Sometimes I get a feeling that I've created a monster, that this blog is very demanding, that there is an audience out there in the cyberworld who expect something from me. While it's nice to be wanted and I know family and friends are part of my "audience" they can't make up the numbers I see in my blog stats. I could babble about the mundane details of my life (my trip to K-Mart), I want to keep content here both interesting and anonymous so sometimes I just can't say what I'm thinking about. This past week was a very down one for me and I spent a lot of time missing him, trying by sheer effort of will to get one more hug from him. Of course that's stupid and in many ways I have progressed down this road called grieving and have developed a one person routine. Even tho my dear MIL is there and talks to me most nights, and my friends are a big help, nobody can replace him. I know it, I'm working on dealing with it, but sometimes that's all I'm capable of doing and blogging doesn't get a chance.
This photo is to prove that the Imp does play in the bathtub. I'm not going to show you pictures of the completed project; it looks fairly minimalist now being all white and grey but It may be a rejection of the mess it was. I can't believe how huge it seems with the wall down between the toilet and bath. I know the separate toilet has its fans in Australia and I can understand the benefits of being able to use the bath while some (probably male and with a newspaper) is camped in the toilet, but the amazing space that removing the wall has produced is worth it.

A short rant about about tradesmen. They show up when it's convenient for them, not you (7AM?), make a horrible mess which some of them try to clean up but none do a complete job, and make you feel stupid about everything you ask for. The skylight guy today showed up early (he "forgot" the meeting we had for Weds) and, as I had expected, the frame didn't fit because I measured the wrong place in the skylight because of his inadequate description of what he wanted measured. His solution was to saw off part of the frame around the skylight, right then, over my exposed benchspace, no warning to move things out of the way, just the ending comment of "good thing you had the vacuum cleaner out". There were pieces of wood and sawdust everywhere and I wonder if I had left food out whether he'd have continued. That will be the last of them for a awhile. [the Imp is in my lap and is trying very hard to sleep with her chin on my arm which is way too high for her to be comfortable but she's settled in]

Two old sock photos since I have just a bit to go till I have new sock photos to share. At left is my first Opal socks and they have had many years of wear. At right are the socks I knit out of my very first hand dyed, hand spun and are too pretty to wear. Sorry about the lurid background but my quilt cover is a Sheridan that was the Bear's but turns out it matches my Oriental very well. The rug isn't really "Oriental" but a handmade wool rug made I think in Morocco. It was in the house my father bought when we moved to Florida and was the only thing I wanted when he moved out. He was going to sell it until he got it valued. I will find a photo or take another as it is one of my prized possessions. It's under my bed because cats (not just this one) like to wrestle with it and have already destroyed the fringe. The new guest bedroom is coming together and once I move the chest of drawers out of the former guest bedroom, serious sorting out will begin. I bought picture frames for 3 reproduction Japanese woodblock prints from a calendar that will go on one wall of the guest bedroom. I can't decide whether the large Arthur Streeton print will stay down the back where I will look at it through the big loom or whether it will move. If you want to know which one go here. It was bought in 1986 on our first trip to Melbourne and someday I'd like to see it in the flesh.

First off a couple of book reports.

Color : a natural history of the palette by Victoria Finlay. If you are a textiles person you surely have heard of this book and I'm a bit behind the wave on reading it It is truly a fascinating book, which mixed her hands-on experiences with finding the original sources of natural colours with the history and science of pigments. Her basic focus as is indicated by the subtitle is art (painting), such as an unfinished Michelangelo that is unfinished because he couldn't get the ultramarine needed for Mary's dress. On the other hand the details of her trip to Afghanistan to find the real source of ultramarine dragged it down a bit. There were also crossovers between dyes and pigments; I don't know that ultramarine (a rock) was ever used as a dye but she she has a whole chapter devoted to indigo. Admittedly it would be difficult to write a book about colour without mentioning indigo. I think this book is a must for any person interested in the history of color in (mostly) Western art. I feel a great need for education about colour. It's a very important central feature of all my textile crafts going back to which fabrics I chose for the quilts on my dolls' beds. There are some colours I thinks just don't go together but don't ask me why. Which is exactly why I need to learn more, see more etc.

