So I was told I had to do practically nothing for a week.  No spinning, no weaving, no banjo, nothing repetitive or requiring strength.   In between reading, and more reading, and reading some more, I made handkerchiefs from scraps of quilting cotton.   My daughter had made me one for Christmas and it is lovely to use, so I whipped up a couple more.   Of course hers was a panel square with a chicken on it.   I decided not to spend anything on these, so they are just plain fabric bits that I had on hand.

 I found these chicken tea towels at the local box store.   I purchased two of them, and cut them in half.   I put a heading at the top and hemmed the two needing hems about the same size as the bottoms of the towels.   When I added the header, I made sure they were all the same size.  I think they make a cute valance for the kitchen.   I had a curtain rod but it had decorative ends which stuck out farther than the space between the window and the cupboard, so I had to get a new curtain rod.   It cost more than the curtains did.

 I was finally able to spin a bit.   This is superwash merino, blended into rolags on a blending board.   Whenever I use the board, I recall my introduction on how to use one, when a gal was doing a demo in one of the spinning classes.   She took all sorts of fibres and slapped them on the board, packing them in until it was overly full.   She pulled off one single huge batt, which looked wonky and horrible to spin.  I couldn't for the life of me figure out why anyone would do that or want to spin something like that.   Then I found a video showing how to pull rolags from the blending board.  This makes smooth, easy to spin and very pretty rolags,which I enjoy spinning.  So many different ways of doing things in spinning for sure!

We have a second chimney in our basement.  It was slightly damaged and needed some repair but I haden't been able to find anyone to do it since we first moved here.  That is until a couple of weeks ago when I noticed an ad in a small advertising booklet which came in the mail.   The repair quote was reasonable, but it turned out that we couldn't use the old woodstove that we already had.   Nor could he hook up the cookstove that I had.   Options were a second hand stove from a big box store - cheap but would need replacing in a year or two by his estimation, or a middle of the road stove which would last for years.   Because the price was just within our budget, we went for it.   All was good until they went to install the stove and they had made a mistake and there wasn't enough clearance for those options.  The only alternative stove which fit the clearance specs, was to jump up in quality, doubling the price.  Yikes -  however, it's super low emissions, has two air flow controllers and pumps heat like you wouldn't believe.   It's the stove I wish we had upstairs!   The downside is that when all was said and done, we could have practically paid for furnace for the same price.    The cats love to sleep in front of it and I'm happy it has a pedestal base as I have a friend who had a cat which got burnt from trying to bask in the heat under the stove.