Category Archives: Cogging for Kibble

Weekend Roundup

This was a truly lovely weekend. We didn’t rush around, the weather was nice, we crossed things off the to-do list, I got work done, got reading done, had a cello lesson, and ate food. Really, that’s all I ask for.

Friday afternoon I had the deeply satisfying experience of refusing that benighted UPS package, and the driver said, “Good for you.” I’m going to be saving around twenty dollars by having the parcel shipped out via USPS, even paying the USPS shipping fee, and I’ll have to wait another couple of weeks to finally get it. I refuse to cave in and support UPS’s extortionate practices.

Saturday morning I took the boy to get his hair cut, and then we went next door so I could pick up The Intentional Spinner that I’d ordered to replace the copy of Spin Control that I’d bought and later that day won in an on-line draw. The boy had saved up twenty dollars and though he tried to get me to say he could buy a train instead of a book, he eventually went up the escalator with great enthusiasm and chose the copy of Warman’s Lionel Train Field Guide 1945-1969 that he’d been sighing over every time I checked out the needlework books on the adjacent shelf. (We have proceeded to read this book before each nap and bedtime. No, really. We started with some of the text on how to use the book, then the evolution of the Lionel packaging, and then the captions under the pictures of the trains. Not exactly a brilliant narrative, but he’s enthralled.) When we left the bookstore we stopped by Jess’s house to finally collect the carton of Vanilla Coke she’d bought for me on a trip to Vermont at Thanksgiving.

Saturday afternoon I got some Yule knitting done and read another chunk of An Echo in the Bone. I also learned that my proper 7/8 soft case arrived at the luthier! This is going to be a straight trade for the 4/4 case that my 7/8 cello came with. I originally told the luthier I’d stop by next Saturday but that doesn’t make sense time- or gas-wise; I’ll send the 4/4 case over with HRH on Friday, and he’ll make the ten-minute trip to the luthier’s shop after work on Friday on his way to collect the boy. We also moved the DVD cabinet out of the living room and into the hallway, where it doesn’t look bad at all, to free up one whole baseboard heater. As the house has been very damp and chilly lately despite the heat being on, we also trotted out the dehumidifier that had been part of the downstairs apartment’s appliance suite, scrubbed it within an inch of its life, and plugged it in to see what would happen. As we’d suspected (and yet still to our somewhat grim horror) it pulled a good couple of cups of water out of the air in just ninety minutes. This flat has always had a problem with window condensation and mold in dark corners, but we’ve never actually used a hygrometer to measure the relative humidity. The recommended level is around 50%; from the lists of warning signs we’ve just read we suspect ours is about 100%. Anyway, we don’t particularly want to be running a dehumidifier all the time, as it takes a shocking amount of electricity, but the difference in the air was palpable. I think we’ll run it in a different room for an hour or so every day.

Saturday night we attended a dinner party chez Luanna, and ye gods, it was everything anyone who’s ever attended one has said they are. We’ve had to miss every single one of these we’ve been invited to for the past gods know how many years, so to finally be there was a huge thing. The food and the company were spectacular. We had a fabulous time and came home with souvenir programmes menus complete with recipes and photos of what was served. Shall I boast about what we ate? Oh, of course. When we arrived the wine was flowing freely and there were platters of hors d’oeuvres in the kitchen, delicious little crab things on baked wonton wrappers, homemade bruschetta, and prosciutto/melon/fig bites in crisp little bite-sized cups. Our first course was a potage of zucchini, mushrooms, and leeks, followed by duck a l’orange, roast baby potatoes with herbs, and green beans with pine nuts. Dessert was the impressive poached pears dipped in chocolate… which turned out to be stuffed with chocolate-nut truffle filling. I am not a huge pear fan, but these were cooked to perfection, and the chocolate and nuts didn’t hurt in the least. I have not been this enthusiastic about food in possibly years.

