Goldfinches and Fiber: Blogging is

so much more important than paying bills, right?

My dreadful mood has evened out. I am almost caught up at my job because the boss has been away for four days; unfortunately he's coming back and he will find more things to do that will take roughly two and half hours each.

I have been using my new elliptical trainer regularly, and while I am not taller or blonder or thinner I think after three weeks my knees and ankles are stronger. It was not cheap, but it lives in my bedroom and is very, very easy to get to, even in pajamas, unlike a class or a healthy walk outside. I hope for fat to melt away, but I will be very pleased even if I just get stonger and don't feel wifty when I leave my rut like I did on the trip to New York. I was appalled by my general unfitness and the fact that I really could not see in any detail very far. So I decided to get the elliptical thing, and I have a really great pair of glasses from Sears. I can see. And I can walk up more of my driveway without needing medical intervention.

And it has been warmer. You might as well live. In today's photos you may note an unusual effect -- _bright light_ coming out of the SKY. Very strange.

Yesterday, although it was not really very warm and only sunny for a microsecond or two, I worked in the garden.

Chainsaws on sumac and stainless steel loppers,
No bugs except for some poor cold grass hoppers
no sweat and few leaves to hide anything
These are some reasons to garden in spring...

You can see me dancing around on my hillside in a dirndl with the chainsaw.... it's electric and I had about 150 feet of extension cord going. I don't think I could dance with a gas chainsaw, as they are almost too heavy to heft. They probably work better. The loppers worked very well and gave my switch-gripping hand a rest. I got about a third done and now I _really_ need a chipper-shredder.

There were old stumps where the sumac was temporarily discouraged by a previous owner; I do not entertain hope that I will do anything but keep it to a murmur. Underneath it was a festive mix of carnivorous rose and bittersweet, a pestilential vine that strangles trees. This is not going to be be easy to make into a patch of anything else. I need something invasive and aggressive with shallow roots. It is the edge of the septic seep-field and I am not supposed to grow anything with serious roots. I didn't grow the sumac, but its very definite roots add a certain legitimacy to my desires to cut it down.

It's not that I hate all sumac; I have another patch if I need to use it for natural dyeing. I am trying to cut back a festering ridge of it so I can see a little farther downhill to a meadowy bit with a nice stone wall -- actually it grows fruitless crawling raspberry, poison ivy, bittersweet and carnivorous rose, but it looks serene from a distance. I once saw a fox there and I think a woodchuck lived under the burn pile -- which is a festering sore in itself and needs more sorting out and a truck for the things the previous owner never burned... There's lots to do here.

Like the bills and the taxes and this weekend is the Smith science fiction convention and I am also putting off getting more ready for the spinning workshop, the one I am giving, you know, maybe I should get a few things together....

Here are some scarves.

The blue and magenta one is Debbie Bliss alpaca and silk. Imagine the yellowy one twice, since I have made two of it, and imagine a purple one in the same yarn. And, visible, a Manos of Uruguay one-skein wonder, I hope; there was a yarn sale at the Fiber Studio this weekend. I only got this and one other thing, well, three skeins of the one other thing. And two very small balls of another. And a flax spinning workshop. I mean, compared to Doug I was very well-behaved.

There is certainly not a cat in this picture, regardless of what Asterix thought there ought to be.