Holding patterns

Still not much to blog about. I would take pics of the sky to distract you, but I have a terminal case of camnesia, and the sky is mostly a flat boring grey right now. I wish I could bottle the smell of the first part of Spring here in Seattle, because it's lovely and bursting with life when you get away from the freeway, and when it rains it adds just a touch of sweet something that makes me want to swoon.

I'm fairly sure it's all those plant hormones saying "Reproduce! Reproduce NOW!", but it's still a fabulous smell.

I'm in a holding pattern on most of my projects at the moment. I'm making steady, if slow progress on the knee high socks. There's a scarf in there somewhere that's my 'mindless public knitting' project. I am washing fleece. Still. Possibly until the end of time. I finished up with the 1/2 fleece from Linda of Skylines Farm (pic is from last year, and of course I forgot to get a picture of this years before I washed it). I have another Shetland waiting in the wings, but I need to do some serious sorting on that before I just dump it all in lingere bags and do my thing. There's two more half fleeces, another Shetland, some mohair, an enormous box of Rambouillet fleeces from last year that I find I may be a little bit scared to open, and a couple other things on the way.

I could have a small fiber acquisition problem. Just maybe.

The Shepherd's Extravaganza is coming up in a couple of weeks, and if I'm a good girl and stop buying fiber, and pay my taxes on time, AND my contract at work is extended, I may go to see if I can find a drum carder. Oh! And books! I need to find some books on blending and generally expand my spinning library from the few titles I have right now.

I can tell that the time is growing closer when I will be able to sit outside with a basket (note to self: buy basket) of wool in the sun and just spin. I've been wondering if it's OK to just rinse some wool in a cool water soak to get most of the yucky stuff out but retain the lanolin...is that still spinning in the grease? That's more like spinning in the grease to me than, say, spinning it with all the crap (possibly literally) in the locks. I may try it with part of one of the fleeces, just for shits and giggles.

I hope to have actual photos of FOs or other interesting things soon, and update with actual content rather than stream of consciousness babbling. Soon. :D