Sunday morning we went grocery shopping, which was oddly enjoyable. Usually we are very tense when we shop in grocery stores, generally due to the oblivious and rude nature of fellow shoppers or the non-availability of an item of which we are in dire need, but people were moderately sane and the only thing on the list that we didn’t get was the name brand butter that was on sale, which wasn’t a huge issue because the basic no-name brand of sweet butter I usually buy was only twenty-five cents more expensive at its regular price.

The weather this weekend was a treat. Yesterday in particular was a gorgeous warm fall day, with sun and only a slight breeze and a high of something like fifteen degrees. When we got home from doing the groceries the boys played in the pile of leaves outside. They claimed to be raking, but I knew what was actually going on.

The huge maple tree out front drops an equally huge number of leaves around this time of year, and after scraping them up into a huge pile (and spreading it all out and raking it up again and again) they hauled the leaves into the backyard to pile on the vegetable garden on top of the compost we’d already spread there. It was so warm that we opened the windows. (Also good for removing extra humidity in the fall, we learned.)

While the boy napped I worked on the assignment I’d received on Friday afternoon, because if I could finish it and hand it in, chances were very good that both it and the one I’d already handed in on Friday would be approved by five PM on Monday and I’d be able to invoice for both of them, doubling this invoice total. I managed to do it, too, so I’m just waiting for the approval codes for each so I can plug them into my invoice and send it off. I’m getting better at the efficient handling of evaluating these manuscripts. It helps when they’re non-fiction; I can scan them with less investment. The co-ordinators have just figured out that I’m experienced in religion, so that’s what three of the last five have been. I greatly prefer them to the epic fantasies.

And I had my cello lesson last night, where we worked on the group pieces for the recital. The great Focus on Shifting continued, with the key thing I brought away from this particular lesson being the concept of shifting over the wall instead of through it, using the slight elastic bounce off the fingerboard to travel on the string to the target position and then rejoining the fingerboard with another elastic motion. I worked on this about a year ago, using the mental image of a jellyfish or a squid swimming for an analogy to the motion required (whatever works, okay?) and it’s so rewarding to see that absolutely none of it stuck with me once we stopped talking about it. I also had a note on my Brahms waltz/lullaby piece that said WRONG FINGERINGS, noted as such after the last group class when I got tangled up and saw everyone else was shifting differently, and hoo boy, were they ever wrong. We went forty-five minutes over time as a result of trying to get them corrected. My teacher is an absolute saint.

Today’s to-do list includes a short proofreading job, doing up that invoice, and typing out the draft of a formal ritual which also involves transcribing Norse poetry. Also, it would be really nice if my late freelance cheque finally arrived.

In Which She Natters About Everything For A Bit

Oh, Mr. Mailman, you do love me. I was beginning to think you didn’t care. I know I don’t order stuff any more — I’m not writing a contracted book and so I’m not ordering used books I can’t get through the library, and I don’t have the money to buy fun stuff. But today you brought me a little freelance cheque. This was a pleasant thing to offset no mail at all this week so far. That was sad. Although no mail means no bills, so there is an up side to it all.

My current freelance assignment is going swimmingly. It all flows and mostly lacks spelling and grammar errors. It’s refreshing to be able to read a story that hangs together with well-written characters and dialogue. The last little sixty-page one that was supposed to be easy after the four-hundred page disaster ended up being just as much of a disaster, as it wasn’t even an outline. It’s really, really hard to supportively review something that essentially isn’t there.

Because work was going so well yesterday I had the opportunity to knit the boy a hat. This was supposed to be a Yule gift, but we discovered yesterday morning that he has no hats that fit him beyond his ball caps, so it got a bit more critical. I knitted the whole thing before he got home, tried it on him to size and place (somewhat, er, freeform) earflaps, and he fell in love with it. He kept thanking me and running to look at himself in the mirror. What I haven’t told him is that I found an excellent web site that turns pictures into knitting charts, and I had planned to double-stitch the Autobot symbol on the front for him before I gave it to him. As he has absconded with the thing, I shall stitch it Friday night after he’s in bed, and leave it for him to find Saturday morning.