L.E. Modesitt. No relation (I think) to the famous knitting guru. I have been reading several of his sci-fi action thrillers. While they are real page turners and always seem to have a deep current of environmental awareness and ethics, I just wish he wrote better. He does so many of the things I marked down student essays on, that I wish I could send him one of his books with my editing. However, he seems to be selling well, so I guess it doesn't matter. Very violent but in a stylized and "we are the good guys" way. The Ecolitan novels are the ones I most recently read but The Ethos Effect was also very good. But I am always left with a guilty feeling like laughing at an Adam Sandler movie.

Fifty Degrees Below by Kim Stanley Robinson. This writer is one of my all time favourite sci-fi writers. Admittedly I just couldn't penetrate The Years of Rice and Salt, but his early stuff and the Mars trilogy are at the top of the all time great fiction. The current trilogy which I am almost halfway through is about plausible, maybe not too future at all, sudden climate change. A few tipping points are reached and there are floods, and severe weather events world wide. The first was Forty Signs of Rain. (BTW I cannot understand the only 3-star ranking on Amazon) As some of the front blurbs have quoted reviewers, every politician should read these books. It can happen to you and what would you do then? The added plus for me is that they all are set in Washington so I can see every place he mentions.

The bathroom is finished, the painters are gone and I can start moving furniture so I can put my studio together and free my dining room table of loom and accessories, many cones of yarn, etc., etc. I do need an electrician to put an additional powerpoint (electrical outlet) in the guest bedroom because there's only one and when the wardrobe (closet) is installed on Wed. there will be power for a lamp etc. by the bed. Yesterday I overdid in a major way by 1) going the the National Gallery to meet up with one of the Bear's old friends who told me many interesting things, 2) going to Pialligo to try and find cider only to find they had already finished for the season (what apples do you pick at the height of summer? why were they always open before at this time of year?) 3) going to a garden centre where I bought veggie seedlings and 2 natives for the front desert, 3) drove to Spotlight and looked at drapery materials without buying any and buying new towels and accessories for the new bathroom which turn out to be exactly the colour of the Imp, 4) stop by the markets to get more fish and a few more pears (I had the choice of 7 different varieties if pears which boggles my mind after growing up with pears being the blah white cubes in fruit salad), 5) stop by the chemist to get a script filled. This morning my legs are very unhappy and my left knee hurts a lot. While I would love to rush out into the garden, I know I would not be able to go to work tomorrow if I did that. It is also very windy and supposed to rain.

I am on the last bit of the Sakiori vest, knitting in the collar. Had I this to do over I would not construct the collar this way, but we shall see. I have a full bobbin of plied heathered purple wool, which is really Bendigo Classic colourway Damson. I am 3 rows into the colourwork on the Komi hat. I see in Ravelry that many people said the had knit as written was too big which is good because I have a big head so it might actually fit. The second sock has about 4" knit.

This is a reflective post since I have been thinking about my emotional and physical condition, what makes me happy, why I feel so bereft at some times and not others, trying to "be here now" without saying "everything hurts." My ethics lie somewhere between the Golden Rule and striving for enlightenment Buddhist style. This is very difficult sometimes when I'm in pain. I've surrendered to the vertigo and hired a painter to do all the painting that needs to be done to make the place habitable. I've lived surrounded by the former owners' aqua enamel on every paintable surface for too long, and I'll admit I am not able to do it myself. A simple decision but one to make without beating myself up inside about tasks I "should" do myself. I am aging. I'm not good on ladders; don't feel guilty or self indulgent. I do need to be more active and hope that I can get in the garden and do more physical stuff without cutting a hole in myself or straining my knees. Knees. Should I get them replaced? I did a bit of exercise in the stacks today and they really complained. Of course the OH&S folks say I shouldn't use footstools but they didn't offer any alternative when I need stuff on the top shelf.

My heart is in my fibre stuff but I never seem to have any time for it. I get 2 hours of watching TV with 2 cats on my lap in the evening. That is usually spent knitting or sometimes spinning. My loom has been warped for weeks and I haven't thrown the shuttle once. I have a huge bag of alpaca to card and other bags of alpaca to wash, not to mention a black fleece in the stash. All my stashes are bursting at the seams and I have plans for all of it and what I lack is time. Should I surrender to retirement because I can at my next birthday? But I do love my job and the people I work with and I'd miss all that. I don't understand how anyone could ever be bored. My social life is also on the go with friends including me in outings so I'm not always at home watching the Imp playing with a twist-tie in the new bathtub (she loves bathtubs). There are online communities, both Ravelry and the yahoogroups that I could read and respond to if I had time rather than skimming and deleting as I do now. I'd like to meet more people online since I find that a perfectly reasonable way to have a conversation. It's how I met my Bear after all.

