I am wondering whether Blogger always loses drafts nowadays. It certainly seems to be a bad bet.

Saturday, when it rained, I spun at the Canterbury Shaker Village. It is never a big event, but there is a certain gentle interest in being the first spinners some of the visitors have ever seen. There are other visitors with much more experience, like the mother of one 18-month old and almost another (due in Dec), have spun, and woven and crocheted but haven't touched any of it since the 18-month old was born -- she hadn't ever tried a double-treadle and wasn't sure she and the baby-to-come would fit behind a Joy (they did, and she really enjoyed the double treadle). And there was the 60ish woman who had gone to farm for a sheep shearing and spinning demo fifty years earlier and never forgotten. I suggested that all of them come to the NH Sheep and Wool next spring.

Since there were very few vendors you would think I could have behaved. But the woman I taught to use a spindle at the CSV Wool Day two years ago (now demo-ing on a Great Wheel and a Joy) showed me a really soft sheepskin she had bought. I was cold and damp and now own a really rich-feeling brown sheepskin. It would go well on my car seat or my computer chair but I think I am going to make a Barbarian Vest. I have been reading a lot about the need for the invention of tailored garments (read: needles, cutting, and shaping) as modern humans suddenly developed the use of symbols (or at least started using them in a way that shows up in the archaeological record) and were able to move into colder climates (and push out the Neanderthals, who didn't seem to have used needles, at least not in Eastern Europe, at least not in the unbelievably dull book I was trying to read). Any ancient person would plotz at the feel of my sheepskin, with its supple hide and long, clean fleece. I will be using plastic sinew for sewing but I want to try some kind of appropriate technology to color the skin. Anyone know anything about how corrosive iron oxide might be?

In other fields, specifically the teardrop-shaped hummingbird garden, Doug and I got a bunch of Home Depot bulbs planted. I am delighted, because the huge order from White Flower Farm has been shipped and my back will be to the wall between now and serious winter to get them planted. Yesterday's weather was unusually unpleasant, being cold AND sweaty. After bulbs and the traditional weekend trip to the dump/recycling center, I racked the peach wine (very tasty), the dandelion wine (something of an edge on it), and the sweetfern mead (spectacular and lethal), bottled the honey/ginger beer, bottled another recently rediscoved 2004 mead, and reeling around the kitchen, brewed BarkShack Gingermead with frozen berries and canned sweet cherry juice. Mead is quite a vindictive little drink.