Orchestra was good last night. At least, it sucked less that it had for the past three weeks, so things must be better. I still need to work on some of the Beethoven trouble spots. Some I have down, others I don’t (which is an incredibly helpful statement, I know). We got to play the Schubert, which was nice because I could play it with no trouble even without practice, and we sight-read the first movement of the second Weber clarinet concerto (well, it shouldn’t have been sight-reading, because I’ve had it for two weeks) and that wasn’t as much of a disaster as it could have been once I remembered that we were in E flat major. It always sounds so wrong until you hear everyone else playing.

Today is laundry and bread-baking (both already on; the freelance work-at-home life is such a glamorous one), and then when I’ve polished my report on this latest ms. I’m going to finish spinning the singles for the wrap. I have about a half-ounce of fibre left, and I’m so close to being done. Of course then I get to ply it, which is another kettle of fish entirely. I discovered last week that I need a second swift, because having a skeinwinder is all well and good, but once you’ve washed a skein you need to unwind it and wind it on again to measure the length properly. The good news is I can build one with jumbo TinkerToys, so I don’t need to buy one. (Now we just need to find the TinkerToys and convince the boy it’s Not To Play With once it’s built; he can have the bits I don’t use. Or, you know, I could ask the husband to knock one together in his copious spare time at work. Along with those extra bobbins.)

Actually, I’ve been wondering if I can’t use the old textile mill quill-style pirn bobbins for storage of singles and plying, assuming I can get a bunch of the inexpensively at flea markets or some such place. I know the holes don’t go very deep, but HRH could drill them a bit deeper. The trick would be winding the singles onto the quill bobbins, but if one located an old manual bobbin-winder, one could do it. Theoretically. (Oh, look, they make new ones, but good grief they’re expensive, even the manual ones. Wow. And new storage bobbins, too, but those are much less fun. )

Which brings me to the discovery that the great wheel my mum owned for years and recently placed in Ceri’s sunroom was retrofitted to be a bobbin-winder. The spindle doesn’t extend out to spin off the tip; it’s been hacked so that it lifts out of the brackets to enable a bobbin to be slipped on, and the drive band runs the spindle/bobbin combo to wind yarn on. Apparently it isn’t uncommon for great/walking wheels to be kitbashed in this way. Gods, I love the Internet. People can share so much information.

Right. On to that work thing. After another load of laundry and punching down the bread.

Dull

First, a pretty picture: I’m currently spinning some Louet Northern Lights in the Cactus Flower colourway. It’s my first foray into spinning dyed fibre, and it’s fascinating me. I probably wouldn’t have chosen this to spin, but it was a test done with fibre on hand, and it turns out it works rather well for a project I had in mind. More on that later, though. Show and tell first!

Okay. Now for the less than cheerful stuff.

I seem to be at a pretty bad fibro low. The cold/flu thing that tag-teamed me through September really kicked me hard, and getting back on my feet is a very long drawn-out process that’s not much fun at all. It’s also that time of year where I’m restless, but don’t want to leave my office. I want to be out being distracted by things, but I don’t have the energy to either do it physically or mentally, since dealing with People At Large requires a heck of a lot of energy. And as I no longer have the car, going out via public requires more time and physical energy as well.

So I’m spending a lot of time flipping dully through stuff on the internet hoping for inspiration, researching spinning and testing stuff out because it relaxes me and doesn’t draw a whole bunch of energy from me, and getting frustrated because I can’t work. Work is… draining. It’s at the point where I’m not being fulfilled by it, and it’s just a paycheque. Which is not a bad thing, because I never set out on this particular freelance gig seeking fulfillment; it was always intended to be just a paycheque, because money is good. It’s just really hard to open these documents and run a review on them, because most of the time they’re poorly written and poorly laid out, and that’s really depressing. I have to muster up a huge amount of energy to deal with them, and that’s draining on a whole other level. What would probably fulfill me more is actually writing, except that whole finite amount of energy and currently low levels means I need to direct the energy towards paying/deadlined work first. I feel exhausted just thinking about writing my own stuff, and not terribly inspired. What I need to do is rethink how I handle these assignments. Maybe read through them entirely before starting to pull out the broken elements for the report, then handle the report at the end rather than starting with it at the beginning of the read-through, because it slows things down.

