I Think I Have Anthrax

Perhaps that is a slight exaggeration. But it is not a good thing when you look at the prescription and you realize it is the very same antibiotic used to treat anthrax.

It is also not a good thing, when the doctor looks up inside your nose and says, "Oh, my."

But that is what she said, when my husband dragged me to the after-hours clinic today. I was hoping to tough it out, but I woke up this morning unable to breathe through my nose and unable to touch my face without flinching.

The doctor also shook her head and said, "You have a terrible sinus infection." And then she gave me an injection of cortisone, some potent decongestants and the abovementioned antibitotics.

"Go home," she said. "Get in bed and stay there for a couple of days."


Technically, I am in bed. I am ensconced on the futon in the spare room, with pillows heaped behind me like a proper invalid, keyboard in my lap, with warm cats deployed along the length of my body. I can see the montior screen from here -- the desk is right next to the futon and the keyboard has a long cord.

I am in bed, and doing nothing except typing and knitting. She did not say that I had to get in the bed without a keyboard, knitting needles, tea or a book.

So I might as well do a little catch-up writing, and talk about the yarn and fiber and spinning I have in the works.

I was pleasantly surprised, my first few times at the arts market, to have more than a couple of people ask about hand-dyed rovings. Some were spinners themselves, and some were looking for gifts for spinners. After the first request, I dyed some roving. I found that presenting two ounces of roving in a large Mason jar went over well as a holiday gift. The roving is simply squashed into the jar and the lid placed on, with a bit of scrap yarn for decoration.

Presenting roving this way is not a good long-term storage solution, but it makes a nice-looking gift package, and it is also wise as protection from toddlers with sticky ice cream fingers.

Two samples are in the photo below. Left: "Tequila Sunrise." Right: "Margaritaville." These are food coloring dyes and will look darker when spun into yarn. Yes, I want people to think "lotsa happy fun" when they spin my stuff. There is also a portion of cat in the upper right hand corner of the photo (see the fur and the rabies tag?), but I'm afraid I had to edit my boy Seven out of the picture in order to get a good closeup of the wool. I doubt he'd take it personally, but please don't tell him that I cropped him out. I promise to post a lovely photo of him for you to admire in an upcoming post.







If the buyer divides "Margaritaville" in half and plies it against itself, they will get a flecked, tweedy effect with the yellow and hints of white.

Also, in the following photo, I've been playing with dyeing singles in gradients of green and russet colors. Top: "Peas and Carrots." Bottom: "Lettuce Knit." Getting good greens makes me grin more than any other color. Maybe it's just that I'm not such an experienced dyer, but I find that good, rich greens are hard to accomplish.

I think my very favorite thing, and it's getting to be somewhat of a signature with me, is to spin fine singles, space-dye them, and then ply them together. It means two extra steps in the winding off, but I really love the play of colors. "Peas and Carrots" was space-dyed after plying. "Lettuce Knit" was dyed before plying. The colorplay has a lot more depth, I think.

This yarn in the next photo was flat-out, total fun. Regular readers may remember that when I added my pre-owned Ashford wheel to the family, she came with some accessories and two fleeces: one was in fairly good shape but the other had been stored unwashed, in the grease and full of vegetable matter, smashed unceremoniously into in a five-gallon tin for almost 20 years. It emerged from the can as a hairy, dirty, waxy lump. I nearly threw it away, but my Capricorn subconscious wouldn't tolerate that, so I salvaged it. Salvage operations required a good, long soak in Dawn and cold water, then a second de-greasing soak, and two good, cold rinses.

I don't find the resulting wool soft enough to be suitable for garment-quality yarn, but I'm frugal, so I made rustic-spun singles and I came up with a good felting wool suitable for purses, rugs, and slippers. The college-student crowd at the arts market bought me out of wild colors last time, and they always appreciate a bargain, so I've dyed these in wild colors and priced them less than first-quality wool. I have lots more of this salvaged fleece, and it will all be rustic spun, and boldly dyed for felting projects. This colorway, called "Summer of Love," was photographed drying outdoors on a cool, dry, sunny day in late November.

And now, an abrupt change of subject. Sort of.

The other day, I visited a friend who is a legal secretary by occupation, and a painter by vocation. I wanted to tell her about my experience at the arts market and wanted to encourage her to apply for a booth space of her own.

