Oh well

I had a lot of plans in mind for January. Somehow, the month has escaped.  Here is a photo of some handspun that I dyed while I was sick.  I shouldn't have been doing it, but I've had several days when I felt sort of better and wanted to feel a sense of accomplishment.  This was some grayish/oatmeal Border Leicester/Romney wool, blended with a small amount of mohair.  I spun enough for a kid's sweater.  I started spinning this in July, when Wolseley Wool, my local yarn store, hosted a few spinning nights.  (It gave me a great excuse to leave home and spin.)

Naturally colored wool makes a great palette for dyeing because the colors come out with depth--textured and rich in the end.  This quick snapshot doesn't show the depth of color, it was cloudy, but I dyed the yarns to order for my kid, blue and green, and left it out in the dining room for all of us to admire and enjoy a shot of color.

Both my twins were home with me for a week due to illness--today is their first day back at school, I hope they make it through the day.  (More on that another time, when I am more energetic.)

A couple of details in the meanwhile.  I left home to teaching my spinning class, which was well-attended and went very smoothly, considering all the illness and antibiotics at home. There are 11 new spindle spinners in the world!  Hurray!  (I hope they keep up the good work!)

Whenever I am really sick, I enjoy a good wallow in bed with a book when it is possible.  Since I had two little kids home with me, that wasn't always an option, but I did discover something. Rosamunde Pilcher's books are now available as ebooks, and you can download them from Amazon or check them out from the library.  I have been a fan of her books since I was a teenager.  Everything is sort of ok at the beginning of every book, but in the middle, there are hot baths, cups of tea, bracing whiskies, dogs, cats, warm farmhouse kitchens, and eventually, at the end, it is always "happy ever after."  There is something to be said for this kind of reading while sick.  I own some of these books, and I prefer real books to ebooks...but these were written long ago and some are out of print.  Here are a couple links through Amazon to the ones I have read (again) so far.  I'm now in the midst of Voices in Summer.

If you're not sick and up for an exciting spy series, I've been really enjoying Susan Elia MacNeal's Maggie Hope mystery series, but only when I wasn't sick and thinking straight!