Cello is feeling kind of sloggy at the moment too, because I’m trying to internalize a whole lot of stuff that’s coming up in lessons, mostly about technique, and as a result a bunch of other stuff is breaking down. This is not unusual; very often we have to unlearn things, or take things apart in order to reassemble them properly. I know this intellectually, but my emotional awareness just sees things I was playing decently now being played horribly and piles on the self-confidence crisis. Orchestra is a slog too, because I’ve been dealing with the take-apartness issues (I’ve played everything on this program before, so why can’t I do it now?), the past month I’ve been ill and unable to focus properly, and I’m experiencing issues with bringing things up to tempo. I can play them sub-tempo at home, and I’m not up to speed yet at rehearsal, which, let me tell you, is frustrating and embarrassing when you sit second chair right in front of the conductor. (I am very specifically not looking at the Beethoven, here. I know, I asked for a Beethoven symphony; I’ve changed my mind. How about some Haydn? Or some Boyce?) So rather than being excited about cello the way I was in the spring and early summer I’m dragging my feet.

There’s a wedding this Saturday for which I’m trying to muster up the enthusiasm to attend. It’s Thanksgiving, which means there will be a visit to the in-laws. Perhaps that’s part of my trouble; we usually visit my parents at this time of year, and maybe not going is messing with my seasonal pattern.

Ultimately it all comes down to being frustrated because I don’t have enough energy to handle everything I need to handle. I want to go out; I stay home because I know that if I go out I’ll exhaust myself for an undetermined period of time. I can’t focus on work. Cello is at a not-rewarding point.

The one good thing that’s happening is spinning. I am so thankful I discovered it at this particular point, because it’s productive and creative while being not overly demanding energy-wise. I just started my first spinning with colour experiment (see above), and it’s brilliant. Ceri got the fibre as a sample when we took our spindle class together in May, and found it while she was looking for something else during the crafting weekend. The bag of roving was a bit garish, but I test-spun it and lo and behold, it’s exactly my goddaughter’s favourite colours: hot pink, deep greens and blues, and some purples. The colours soften and blend so much during the spinning process that the single is quite attractive. I’m so glad, because finding a yarn for the wrap I wanted to knit for her as a Yule gift was becoming quite a trial (not that I was looking for a colourway with all her favourite colours in it; this was pure serendipity). I’m spinning a fairly fine single, and fingering weight (what the pattern calls for — well, actually it doesn’t, it calls for laceweight, but I’m knitting a heavier wrap so I’ll be using fingering weight) will be no problem at all. Thank goodness my beloved LYS Ariadne Knits had another couple of the small 2oz bags in stock; they’ve got those aside for me, and all together that will be 6oz and more than enough (she said, crossing her fingers and looking sternly at the spinning wheel, which is totally innocent). Of course, once it’s spun up and plied I’ll have to knit the thing, which is another kettle of fish entirely. I am also planning to knit a hat with earflaps for the boy, so we shall see what all these good intentions bring.

Noon

Four loads of laundry done (okay, the third’s drying, the fourth’s in the washer), the freelance polishing is almost complete, and the sun is actually out today. I feel slightly more human, though folding the first two loads of laundry wiped me out for a good half hour.

HRH turned the heat on in the kitchen last night, as it’s central so would take the chilly edge off pretty much everywhere, because the temperature went down to three degrees C last night. Seriously, October? Three degrees already? Come on, Indian summer!

ETA @ 2 PM: Laundry done, and freelance thing done. Going to go fall into bed now, because I’m dizzy and have the chills.