When I arrived, she was working on an oil for an upcoming show -- the figure of a lone man on a grey street in a big city, a painting with strong contrasts and deep shadows. The man wore a long, grey overcoat and a brimmed hat reminiscent of film noir and of our own fathers.

After a few minutes, she draped the work-in-progress and set her hands to stretching a new canvas.

Our coffee mugs sat between us on the paint-splattered table in her garage studio. I perched on a stool, knitting with my own handspun, hand-dyed yarn.

We talked about our friends, her dogs, her daughter's school, and her own paintings. We discussed how people perceive and define art differently.

We were not having this discussion at the graduate-school level by any means. Terms like "postmodern" or "dadaism" did not come up. We simply talked about what we think is beautiful, what is emotive, what makes us think, and how other people react.

What makes a thing "art?" Why is a thing "art" to one person and not to another?

Is it art if a pedantic art critic says it is art, and not-art if a nine-year-old thinks it is art? If I fail to understand it, is it not-art or am I simply dull-witted?

We were talking about these things lightly, sometimes amused, sometimes bemused, relating stories of people we knew and the things they liked, tales of how some work that she was sure would be a hit had flopped, while people went wild over what she thought would be dead-certain duds.

We gnawed at the perennial question: why do so many artists have to struggle so? Why do most people more readily embrace mindless entertainment than good art? Is it because of the simple fact that interacting with art requires some degree of thought -- which frightens many people -- while interacting with pop culture requires only passive observation? Does art live in the hands of the artist or the eye of the beholder?

We also considered: is art craft? And: is craft art?

We both said "yes" to both concepts. And then she gestured at my hand-dyed work and said:

"I paint on the canvas. You paint in the canvas. Same thing."

So I pondered that. I thought about all the fiber artists I know who put so much of themselves into every dyebatch of yarn and into every skein of handspun fluff. I thought about how difficult it is to explain to some people why I have to make things. I have to make garments from scratch, I have to make yarn from scratch, I have to make colors, I have to write. These things are not mere pastimes or hobbies. They are powerful and singular urges which cannot be ignored. It's like being hungry, or needing to go to the bathroom. I will be miserable unless and until the need to knit, spin, or write has been vented.

I don't have to explain this tangible need to a painter, but it's difficult to explain this urgency to people who think of arts and crafts as mere pastimes, activities which exist for the sole purpose of occupying an idle mind, like the word-and-number puzzle booklets you can buy at the airport.

Before I went home, I told her one of my favorite art stories. It happened to a young man I knew back in the 1970s, a young man named Jeff who was a sidewalk painter in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I had a bit of a crush on him, back when my high school friends and I would take the streetcar downtown on Saturday mornings and wander around the French Quarter all day.

Each morning, he set up his easel on the flagstone sidewalk outside of Jackson Square, right across the street from the Cafe Du Monde. He'd work on a classic New Orleans scene in oils, while intermittently knocking off quick little oil portrait sketches of tourists for a modest fee. He worked earnestly, in all kinds of weather.

Once when I passed to admire his work, Jeff was all smiles and told me that something remarkable had happened to him. Around midday, he was hungry, so he closed his paint box, laid his brush rag across the backrest of his folding chair, and asked a neighboring artist to watch his things for a few minutes while he went to buy a sandwich.

When he returned, a tourist was holding up his brush rag, scrutinizing it carefully. The man asked him, "how much do you want for this?"

Jeff was puzzled, thinking perhaps that the man was rather ineptly trying to make a joke about modern art. In jest, Jeff replied, "oh, I was planning to ask five hundred, but I haven't decided on a firm price."

The man reached in his wallet and pulled out a wad of money. "I'll give you one hundred," he said, wagging a cluster of twenties at Jeff. "I'd pay more if it was mounted. Also, you need to sign it."

Jeff looked around, thinking there was a camera crew and a TV comedian waiting to pounce on him, but nothing happened. He looked at the rag, smeared with layers of blotchy color, and asked the man if he was serious.

He was.

Jeff signed the rag and took the money.

Beauty is always in the eye of the proverbial beholder. I try to keep that in mind when I make up new dye jobs. I think it's important to offer something for everyone. I can't just dye everything in my own favorite colors.

