouted, and the portulaca is already blooming. The bramble berries are actually starting to colour already. Today I mowed the lawn and trimmed edges around the veggie beds. By the time that was done I more or less collapsed for a while. I started packing up the books in my bedroom (for the second time in 9 months) for the great furniture shift, but the whole process has been stymied by the fact that The Salvos didn't show up on Friday, despite confirming that they were supposed to come. Since all furniture relocations depend on them removing certain items, I am now even more surrounded with boxes. I have succumbed to the advertisement of a roof restoration firm and they are due to start tomorrow. They cost a lot of money but I am so tired of holding my breath every time it rains. We've been having so many unexpected thunderstorms (like this afternoon) and the thought of 90 cracked tiles on the roof is enough to make the money seem worth it, especially since I've already spent thousands on the roof and it still leaks. Dear MIL is lending me half of the money, since there is no news about the super funds' death benefits. I will also gain a roof that is all one colour which is nice, since I had never looked at my roof from an angle that showed that the additions made to the house in 1983 were made with a different colour tile. Typical.

I've been having a lot of hand pain lately which I wake up with in the morning, but usually it quietens down to background noise during the day. Please hope it isn't knitting related. And I haven't been spinning at all. Tonight I addressed Christmas cards instead of knitting, but there was all that garden work earlier. I am trying to get my head around exercising with FMS which all the books say you should do. Aside from the fact that my knees are so bad my surgeon told me not to walk a lot, I have no idea where I would fit this into my life. If I have a free 15 minutes I would prefer to read a book to exercising, especially after work and whatever else I had done that day. I view my gardening as exercise but I suppose it isn't aerobic enough (altho mowing the grass certainly felt like aerobic exercise) or targeting the right muscles. I tried some stretches and also could do 15 sit-ups with ease without having practiced in years. I'd like to strengthen my legs without involving my knees but it's hard to find exercise that doesn't put some strain on the ligaments while helping the muscles.

One magazine that came this week had an ad for travel in Australia and I would still like to go to Cape York. All the tours I had seen in the past involved some camping, but it seems like there is enough tourist development that you don't have to do that now. I have never been much of a camping person and FMS really requires a bed to sleep in. It is my enduring regret that the Bear had just conquered his world class snoring via a CPAP machine and before we could exploit the benefits of being able to sleep in the same room, he left me. I am getting used to being alone, but I still miss him every hour of every day. I am pretty sure he would have been happy with the election result but he was such a cynic about such matters that he may have dismissed even a change this drastic as just a different group of politicians to muck things up. At any rate I'm still poking around looking at travel and tours.

Why is life so complicated, time-consuming, complicated, and expensive in time and money? I accomplished a lot this afternoon in chasing up things, getting minor paperwork and purchases, giving the Bear's suits to the Salvos, etc. This involved driving all over Belconnen, walking from one end of the mall to the other, came home and fell asleep while watching the news. Not that there's anything important in the news since we are hurtling towards and election on Saturday and every other ad on TV is a political one so the mute button gets a workout. The best news is I found my knitting! I lost the Laurel Burch bag with my sock knitting in it several weeks ago and tore apart the house, and the car to no avail. There it was in Westfield's lost and found which made my day. I got paperwork to change the name that the Victorian land is in (plus not so small fee), but I'm still going round in circles with the ACT land registry. To complicate matters one arm of the bank says the mortgage has been discharged, and the other part says it hasn't. Please sort this out internally before getting me involved, please.

We continue to have hot days and frequently end the day with thunderstorms. This is not usual Canberra weather for November. Certainly the opposite of last year when it didn't get truly warm till December, and then cranked it up to 35C. Hot weather always makes me sleepy so it's a struggle to get anything done, especially when it's ironing which is in need of attack. All I managed Sunday was a thorough bathroom clean, and then fell asleep for most of the afternoon. This is what worries me about traveling. I can sleep in planes if my legs don't hurt too much.

One book I got in the mail recently was The Oxford Companion to Food which looks extremely informative and hunger
producing. Just the right thing while one is trying to stick to a diet.

I may have given up on the specific trip to Italy but I am still thinking of traveling, probably a longish tour of North America. All previous trips were factored in around the Bear's job, him convinced he was indispensable and couldn't go away for long and/or hitting as many work-related sites as possible. Now I have long service leave and someday some money, and am going to stick pins in a map for people, events, and sights to see. I haven't seen the Grand Canyon but the Bear had. All advice is to go while you are still able. I am discovering more textile tours and even Elderhostel or (shock horror) a cruise.

