I have my loom! I’ll do a photo post when I get home from my trip.

I’m going out to the fabric store today to get a bit more polar fleece to extend the homemade duffel bag I found that almost-but-not-quite fit it, and some cord with which to reattach the apron rods to the loom, because it’s currently got a series of loops attached via lark’s head knots and they’re not all even with one another, so the rods don’t sit snugly when under tension. I’m going to do the zig-zag lacing thing with one long piece of cord instead of separate loops. The loom is very light indeed and folds quite cunningly, and we’re now trying to figure out a way to kitbash a box for it so I can check it as baggage on the train home. I can’t carry it on, as the length exceeds the max carry-ons can be. Yesterday we got some yarn with which to sample a pattern for a Seekrit Progikt, and I’m going to do a test warp for the sample this afternoon.

The girl who sold it to me is my age or a bit younger, and got herself a small used Dryad floor loom so she didn’t need this one any more. She also had a Lendrum wheel and baskets of yarn everywhere. Heh. I wish we lived in the same city; we probably would have gotten along just fine.

Mum is doing very well indeed. She’s using the cane while in the house now, and the walker only when we go out, which we’ve been doing once a day to shops and things. The food has, as usual, been brilliant. Last night, for example, we had scallops au gratin, with steamed asparagus and brown rice. Mmm.

The nightly video chat with HRH and the boy back home is a great idea, and it’s been fun, but they’ve been having problems with the microphone on the webcam back home (translation: it wasn’t picking up sound at all, so we used the telephone as a speaker) but last night it worked for some reason, and it made the chat much easier. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that tonight and the rest of the nights go as smoothly. Living in the future is pretty darn cool. I miss them a lot, and seeing and talking with them every night helps. ( “Having a Dada and no Mama makes me very sad,” the boy told me solemnly last night before leaning into HRH for a hug. Only three more sleeps!)

I’ve burned through three books since I got here, and I can’t recommend Alan Bradley’s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag highly enough. The other book was Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker, which was good, but the Bradleys were really spectacular. I also hand-wrote four pages of novel material in bed this morning.

Okay, off we go for today’s outing. Have a wonderful day, gentle readers.