I've run out of things to say and now I think I can finally fall asleep. It's quite a trick to try to rest when you've just had a jolt of cortisone.

I'm off to sleep. Carry on.

A Way-Too-Short Weekend at

Apple Leef Farm

This post is a wee tad on the picture-heavy side, so I apologize to those of you with dial-up service. Go make a cup of coffee while it downloads, and come back when you're ready. You can click on all the pictures to make them larger.

All done? Good.

Something tells me that y'all would like to see these featherweight, hand-dyed, felted, wool stoles live and in person, but a picture will have to do:

Something else tells me that you'd like to know more about the person who makes them, and more about the shop they live in.

Welcome to the shop at Apple Leef Farm. The farm features fiber-bearing animals, flock guardians ... and a wonderfully welcoming fiber arts shop. Not only does Leef offer fiber arts classes, but she also has two delightful, cozy and spacious bed and breakfast cabins, and if you'd like to camp out in the nearby woods, you can do that too.

The shop offers yarn, weaving and spinning supplies, and both classes and weekend retreats for knitting, weaving, felting and spinning.

Here's the great wheel at the entrance to the shop, Leef's workhorse wheel to the left, and her plying wheel on the right, with a sampling of spinning fibers and finished yarns in the background:

Leef offers a wide variety of spinning fibers: colonial and mutilcolor fleeces and roving from several breeds of sheep and goats ... alpaca ... natural-color organic cottons, recycled cotton from blue jeans, and pima cotton ... combed tops, pima sliver, cotton lints, and seed cottons ... carded silk cocoons, raw silk cocoons, silk hankies, bombyx and tussah silks ... soy silk ... bamboo ... flax ... A-1 bombyx silk bricks ... kid mohair locks and tops ... corriedale-cross rovings in natural colors ... moorit ... wensleydale ... and a variety of blends of most of the above fibers, may favorite of which is a yummy merino, cashmere and angora blend.

Leef offers a variety of ready-to-weave cotton yarns for weavers, organic cones and dyed cones, as well as hand-dyed warps.

She also has felting wools, blanks for shibori dyeing, and a wide variety of dyes, as well as finished, ready-to-use silk blanks for scarves and kimonos.


In case you're wondering? I haven't mis-spelled "leaf." Leef is the name of Leef Bloomenstiel, my dear friend who runs Apple Leef Farm, along with her husband, Les.


Before I tell you more about the farm, I shall tell you about my friend Leef.


There is a certain quality to friendships forged in times of trouble that cuts through all the ordinary facades and meaningless chatter which usually cloud our initial perceptions of another human being when they first appear in our lives.

During less trying periods, we might have coffee and host cookouts and take walks with a new acquaintance countless times, without ever really getting to know them in a real and meaningful way. You may go on for years, chatting about politics and gardening and the weather, without ever opening up to one another or seeing the roots of that other person's soul.


Leef and I met at a herpetological society meeting over twenty years ago, and we quickly realized we had much more in common than our interest in reptiles and wildlife, and the fact that we both like to knit.

Before too long, we realized the we were both dealing with nearly identical life-straining situations, and as we formed a two-woman support group, we found that our creative energies ran in the same direction as well.

We humans gain acquaintances when we realize that we share a few common interests with people whose company we find agreeable -- we may share the same views about politics, work for the same company, enjoy a few pints at the same tavern, live in the same neighborhood, or share the same hobby. And many acquaintances who are baseball fans, Trekkies or joggers soon develop fast friendships. The common interest served merely as an introduction -- an icebreaker handed to us by the Fates: "You're a knitter, too? And a computer enthusiast? A reptile geek, birdwatcher, and hiker as well? Wow, we have a lot in common!"

Common interests are handy, and a person's interests tell you a lot about them. But the best friendships are forged between people whose values and passions are deeply symbiotic -- people who bounce energy off each other in such a way as to bring out the best in each other.


Now about the knitting part. When Leef and I first met, we learned that we both enjoyed knitting, and soon we were getting together regularly to knit, have coffee, and work through our life problems.

We became friends in the green-screen days of computering and in the infancy of the Internet, search engines and AOL. At the time, it was difficult to meet other knitters, so it was delightful to have another knitter with whom to share resources, tips and techniques. Finding the original Knit List was a coup for both of us.

