My bathtub looks like Sasquatch died in it

Inspired by yesterday, and realizing that I'm probably looking at the last few good weekends of the year, I decided to work on one of my fleeces today. Did some web searching for advice, hauled one out and started in on it.

Whoo boy. What an incredible assload of work it is. Truly amazing. First you pick over the fleece, getting rid of the parts with too much "vegetative matter" and too much sheep poop. Then the washing. First, a soak in super hot water with a LOT of soap in it. So hot I actually had to boil water to get to temp. Then 3-5 rinses in increasingly cool water, with draining it in between. Saturated wool is heavy, so lifting it in and out of the sink has made my back ache like hell. And it was so dirty. SO dirty. And there was water ALL over my kitchen. Now it's all drying on my clothes rack in the tub upstairs. I should get Wiley to take a picture of it. It's awfully funny looking.

But, I think that what yarn I do get out of the fleece is going to be stunning - it's black with brown on the tips and some silver hairs mixed in. The fibers seem to be very long and soft, and I think it's just going to be gorgeous.

As far as the whole wanting to get really into the whole where-it-comes-from, kinda earthy part of the experience, I think I hit that when I found a dead caterpillar in the fiber. Just a little reminder of where that wool sweater comes from, I guess. But still, ew.

Other highlights from yesterday included seeing the woman spinning angora quite literally off her rabbit, as the rabbit sat in her lap, seeing a tiny Charka wheel in action, forgot about those in the sleepiness of last night

(no subject)

Damn wool.

My back hurts this morning.

That is all.

More widget-isms

A month of so ago, we went for a hike with Jude. While we were hiking, Jude taught her a joke.... "Where does a sheep get a haircut? At the baa-baashop". I don't think she even gets it, but Widget keeps repeating it to random people, and laughing her butt off at it.

In a similar vein, sh was starting to try knock-knock jokes. I could only remember one the day she asked, so I told her the banana-banana-banana-orange (Orange you glad I didn't say banana?) one. Which was probably too complex for her to really learn, so she keeps trying to tell it back to me, and mangling it terribly. Everytime she does it, she cracks herself (and me) up.

On a sadder note, tonight at dinner, I was telling Wiley about Matt's sad fish issues, where he's lost almost all of his 20+ goldfish tank. (He was our source for Dorothy, Shark and Whale.) Widget looked at me, and asked why his fish had died. I told her that we didn't know why. With this sad little face, she said, "I know how he feels. It's sad when your fish die." So we talked for a bit about her fish dying too.