And then there's the Bear. I still feel like a part of my physical body has been hacked off. A loss of part of me, not a separate individual. I found a copy of Alice in Wonderland in Latin in the stacks and my mind went to how much fun we would have had with that and how many catch phrases would result. As I've said, I've never lived alone for this long especially not without the prospect of change, but from here I can't see where or why I need to add courtship and a new man in my life. Except for things when brute strength is required or handyman skills (not something the Bear had unless it was electronic) I don't see the need. It's a pain but I can put out the rubbish myself. The specific things I miss are idiosyncratic to him and I doubt are duplicated.

So here I sit, debating being in the now, understanding my own mental state but very uncertain about my future. I am a planner but I don't know what to plan for. Perhaps being in the now is all I can handle right "now". Makes me antsy but there is nothing more I can do and if I can maintain my consciousness and awareness, that might be a sufficient goal for the short term. Watch this space.

This is one of four books that arrived from Amazon yesterday and I think I am madly in love with it. If you have trouble reading tiny type it is The Yarn Lover's Guide to Hand Dyeing by Linda La Belle and I have no link because it's available from everybody. Not only does it show all the techniques to get all those wonderful colours you covet when looking at hand-dyed yarns, not only does it take you step by step through (I think) 9 different dyes from Kool-Aid to Kiton, not only does she use many different fibres so it's a good cross section of materials, but there are interviews and behind-the-scenes photos of some of the best hand dyers we all know from Treenway Silks to Koigu. I happen to have 3 4 oz skeins of white wool sitting on my kitchen table: hand-spun BFL, handspun one ply merino one ply mohair, and commercially spun wool and cashmere. I think to the stash and think of all the white wool waiting to be dyed. And lets not forget overdyeing while we're talking about dyeing, because Sally Melville's Styles opened my eyes to the possibilities of changing the yarn into something completely different. One of the techniques I liked in this book is the dyeing of a already knitted hat. It's an idea I've toyed with when thinking about knitting socks and then dyeing them. I have so many ideas coming out of merely paging through this book. It inspired me to think about retiring our tired microwave to solely dying purposes and my MIL told me she has a single burner hot plate I could have which would move the dyeing out of the kitchen. When the door is installed as my work space, there will be lots of room to spread things out. Weaving with hand-dyed yarn! Where will this end? How will I ever have time to blog?

My excuse this week is I got a cold a week ago and spent several days feeling like sludge so I went easy for several days. I was lying in bed actually sleeping while my bathroom was being demolished and rebuilt. It's close to being finished, needing installation of the vanity and toilet (out of the dining room after more than a year!) and some minor electrical work completed. And painting. Why does my world revolve around painting? I hope to go back at the guest bedroom this weekend. This morning I worked in the garden; another skirmish in the war against couch.

For those who know what I refer to, be glad that my financial dramas are almost over. The cliche that people go feral when money is at stake is all so very true and you cannot trust anybody.

Rounds 1-3: I have not watched any but snippets of the Swans this season but they have lost one and won two and the few times I managed to be in the room when they were actually playing and not having a commercial break, they looked good. Mick seems to be in good form as does Bazza. I so rarely have time to sit down and watch during the day on weekends and I didn't grow up to listening to footy on the radio so I have a hard time visualizing the match simply from play by play commentary. And of course, I always want to share with The Bear and he's not here.

I've added another charity link to my page. Plant a Billion Trees is an initiative of the Nature Conservancy to reforest parts of the Brazilian rainforest. I've been a member of the NC for many years and the Australian Bush Heritage folks do similar work to what the NC does. Buy up land and try and rehabilitate it. Bush Heritage is on a plan to buy up land to form a wildlife corridor from the mountains to the coast. In case you haven't caught on, I really care a lot about the environment and people less fortunate than I and I try to donate regularly if not in large chunks. I try to live as green as I am physically able, have a 99% organic garden, use water wisely, and consumer moderately (except for fibre and books). I find it frustrating when somebody publishes something about tips for saving energy or water or whatever and I've already been doing all of them for years. Re-use, repair, recycle.

A few photos to prove I really am making progress on the knitting front. To the right are the Mountain Colors socks, down to the heel on the first. I am a little worried about yardage so made them a tad shorter than what I prefer. Yes, I know I could just have added different yarn to the toes, but the colours of this yarn are so pretty I hate the thought of tacking on something that doesn't match, and I have nothing that comes close to these. Here also is progress on the Sakiori II vest. I only have half of a side panel and the collar to go.