She was a farm girl stranded in the city, so she made sure that her kids grew up hiking, camping, riding horses and visitng their grandparents in a delightful Louisiana hill-country town, not too far away.


Neither of us is the sort of person to have a casual interest in too many subjects. We both are the sort who dive in head-first and earn ourselves a seat-of-the-pants PhD when any interest grabs firm hold of us. Before we knew it, our common interest in knitting led to spinning and dyeing, and Leef took off from there into weaving. I weave a little, now and again. Small things, when the mood strikes me.

But Leef is a certified, bona fide Weaver.


Over the years we went through life changes, Hurricane Andrew, job changes and her mother's death ... and I experienced her kids growing up.


This friendship began twenty years ago. Life has taken us in different directions in recent years, and Leef and her family moved to Texas, partly for job opportunities for her husband, and partly so she could have a small farm, but distance doesn't change the qualitative nature of a solid friendship.


Unfortunately, we hadn't seen each other live and in person in far too long, so I hadn't seen the new farm, or the new store (they recently moved from their mini-farm closer to Dallas).

So the store kind of bowled me over when I walked in. Years ago, we spent so much time talking about having a studio, a yarn shop ... a place to teach knitting, spinning and dyeing. We would spend hours dreaming up what we'd sell and what the shop would be like -- some cozy seating in a corner, the teaching studio over here, natural light from over there, and of course we'd have to have a coffee bar.

And now here it is. I sorely wish we were doing it together, but I am so happy for her that she has it for herself.

Below is the part of the store that serves as a weaving studio and class workshop. Note the floor loom on the left, a triangular loom partly filled with a handpainted warp, bags of fleece, and yet another spinning wheel:





You need to know that when Leef teaches a new weaver or spinner, she doesn't just set you down and show you the basics. If you go to one of her weekend retreats, you will come away from it really knowing how spin or weave. Leef is the sort of person who teaches her students not only what they need to do, but why they need to do it. She wants you to walk away from her studio with a complete understanding of the process.


On the opposite wall from the loom and teaching area, she displays some of her yarns and felting supplies, as well as a selection of felted stoles and gossamer hand-dyed silk scarves.

The dyeing workstation is out-of range to the left in the picture, and includes a stove, sink and work table.


I remember Leef's early dyeing experiments -- hiking the local woods and creek banks searching for flowers, bark and roots to find ingredients for natural dye recipes. Then it was out to the backyard with a propane burner and an old canning pot, standing over dyebaths until she arrived at the perfect shade of green, brown or yellow. I remember picking sack upon sack of railroad daisies.

After Leef moved to Texas, my work schedule became enormous, but when I had any time at all to myself, I took to the same locations in search of wild indigo plants -- the invasive descendants of indigo crops grown in the plantation days of south Louisiana. Indigo requires a lot of plants and a special touch with the dyepot -- and although I enjoy working with natural dyes, I have never gotten past a wan blue with my own efforts.

Leef had started getting serious about felting -- hats, slippers, you name it -- shortly before her family moved to Texas.

Which brings me back to where I started.

Now I know you are curious about those stoles. Leef produces these amazing, drapey garments in Nuno felting, a technique in which she felts and dyes wool onto a silk gauze. The end result is a rich, drapey, exotic-looking fabric which makes me think of something that perhaps an alien ambassador or priestess might wear as ceremonial garb when meeting with Captain Picard, or attending a meeting of the Federation. Each one is an individual work of art.


To the lower left, below the stoles, you will see a display of dyed silk scarves, befitting Stevie Nicks at the height of her gauziness ... and I do mean that in a good way! These scarves are as light as a feather and display equally well either ironed flat or dried in a scrunched-up technique -- not unlike making a broomstick skirt.

There are also some yarns for sale -- some handspun, and a selection of comercial sock yarn. She also carries a sleection of bamboo knitting needles, and every conceivable accessory or tool you might need for spinning, weaving or felting, from dyes and niddy-noddys to spinning wheels, looms and drop spindles.





