It must be summer...

We all come to realizations about ourselves...and sometimes we have to realize it over and over.  I'm just not much of a joiner.  That is, I seem to do things in my own time, but not really when everyone else does it.  So, it has come as a surprise to me that even while other people have started their "Tour de Fleece" in style, I have been managing to spin, card, or knit every day...all on my lonesome.  The Tour de Fleece is an event for spinners, where people watch the Tour de France (or not) and try to commit to spinning every day during this period in July.

To be honest, I didn't see myself doing this.  First, I watch very little TV, and much of what I do watch is kid-related.  Second, the 10 days between preschool ending and camp beginning had me very busy with twins and without childcare...but to my surprise, there were brief moments for spinning.  I did some wheel spinning as we played in our basement play room, and a bit of spindle spinning while we played in the yard.  Unfortunately, we spent a lot of time struggling with a summer cold, an ear infection, and feeling unwell due to the smoke from enormous forest fires, even though they were hundreds of miles away, in both Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Then, summer camp started this week and I threw myself into getting both my work life and our household back in order.  Again--I had my own set of surprises.

I wrote articles...and then had not one but two editors indicate that basically, I was on vacation because they were.  Yup, no articles coming out right now in July, because, uhh, there's no one there to receive or edit them.  Maybe next year, I should ask for folks to tell me their vacation dates and social calendars?!

Right.  So, even though I could work really hard to produce new contacts, pitch to new places...odds are they are also either on vacation or operating on summer autopilot.  hmm.  Also, I have been the lucky last person in the household to get over this bug, so as the boys went off to camp, I discovered that I really wanted to take a little rest, which was not to be.

I have changed a lot of bedding, done some grocery shopping, frozen some berries, and attended to a lot of other minutiae.  So, perhaps despite the fact that I did not show off shiny mounds of roving to be spun this month, or make any broad commitments towards what I planned to accomplish, I am finding a few minutes to play with fiber most every day.  I'm carding (with hand cards) a chocolate brown Border Leicester fleece, and spinning it up.  I'm plying some white Romney wool.  I'm spindle spinning some ancient brown Merino that has been in my stash for 16 years now...

I'm spindle spinning some white Rambouillet cross lamb wool that required combing (by hand) and so I only spin a very small amount at a time.  There's no sparkly stuff with sequins, no roving processed for me, but turns out I'm participating --again, in my only special way.

Quirky loners?  Is there a Tour de Fleece team for that?  I guess I'm on it. :)

Oh, and I guess it must be summer, since all the editors seem to gone fishing...guess I'd better fill up the time productively.  Maybe with a little spinning...

squeaky

This post may be a bit quirky. I am feeling a bit wobbly--had some bad allergies/asthma earlier today. Due to the nice medicines I took, I can now breathe well. (Hurray!) However, I am feeling a bit disconnected from my toes. Off-kilter. :) Most of the day's activities were shelved so that I could sit quietly and avoid any missteps!

The first big news is only what you might expect from the daughter of an automotive engineer. When I got my big floor loom, I was thrilled by it and threw myself into weaving. What I didn't love was the horrible squeals that happened when I put my foot on the treadles to lift harnesses. I asked around, and my friends said there weren't many places to oil on a loom and --don't those metal heddles sound noisy? Well, when something squeaks that much, it turns out that there are moving parts and places to oil and yes, those heddles are noisy--but it wasn't the heddles.

I started out with sewing machine/spinning wheel oil, but I just couldn't seem to eradicate the noise. Finally, the professor came back from the hardware store with this spray lubricant guaranteed not to stain or harm wood, metal and plastic. I used that spray can stuff so much yesterday that I thought the smell alone might be dangerous in a closed up room in winter! All of a sudden...I hit it. The squeal-ly places. Silence. The squeaks were gone.

Wow. In fact, it was so quiet today that the professor didn't even realize I'd been weaving. Hurray!

In other quirky news....you may remember that back in July when we moved to Winnipeg, we drove most of the way here in one car. Our friend John drove the professor's car (and all our houseplants) up to northern Minnesota for us. He left the car at his parents' cottage, and we picked it up there. Today I got a very sweet Valentine's tale:

Our friend drove up to Minnesota, but stopped on the way to visit his relatives' farm. We'd heard a lot about this farm in the past, but we'd never seen a photo. Until today. Click here for a very sweet (and large) Valentine....I've also been wondering if it was stinky, but suspect that in this cold, it's probably not smelly. You'll understand this if you hop over to read this story. It's well worth it. Enjoy! :)