Lest you think my life is filled with nothing but words words words, here's what else I'm doing these days.
Bill's in New Mexico, and when he's away, the dye pot is usually busy. Dyeing is a messy project, and it's better to do it while nobody's looking. I've been dying merino roving for some felt projects, and running the dyed fiber through my carding machine. (Click for a larger view.)
There's another step beyond this one, for this is superwash merino. (Don't ask me why I have so much of it--if you can remember the impulse that drove you to acquire a particular fiber for your stash, you're a better woman than I.) Superwash doesn't felt very well, but I can blend it (on the carder) with fibers that do felt well, and come up with a satisfactory blend.
Here are my first efforts at making felt vessels. I love their organic feeling. The mohair of the gray vessel on the right comes from Lisa Shell's angora goats; the handspun yarn that decorates it is couched on.
And here's the tam I'm knitting--an interesting project, from Mary Rowe's Knitted Tams. The book has plenty of helpful general instruction, but the photographs of the finished tams are not keyed to any specific pattern. You have to imagine what a given graph might look like, in colors of your choice. So this is very much an experiment. This is what Rowe calls the "body" of the tam. When the top (the "wheel") is done, I'll post another photo.
And for those of you who are sending DRY thoughts, send more! We got another 3" of rain yesterday. I don't know how much we've gotten in this last two-week rain event, since the 6" rain gauge overflowed the night of the big storm. Judging from radar reports, though, it looks like we got about 12" that night--and another 7" after that. We've had more rain in the past six months than we normally get in a wet year. I'm planning my ark. And there's a rumor that the neighbors are bringing in a truckload of rock for the road. I hope it's more than a rumor. Everybody's getting stuck at Boggy Junction--including the garbage truck!
Oh, and if you went to Amazon looking for my review of Miss Potter, they've dumped it--goodness only knows why. (Maybe they didn't like something I said?) So I've posted it in an update to this post.
Reading notes. "A poet is somebody who stands out in the rain, hoping to get struck by lightning."--James Dickey