There's more yarn in the picture below, and dyeing supplies in the background. Do you also see the hand-dyed gauzy silk jacket, graced with a felted lace stole? Leef offers both materials and classes to make all of these things:






Leef's farm is in Van Alstyne, Texas, just a tad off the beaten track -- a scenic drive through the rolling hills north of Dallas. But if you are a fiber enthusiast anywhere in the Dallas-Forth Worth area, Oklahoma City or the general Texoma region, and you're up for a day trip, you'll be glad you went to the trouble to find her.

Leef is happy to arrange weekend retreats for any guild or other group of fiber enthusiasts who'd like to spend a weekend on her farm. In addition to the two bed-and-breakfast cabins, there is ample campground space on her property. You can contact her directly to discuss classes, arrangements and prices, depending on the classes you want to take and the size of your group.


For directions to the shop, hours, and class information, contact Leef at:

http://www.appleleeffarm.com/

I'll leave you with a photo of some of the farm animals: here's a little cluster of sheep, presided over by Doc, a 30-year-old horse whose hobbies include coyote-stomping, and Murphy, a llama who not only provides fiber but also serves as a flock guardian. You can see Murphy just above the second sheep from the left:






Next time, I'll tell you more about the farm animals, the land, and Leef's plans to expand the services she and her husband offer.

At the moment, you can contact Leef through her website and see what's new at the shop. If you have a group of friends who are interested in a weekend retreat so you can learn to spin or weave, you can arrange that as well.

104

Y'all, it is hot. It was a hundred and four degrees Fahrenheit yesterday afternoon. It was 84 degrees at two in the a.m. when I woke up and had myself a good dose of insomnia, and it's 101 right now.

It's the kind of hot that makes you seriously contemplate whatever posessed your ancestors to settle here. Me? I'm convinced that my own ancestors arrived in October and made their decision based on that, and by the time summer came back around they were too busy eking out a living to get the hell out, and by then, the babies caused by happy October weather were born ... and then well, you know. You're stuck.

My own personal, direct ancestors didn't arrive till the late 1880s. By that time, clothing was slightly less voluminous than in days gone by, but not by much. Women still drowned when any sort of boat sank, weighed down both by their clothing and the social norms of the time which forbade them to shed it, even to save their own lives.

I can't stand wearing anything but the thinnest garments in this weather. I can't imagine facing it in pantaloons, petticoats and corsets. Gah. Once the thermometer hits about 95, it's even too hot for shorts. A loose, thin, cotton or linen skirt is much more comfortable. Today I'm wearing a Hawaiian-print wraparound and a tank top, which makes me think of Lisa Louie -- hi, Lisa!

I have a hard time imagining the first European explorers deciding on this as a swell place to live. "Hey, guys! There's a little rise over here next to the river! Let's build here, just as soon as we get all those water moccasins and poison ivy vines out of the way."

Before the advent of air conditioning, running water, mosquito control and modern sewage, people down here died all the time from yellow fever, malaria, and related ailments -- right up until the early 1900s. We still have to maintain diligent mosquito control to keep encephalitis and West Nile Virus in check.

Anyway, yesterday, it was too hot even to spin properly. Even indoors with the air conditioning on, the humidity was such that I was having trouble drafting the fiber.

So I fooled around with experimental yarn labels instead. The labels shown below are draft-quality mock-ups -- having a bit of Sunday afternoon computer fun:

I waited until late afternoon to catch the low, slanting light outdoors, but the oak canopy above our house still prevailed -- it's so much easier to take outdoor pictures in winter here. You can't even see our house on Google Earth, but you sure can see the trees.


Yarn colors, top to bottom, are: Candy Striper (gradient-dyed Romney singles plied together), Blood Orange (space-dyed roving, spun into 2-ply sport weight), and Blue Hawaii (dyed 2-ply Romney). I was going to dye some more last night but it was too hot, even with the air conditioning on. It occurs to me that I should put a tiny dash of yellow here and there in the Blue Hawaii, to represent the twist of lemon in that drink.


I suppose the name "Candy Striper" belies my age -- how many of the rest of you were hospital
Candy Stripers in high school? I am thumbing through my dye notes, and nearly all of my other color names are either food-related or adult-beverage related. I can't imagine why ...


I don't think I like the idea of a twisted skein with a wrap-around label as much as I like the idea of loose skein hanging with a tag. I'll play around with tag designs tonight, and post photos to solicit opinions.