And here is some spinning as well. I got bored spinning yet more white merino. I thought it time I tried to spin some of that washed, carded and very fluffy white alpaca. I've never spun anything but various types of wool and some blended with a bit of mohair, so this is virgin territory. I know alpaca on its own can be very heavy, warm, and has no memory so I am aiming at something fine. I have no idea how it will behave once plied and washed but I hope I produce something usable. It seems pretty soft and the fibres are in the 3-4" range (not the really long stuff I showed before. I have masses of the shorter stuff to card.

LATE BREAKING NEWS: The Imp is missing. I have been having tradesmen in to remodel the horrendous main bath. The cats have been carefully locked up every day. Today the electrician came late, almost at 5. She had been with me to that point and she disappeared under the bed when a strange man entered the house. But he was in and out repeatedly, flipping circuit breakers etc. He always closed the front door but she can be so quick. Now it's getting dark and I've been out calling till my throat is raw and I can't find her. I don't think she's go far and I've alerted the nearest neighbours (who don't have dogs). I am distraught. I can't imagine her gone, she's with me all the time demanding to be petted. She is microchipped but where is she????

UPDATE: she is found!! She made it down under the house through one of the holes in the bathroom floor. Despite all our best efforts to cover every access point she must have found a hole. My dear MIL told me to sit down and eat something and she would come back and when I did I heard her under the house. Getting her out wasn't so easy but she will be incarcerated whenever there is an open hole. Just exploring, Mum.

What's my excuse this time? I have none. I have been tired, in pain, grieving, busy with all the dumb things we have to do in our daily lives. I had a spell of not sleeping. I have a chronically sore right thumb that I got X-rayed this week although I think it's "just" arthritis. I have been going in later to work which my body appreciates but I don't like sitting in traffic for 25 minutes to go 3 kms. And going in late means I work later and barely am home, changed clothes and read mail before I am into making dinner, feeding the cats, etc. The Senior cat continues to deteriorate, coughing spells last longer and sound more painful, she has ceased washing herself and only lies in the dining room or the computer room in the sun all day and my lap at night. I briefly got both of them in bed with me (if they can't see each other they can pretend they don't know) the other night. I can tell by the way the SC walks that she's in pain. I hope she makes it through my trip. I've also been working on trip details, getting in touch with old friends and figuring out dates.

Grieving: still hurts deep in the centre of me. It's also loss--that part of my life is missing. All very tender areas I can't dwell on without crying and so I tip-toe around the edges, knowing and acknowledging the sore place but not poking it to make it blot out the sun. Strange as this may sound, I've gone back to wearing make up. In my old life I wouldn't even go to the grocery store without eye make up. Here, as part of a unit where I was loved for the essence of me, not so much my appearance, and I didn't care what anybody else thought, I stopped the routine. A photo taken recently revealed that I have no eyebrows and my features seem to have disappeared. Being a single (well, there is nobody I'm a part of anymore) I feel eyes not seeing a couple but a single. Perhaps it's vanity in my old age and more wrinkles than I had a year ago. So now I have a collection of potions and such that add to my getting ready to face the world time, but give me a little more self confidence in being a single, an atom split from my molecule. Now to sound utterly vain but I don't think I look my age and if I can shed the last 10 kgs I will feel even better about my Self, my Individualness, my Aloneness, the outer shell the world sees.

I have been busy stripping wallpaper from what will be the guest bedroom and I'll go back to that once I post this. I have almost warped my loom for second time. The bathroom renovations are scheduled for this week.

I am spinning my free fleece, which is so soft delicious merino. I am knitting the Mountain colors socks (did some of that during Earth hour last night). I have 2 side panels to knit for the Sakiori II vest from Folk Vests and then the collar after I put it all together. The yarn is bulky so it goes quickly. I broke the yarn diet that I have been on for over a year and bought some 90% silk yarn from Elann, as well as some Berroco Cotton twist which I love and is not sold in this country as far as I know.

Here is my next major project, my first fair isle, made from Philosopher's Wool (left) in their pattern Stained glass from Fair Isle Simplified. It will definitely be warm when all that yarn is doubled. I bought it all half price from a vendor in Canada whose name I forget. The other more mindless project will be a saddle shouldered cabled jacket out of plain grey superwash wool. Cables are mindless to me, socks are mindless to me. I've never done any fair isle except some striped socks, which hardly count.

