Much better today

Thank you all for your concern. I don't know what was wrong with me yesterday but a fever and excruciating headache are the main symptoms of lots of nasty stuff. I wasn't entirely joking about West Nile, but I wasn't panicking because
A) my fever wasn't that high and
B) I wasn't confused or having more serious neurological symptoms.
My husband kept asking every hour if I was confused and how the stiff neck was doing. I was reading on the CDC website about West Nile and there's really no point in going to my doctor early on anyway, as there's nothing she would do but send me home to wait and see.

I still had a low fever early on today and I can still feel a slight pain in the top of my head with sudden movement, but I have something close to normal energy levels, ate a healthy and substantial dinner, did some laundry, and spent the evening spinning.

Tomorrow I drive back up to St. Paul to pick up Owen at camp. I have a fellow fiber-geek friend riding along with me and her son who's a computer geek like Owen. So, the boys will be ensconced in the way-back row of of the mini-van and my friend will ride up front and knit and we can chat. Her son has gone to camps run by the same outfit, but in another city, for four years and he loves it. So, we figure the boys will have lots to chat about, too.

I've begun spinning some of the Brown Sheep mill ends. This fiber really does benefit from pre-drafting to loosen it all up. If I owned a drum carder, I'd probably pass it through to randomize the colors a bit, loosen it all up a bit, and maybe remove some of the short bits that were created by occasional blunt cuts across the roving. To me, it's worth the work because the price is right, but I can imagine that some spinners would rather spend more for fiber that you can spin right out of the box.

No pictures tonight, either, but maybe over the weekend. Mostly I wanted to let you all know that whatever bug I was fighting is losing this round.

More Summer Pursuits

Owen went to camp yesterday. Well, not "camp" like sleeping in a tent or a cabin in the woods, but a summer program. His camp is in St Paul MN and the "campers" sleep in an air-conditioned dormitory and housekeeping brings them clean towels daily. He and his fellow campers will learn about computer programming for gaming.

This is a big rite of passage for a 12 year old who has never really been away from his parents, even to sleep over at a friend's, who has never really been babysat (under 6 times in his life). We're hoping it goes well.

This is the dorm room:


These are two of the staff members:

They seemed very nice.

I stayed over at my old college friend Nora's. I persuaded her to start a blog last night, and she did! Nora's a writer who sometimes knits. She wrote a book about knitting a sweater for one of her sons: kind of a memoir with a lot of history and other knitters' stories intertwined. And she's been shopping it to publishers and agents for over a year without any success. If you know an agent with an open mind, let me know. (I took a couple pictures of Nora, but they were awful. My camera was behaving a bit strangely and I caught her in the worst moments, freezing distorted expressions and so on. So, no picture this time.) She is my oldest friend. Well, you know, not that she's old, but I've maintained a friendship with her longer than with anyone else except my parents. She's been in my life even longer than my husband. Almost 28 years!!!! (Can we really be that old? It doesn't seem possible.)

I came home to find that my Sheep Shed Studio order had come! Six pounds of fiber!

This place sells mill ends from Brown Sheep Yarn Company at a great price. $7.50 a pound! But you don't get to specify exactly what you'll get. That's ok with me. You get to choose a color family and you can request a color dominance, but you might get something a little different.

I requested a black-dominant black mix,

and a brown-dominant brown mix.


While I would have preferred more black in the black mix, that's just fine with me. I can dye the white stuff. Maybe I can mix it up to a medium grey.

And they enclosed a little bonus pack of pure black. I can't wait to dig in.