Day Off

The boy went into preschool today and wasn’t sent home, so I assume all was well. I gave myself a well-deserved day off, which means I practiced the cello twice (once this morning and once this afternoon), wound off the yarn I’d plied last night (237 yards), spun some more single and plied it with the remaining single (another 43 yards, for a total of 279! and I still have some original single left), washed both to set the twist and hung them to dry (the second little skein is positively the best yarn I’ve done so far), made bread (twice, because the first one went horribly wrong because I forgot to turn off the low heat I’d set in the oven to warm it up before leaving it to rise, so the heat killed the yeast), made stew, and caught up on some web episodes of things.

There is a train horn stuck on at the bridge near us. It’s… insidious. It’s almost not noticeable, until one notices it, and then it’s Very There.

I feel so relaxed. Apart from the irritating tickle in my throat that has caused me to cough all day, that is, and the resulting headache. It felt so wonderful to sit down and actually play again. The cello sounds fantastic, with excellent ringing tones and nice sustain. Part of that is I’ve forgotten how good it sounds, but I like to think part of it is also due to my use of back muscles to direct the bow and keep an even weight on it.

Oh good, the train horn stopped. You never really appreciate silence until it falls after a very long stretch of constant noise.

Speaking of noise, it rained quite hard in the early afternoon while I was spinning, and I opened windows so I could hear it. It was coming straight down, and it sounded lovely.

Tonight I am off to watch another two OVAs of Maria-sama ga Miteru with Marc, and then tomorrow I will do the little freelance assignment that’s waiting for me. We were told that accounting was behind and so the cheques that were supposed to be cut last week and mailed out today will in fact be a week late, which snarls up my budgeting somewhat. I am annoyed, but there’s nothing I can do. Accouting promises that it’s an isolated incident and the rest of the invoicing/payment schedule for the year won’t be affected, but we shall see.

Aha, the boys are home. As I just took the bread out of the oven, I suspect we shall all indulge in warm bread with butter melting off it and onto our fingers before supper proper.

Weekend Roundup

So very tired. This cold is kicking me, and dealing with the boy’s cold and being home 24/7 is draining me even more. Plus it was a packed weekend (of course).

Before the weekend roundup begins, it is important to note that on Thursday night, I rejoined the Thursday night gaming group for the first time in, oh, possibly almost a decade, because HRH rearranged the basement office to make room for a table and chairs and the gang came over here so that both HRH and I could be in the game at the same time. I’d originally dropped gaming because I was burnt out, and then there was the boy and someone needed to be home with him, so even though the spirit was willing, getting a babysitter every Thursday night was not remotely possible; besides which, the fibro over the past handful of years (pre- and post-diagnosis) makes evenings out doubtful. But the compromise of being in one Thursday night game a month(ish) and in my own home is very doable. MLG has launched a new Star Trek game which promises to be very exciting, and it was very flattering to have so many people thrilled that I was back. I’ve missed the gang, and it’s great that they’re willing to move that one game in the four-game rotation to a place where I can participate.

I got an e-mail Friday afternoon from the freelance coordinator, who congratulated me on my patience and courage in handling the horrific project I’d handed in Thursday night. And my new assignment landed, which is a lovely little 23K word general fiction manuscript to evaluate, which I suspect was cherry-picked for me after the nightmare, bless them. HRH came home at lunch on Friday, and Friday afternoon we went to HRH’s parents’ house to belatedly celebrate his mom’s birthday. It was much more relaxing than I expected it to be, and I got another inch knitted on my lace scarf. I had a good cello lesson on Friday night, too, which helped. I was upfront about my lack of energy and focus, so after we worked a bit of Mooney we sight-read the Mozart duet that M and I are playing for the recital this December. It’s just lovely, and amusingly/conveniently enough it hits all the things I need to work on: smooth bow changes, listening, timing, and expression. I didn’t hate everything I played, which I tend to do when I’m tired and can’t remember new instructions from one moment to the next. The pretty melody helps a lot with that. I love to play it. I’m so fortunate that my teacher understands that I have a condition with fatigue and focus issues, and is willing to work with me through them.

