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