The Week Went Where?

The week has flown by once again. Canada Day weekend is normally the Ealdormere event, Trillium Wars. I really wanted to go this year but it was my daughter's BBQ to introduce us to her fiance's parents. They seemed like very nice people however when his mother pulled out a stack of about 200 photos and started to show me pics of her relatives that I "might" meet at the wedding, I did really, really wish I was sitting around a campfire with good friends, dressed in a tunic, perhaps listening to bards or just enjoying the atmosphere.

I had a go with a vague attempt at embroidery for a new tunic for hubby. After 3 days of effort, I hadn't warmed to the results of my efforts and hubby mentioned that he really wasn't an "embroidered tunic" kind of guy. That particular piece - part of one cuff was tossed and he's now got a new plainer tunic in woad blue with madder neck facing almost done. He thought that my finishing all the seams by hand was an awful lot of work, but I pointed out that I do it while I'm sitting around anyway, so it's not like it's a specific time out of my schedule. I really dislike sitting still watching t.v. or movies, sports etc, unless I'm doing something else at the same time.

The garden is growing, mainly weeds. I've gotten the leeks weeded and started on the 2nd woad bed. The cool and wet weather seems to favour weeds over the other plants, although the herbs are looking great! There are a few green tomatoes on the vines. The Arctic poppies that I worried about earlier this year have sprung forth abundantly..... everywhere... like where they should be and where I least expected them. They are supposed to be in the front garden beds but they are in multiple places in the back yard, woad bed, herb garden, sprouting out of the part that I experimented with landscaping cloth to keep the weeds at bay!

I spun up some corriedale that had been mordanted in case I needed it as extras for a demo a few weeks back. I spun it much thicker than I normally do. Every once in a while I need to remind myself that I can spin to size and chose something out of my normal range and spin off a bobbin of it. Since I only had 100 gms of the corriedale, this became my "thick" skein. There are 192 yards in it. Because it's mordanted with Alum, I feel obligated to dye it although if I hadn't mordanted it ahead of time I would leave it plain as it turned out to be a lovely colour on it's own.

I spent 2 days washing fleeces. They are both pretty when washed up. This is Jillian, a Shetland lamb from Kalwa Taure. It's a pretty grey which will be part of the shawl project for Tammy. I also washed Rolo but right now, with grey, cool weather and a move on the way, it's a little much to do the washing. I've decided that I don't really "like" washing fleeces. I ended up tired, wet and smelling like dirty, wet sheep. While I actually do like the smell of fresh fleece very much, it turns out that I DON'T like smelling like fresh fleece myself :)