Saturday morning we did groceries and I baked. I made a double loaf of herb bread with half white and half whole wheat flour and an apple cake to take to the harvest ritual at Rowan Tree Farm that afternoon. HRH headed off belatedly to deliver things and pick Amanda up and didn’t get back till half an hour after I’d wanted to leave. As RTF is an hour and a half away that means we got there an hour later than the suggested target time. We had a lovely harvest ritual in which we counted our blessings, and then t! and Jan feasted us with local venison and boar sausages, lamb sausage, locally sourced beef, and the side dishes the guests had brought. We had to flee around seven-thirty because the boy had to get home and HRH had a bachelor party to attend back home. I felt rushed, which on top of the cold and increasing fatigue due to said cold and small boy being home sick made me disinclined to be social.

Sunday morning was Pagan playgroup, which HRH attended with us because I was too fatigued to drive safely. The coordinator was delighted to see him, especially since half the kids were missing. It was a really nice low-key day. On the way home we stopped at a pharmacy so I could finally pick up cold medication for myself. After a chat with my mum and a light lunch I napped while the boy did, and then Ceri came over for a wonderfully quiet afternoon of knitting… which neither of us did. I spun another threeish ounces of Corrie, and she crocheted. And the boy learned how to use the ball winder, an event he has been looking forward to for ages. (How many four year old boys do you know who can correctly identify a ball winder in a catalogue?)

He was very excited about making ‘yarn cakes’, and stacked three of varying sizes into a wedding cake-like configuration. Ceri got to use the skein winder in conjunction with the ball winder too, which was very exciting once we figured out the angle necessary so the thing would actually turn to wind off the skein while she wound it into a centre-pull ball. And we discovered that if I mount the skein winder on the wheel post backwards, I can keep spinning while it’s being used. Efficiency!

HRH handled dinner and let me have a bath, for which I was extremely grateful because the fatigue was getting worse. After dinner we put the boy to bed, Blade came down to be the Designated Responsible Adult On Site, and we headed out to our monthly steampunkian horror game chez Tal. Everyone was tired, so it was a very brief focused game in which yet more puzzle pieces dropped into place and important info was added to the clues we already had.

This morning the boy is home yet again, because his nose is still unpredictable and every few hours there’s a nasty coughing jag. As bronchitis popped up at the school twice in the past couple of weeks, I’m taking him to the doctor today (if there’s an appointment free; can’t call till nine, and the line will be swamped with everyone calling in after the weekend, grr) to make sure all’s well with him. If I can’t get an appointment, I’ll try sending him in tomorrow.

Speaking of which, I’m off to brave the phone lines. Wish us luck.

ETA: Forty minutes to get through… and the doctor’s not in this week. The nurse asked if he had a fever (no), if there was anything alarming (no), was I giving him anything for it (yes, an expectorant syrup), said that a lot of the viruses (virii?) going round left lingering dry coughs that weren’t indicators of anything serious, and to take him to a clinic if it hasn’t cleared up by the end of the week. Fine; Plan B it is! Keep him home today, send him in tomorrow.

Speed Bump

The boy woke up with a horrific asthma attack around eleven on Tuesday night. He hasn’t had one in two years. This was eerily reminiscent on that previous attack, too: suddenly waking up in a panic almost incapable of breathing. The good thing is that he’s two years older and understands that the mask and inhaler help him to some degree almost immediately. So that plus a glass of water and some cuddling got him calmed to a point where he eventually fell asleep again, although he woke up again four hours later for a repeat of all treatment. I had trouble getting back to sleep every time, so I think I clocked a total of three or four hours. When we got up at six it was obvious that he wasn’t going anywhere, so I called preschool and let them know he was staying home. Both his teacher and I were mystified as to the origins of the attack, as there had been no signs of a cold or anything triggery the day before. Mid-morning he developed a very low-grade fever (just two- or three-tenths of a degree above average), which led me to suspect that he was indeed fighting some kind of cold or flu.

