Pictures? Why would I have taken pictures?

A delightful note on boredom as an anthropological item.

I figure I am reasonably contented these days but the fact is I am reading way too much and the house has descended from barbarism through savagery and is dipping into chaos. One reason to find solace in Robin McKinley is that the space inside a book is tidy, and also not my problem.

Except that we are in a drought, the weather lately has had some perfect days. It managed to be pleasant for the Canterbury Shaker Village Wool Day, where Doug and I go and spin. This is a very small atypical wool festival, in that the demonstrators far outnumber the vendors, and the visitors often know _nothing_ ("Is that a spinning wheel? Do all spinning wheels look like that?").

I am finally beginning to recognize some of the people I don't know from blogging, like the woman whom I taught to spin four Wool Days ago. She would pop up and say "Hi! Remember me?" and I would gulp and say, "Um, no...." She managed to imprint on my adamantium skull at Spa and even though I couldn't recall her name I knew who she was. Hi, Pam! Maybe we'll get solid on your name next.

My parents came up from Boston and enjoyed the sheep. I dragged them the extra hundred yards to see Gina Gerhardt (whom I just Googled and ended up with my own blog entry (down a ways) as the top pick. Gina, your profile is TOO LOW)'s flax braking setup. I take spinning and even weaving pretty much for granted (unlike most of the visitors, which is why they are at Wool Day), but flax processing is rare. My parents were gracious enough to be actually interested, and Gina was gracious enough to let me play with her stuff and demo it for them. She was a hoot, actually, and yelled at me for not remembering _everything_ she had taught me a year ago. Since I failed to remember _her_ when I saw her at Fiber Revival (you would have thought the hank of flax on her wheel would have been a hint) this was particularly funny. (I do usually recognize my parents.)

I have roughly enough silver equipment to furnish a small craft fair, and no apparent time, no apparent space, and a tendency to freeze. I am taking a Keum-Boo on Argentium class and messing around in Keum-Boo with silver clay and it's _magic_.

I will post this and go to work and hope to update more soon. But this weekend, because I need another project, I am going to Northampton to visit the daughter and take the Rovaniemi Mittens workshop at Webs. Why, given that I have maybe 12 projects ongoing and am not that great a knitter in the first place? I blame the Harlot. Show me a lost art and I am anybody's. (Raider of the Lost Art...)