Thank G we are out of our spell of 35C weather. This is the weather we should have had in February when we were freezing. The garden is dried to a crisp as well so I can rip stuff up. If we actually get rain as forecast for Friday I will plant some silverbeet (swiss chard). The pear crop turned out to be a bust because we had bad fruitfly this year and I don't spray the tree. Very few pears were edible except by parrots. I obviously did not paint, so that's next weekend.

I have a guilty confession. I am totally hooked on So You Think You Can Dance (Australian version) and am glued to the TV while it's on (altho my dear MIL may be talking in my other ear). And I think Camilla should have stayed and Rhiannon voted off and I think Henry & Vanessa are more than just partners and I think Henry is sooo sexy and such a good dancer. Do I sound like I'm 16 yet? I watched all of the US version even tho it wasn't live and I didn't cheat spoil anything. I keep telling myself "favourite" not "best" (see above comment on Camilla). Sometimes I'm so jazzed up after the Sunday night show I have a hard time coming down. I've never watch any of these reality type contests except the dance ones, but Ten (network) has me pinned down by this. I am almost glad everything is disappearing over Easter weekend so I can catch my breath.

Hate to blog and run but I am knackered. It's been a while since I worked 2 days in a row (let alone a day with as many authority snafus as I saw today) and I need mindless knitting (Mountain Colors socks OTK) and mindless TV.

Here is the yarn that was forced on me at work. There is enough total to knit a jumper. But this is the first addition to the stash since 2006, not counting handspun and sock yarn. On the right was yet another surrender to the lure of beautiful roving, this time from Laughing Rat Studio in my former stomping ground in the US. We have, left to right, superwash merino, Shetland, and Corriedale. Yes, I said no more fibre, but I couldn't resist. I need my spinning mojo back. I'm almost finished the Regia socks and will then dive into big winter projects

I thought I'd give you an idea of what the results have been from my latest round of cleaning white alpaca. Yes, those locks are 8" long and silky and beautiful. I can only guess the animal missed a shearing which is why they are so long. They were just as filthy as the rest of the white alpaca and despite flick carding them before washing, the ends still stuck together. When I do the next lot of this, I'll cut the tips off since now I know that even if they go in open, they come out stuck together. I think I only have 1 1/2 trash bags of white, two of chestnut brown and one of black. I'll probably have to cut these locks unless they spin easily from the lock because they are too long for the drum carder.


After all my talk about my garden I thought I'd post a couple of photos even though it's in its last stages. At left are my two raised beds, the right one full of beans, the left has tomatoes down the end, eggplant in the middle and my now-deceased flat Italian beans. There is a cantalope at the front which I planted late when my cucumbers died, and miracle of miracles, it has produced a rockmelon (what Aussies call a cantalope) but a baby, about the size of a large grapefruit. In the rear is the pear tree and to the left of that is the asparagus bed. The right hand photo shows part of the rest of the garden: tomatoes, pumpkin (butternut squash) which produced 7 large pumpkins, another cantalope running with it. At the back are my limas which were so vigorous they practically pulled down tomato stakes. If you could see to your right, you'd see the "herb garden" which consists of a lemon verbena, sage, oregano, and a humongous bay tree that I need to take the chain saw to. It was just a sprig when we planted it. If you could look left you would see my strawberry patch and where the zucchinis just died of mildew. Behind you would be the 3 plum trees.

I have not done most of what I planned over this long weekend because of two thing: pain and heat. Every day that I spend time on my feet, whether it's shopping, moving my loom into its new location and tidying up the proto-studio, my legs kill me the next day. Only bed rest and Neurontin help and enough Neurontin and I'm too sleepy to concentrate. I think I need to see my rheumatologist to see whether there's any solution. My right wrist is also very sore, in the same place that I had the frozen thumb.The heat (we're over 30C for the next week) means painting walls becomes difficult since the paint dries on the brush or roller before it reaches the walls. Same problem with stripping wallpaper. This is the weather we should have had in February.

One last tidbit: I now have a link on my page to Kiva, an organization that takes small donations and turns them into loans for people in third world countries to start or expand businesses. I don't know where I stumble on their web site but I made a small donation to a group of weavers in Guatemala and I was just told their loan had been fully subsidized and they are on their way. Small donations make big things happen.

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).