We went out to pick up refills on his inhalers and an expectorant syrup, and ran other errands as well. As the day went on it became increasingly hard for me to breathe as well. The weather had done a drastic switcheroo and went super-humid, which may have been a major factor in the asthma. As the day went on, however, it became increasingly evident that there was a major impressively icky full-blown chest cold developing. This asthma attack, like the one two years ago, had been an early warning response to the imminent pulmonary-focused illness.

With the lack of sleep, I tried to nap when the boy went down for his rest, but I was wide awake, which did not bode well for the rest of the day. I did get some spinning done, though, and when the boy woke up he climbed into the chair next to me (along with five cars and Blackie), followed closely by Gryffindor. Let me tell you, the chair was pretty crowded, and drafting was a challenge. But the boy took pictures!

I finished spinning the Blue Faced Leicester fibre I had left over from the spindle workshop I took in May, and I knew there wasn’t going to be enough yardage for the project Ceri needs it for. So I called Ariadne Knits, and they had both half-pound bags of both Corriedale and Merino top in stock. The boy and I popped down to pick up a pound of the Corriedale (much less expensive than I was expecting!) so I’ll have enough for all the yardage required (have to start over again, as I discovered that BFL is “hard to felt”, which is ungood for the particular project Ceri has in mind) plus extra for people to try it out (crafting weekend in Alexandria coming up, hurrah) and dyeing experiments. Using the commercially prepared BFL top is a blissful experience. It’s like night and day when I compare it to spinning the unknown bits of wool I carded and dizzed into sliver myself. This is more even, smoother, and easier to draft. It shouldn’t be a surprise, of course; you get what you pay for. And as Ceri pointed out to me, this is why people stress that you should work with the best stuff you can afford, whatever your craft. The less expensive stuff is less expensive, but you never know when the fibre is working against you, and when it’s your technique that’s causing the problem. One should also really enjoy what one’s doing, and using the best material you can afford contributes greatly to that.

In this case, I am so glad that it was the quality of the fibre that was the problem. My beautiful BFL singles, let me show you them:

I can’t wait to ply them. Except if do that, I use up my last free bobbin, and I can’t spin my Corrie. No, wait, that’s stupid; if I ply them, I end up with two free bobbins at the end. Never mind. Or one free, anyway, because there’s more on one bobbin than the other, so there will be leftover single. And my last attempt at Navajo plying was amusingly disastrous, so perhaps we won’t to that again. Or, well, why not; I have to learn, and this is as good as anything else to practice on. Or I can just skein the leftover single and wind it into a centre-pull ball on Sunday when Ceri comes over to play. (This example of stream of consciousness thought is brought to you by slowly shifting into work mode from early-morning mode.)

Needless to say, I got no freelance work done yesterday; then again, I didn’t expect to. Although I really wanted the project done and gone so I didn’t have to think about it any more. Ah, well; we all encounter speed bumps. The boy’s home again today, as he will be for the rest of the week. The glamour of being home sick has worn off, and now he is cranky, irritable, and whiny. And I have to work today regardless, as today’s my deadline. HRH is going to try to come home early, around the end of the boy’s nap, so I’ll have at least naptime and a couple of extra hours to polish the report.

I didn’t make it to orchestra last night, as the lack of sleep, my own developing cold (yes, another one; the boy’s ambushed me while my immune system was still down form the last light cold), and the running around all day had taken its toll. I was achy, dizzy, and couldn’t hold things securely with my hands, so in the interests of not totally running myself down and making myself and everyone around me at orchestra miserable I called and let them know I wasn’t going to make it. And wow, did I ever sleep well.

So today the boy is enjoying cartoons in his pyjamas for a good long time, and I am opening the freelance document, and work shall be done. He knows to leave me alone as much as possible, and so far so good.