My throat is much better--I am still a bit croaky and baritone but it doesn't hurt as much as it did. It has turned into summer overnight. We went from 16C to 30C in a week. Everything in the garden is mulched, snail baited and tomatoes staked. I have been getting a handful of strawberries.

RCCLive tagged me with a blogger meme: "open the book you’re currently reading to page 161 and read the fifth sentence on the page, then think of 5 bloggers to tag." I am currently reading Richard Morgan'sThirteen which was sold in the UK and Australia as Black Man which seems to be a reasonable title because the main character happens to be a black man and the novel takes place about 100 years in the future. I am not up to p.161 and hate to read ahead, but I'll oblige. Ha! The line is "What?" I too have not a lot of bloggers to tag but I'll try
1. Random Knits
2. Jejeune
3. Purple Purl
4. Sarah

The alpaca I pulled out most recently to flick card and go into the washing bag was over 20cm long (8"). I hope I can do it justice when I spin it. I can't put it through the drumcarder without cutting it into smaller pieces.

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.

It's late and I'm tired and have a headache but I just wanted to say hey before hitting the hay (joke, folks). One thing about me is I watch a lot of TV. Everything from documentaries on Nat Geo to CSI. My guilty pleasure TV-wise this year is the American version of "So you think you can dance." We are promised an Aussie version next year. I just love watching these kids dance their socks off. We are about to get the grand finale next week and I would choose either of the male dancers as they just continue to excite and amaze me. It's the only "reality" TV show I can tolerate and the airwaves are crammed with quiz shows and other forms of crap. Which is why I watch a lot of DVDs as well as TV; I'm a participant in a program where you set up a list of movies you want to watch and they send 2 at any one time to you and you send them back. I am catching up on TV shows that Aussie stations showed in the middle of the night if they showed them at all and movies that I missed, and it takes the effort out of going to the DVD rental place and guessing at what they might have in stock that I might want to watch.

Book reports: I finished Sean Williams and Shane Dix's trilogy Evergence and think it was one of the most satisfying outings in action hard sci-fi I've read in a long time. I have started reading Richard Morgan's Thirteen which I bought twice because it was published under a different title in the US and the UK (Black Man) which makes me so mad. His previous novels (Altered Carbon, Woken Furies) were of the same futuristic thriller genre. In between I read the latest Kathy Reich's novel Bones to Ashes which was predictably a page turner. I hated what they did to her novels in making a TV series which had only the slenderest of commonality with the novels (female forensic anthropologist, full stop), changing the locale, the surrounding characters, etc. My BBBB Empires of the Word bogged me down by the time I hit the end on the role of English as a lingua franca today. I've read a lot about this and I just got stuck. I may come back to it after I read The Root of the Wild Madder by Brian Murphy about the making of carpets in Iran and Afghanistan, and The Stuff of Thought by Steven Pinker which is Semantics 101. Why am I reading linguistics books? Didn't I get enough of this in grad school? I also squeezed David Crystal's By Hook or by Crook in there somewhere (etymology, especially of British place names, this time). Two recent purchases burning up the shelf space are Eric Clapton's autobiography and that of Patty Boyd. How this woman married two of the men I have idolized since I was a teenager and made neither of them happy I must find out.

I am still cleaning alpaca. One reader asked how it spun up and I can't tell because I haven't spun any yet! I've been madly washing it but haven't spun it. I am spinning very fine merino that I will ply with mohair and then dye for sock yarn, and some of it I will ply with the palest of the beige alpaca (which sometimes looks almost white) and dye to even the colours out. I got lots of white merino from the free fleece. I'm mostly trying to move alpaca from sitting around dirty in trash bags to clean and ready to spin. I am also grumpy after placing a rather large order for weaving kits with Heritage Yarns only to be told they don't ship outside the US and Canada. I would have thought this would have been an opportunity to grow their business, and I wanted to take advantage of the strength of the Aussie dollar but nope.

I have decided against the trip to Italy and beyond. I realized I am just not strong enough physically. I cannot by myself haul suitcases around airports. Tactile Travel has a less active tour in Sept but it's not in the part of Italy I want to see. I may just do another trip to the US, or Canada, or New Zealand. I can speak Canadian and Kiwi after a fashion.

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

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

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

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

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