Thanks to everyone for your kind and supportive commentts about my upcoming venture into the weekend arts market. I am still waiting for my application to be approved but I will let you all know as soon as I have an opening day for my weekend stall.


I'm getting up super-early tomorrow to dye some singles before breakfast, before the heat gets serious. I also need to be up super-early because I'll be edgy -- my brother-in-law is having bypass surgery tomorrow morning, and I worry better if I'm up early.

Hello ... Seattle?
We have your weather,
and we're not giving it back.


Some Sunday mornings start out with a good, long, lazy sleep-in, to the tune of rain hammering on the roof:









And when the rain stopped, I went to the door, bracing myself for a blast of superheated, humid air.
But it wasn't there.

I looked everywhere: in the garden, under my car, in the mailbox. But July in Baton Rouge was nowhere to be found.

Due to a complete freak of Nature, we're having a cool front in July -- a precious few days of daytime temps in the high 70s F. (Okay, it might hit 80F tomorrow, but still). And, if you can sneak outside between the torrential downpours (that's the catch), you can do what I did this morning -- stroll outdoors with your cup of coffee, and have the following conversation with a neighborhood cat:

Me: "This is unbelievable. It's ten o'clock on a Sunday morning in the middle of July, and it's 72 degrees."

Cat: "Meow."

Me: "What gives? Not that I'm complaining. Not at all. I'm just stunned. In shock, actually. I need to find out how this happened."

Cat: "Meow."

I spot a neighbor jogging -- yes, jogging -- towards me and I wave at her, calling out "Morning!"

(Yes, I am the kind of helpful person to point out the fact that it is, indeed, not dark.)

Jogger, slowing down: "Good morning!"

Me, sweeping out my arms all-inclusively: "What happened?"

Jogger, not needing any further explanation for the nature of my question: "Beats me, but I'm not asking any questions. This is too nice."

Me: "I think UPS got our weather delivery mixed up with Seattle."

Jogger: "No doubt ... Isn't it great!"

Me: "Sure is! Later!"

Jogger: "Later!"

Cat: "Meow."

I spread my arms and take in the coolness (77 is cool, my friends ... it was 96 two days ago). The cat licks his left front paw and then sniffs the nearby border grass, no doubt contemplating a hunt for field mice on this fine day.

Frogs and toads are chorusing a hallelujah choir of pure amphibian joy. I take my coffee to the porch and sit there, watching the neighbors walk by (people are outside!). The lack of heat is so remarkable that entire families are outdoors, walking the kids and the dogs, marveling at the wonder of it.

Y'all have to understand that even a few summer days like this are absolutely and completely freakish in our part of the world. But freakish in a good and very welcome way. The summer norm is for the Louisiana thermostat to have an ugly breakup with the 80s sometime in early June, and then get real friendly with the 90s part of the thermometer, and stay there quite obsessively unti mid-September (with the occasional dalliance into the 100s in July and August).

But here it is, the middle of July, so I take my only opportunity for the whole summer to sit on the porch, drink coffee, and knit.

The amazing weather has done wonders for my mood, so as I work away at my sock, I consider what I might do later in the day, and remember that I've been so dispirited by last week's suffocating weather and bogged-down grant work, that I have fallen over a week behind on my blog.

I have been meaning to post a few things about spinning:

A few weeks, back, you may recall, I went through a bag of natural off-white and natural grey singles and did a little Kool-Aid dyeing.

There was gradient dyeing, with tropical punch Kool-Aid and two four-ounce skeins of Romney singles:

Then, a one-ounce sample skein of Romney singles got tie-dyed with black cherry Kool-Aid. This one will be plied against itself for a speckled effect:

And next, there was a two-ounce skein of natural grey singles -- somebody please hit me with the stupid stick, I forgot to write the breed on the bag label -- that I space-dyed with Kool-Aid Mountain Berry Punch. It will be overdyed with lime green Kool-Aid so that part of the grey remains grey, part becomes green, and part of the green overlaps the blue:

And here's the whole whack of samples hanging out in the bathroom with a fan blowing on them to help with the drying process:

Next time I post, you'll see all of these yarns plied in their final state, and skeined up for future use.

Most of my spinning is fine worsted singles, which I 2-ply for sock yarn or lightweight knits. For worsted weight yarn,I spin fine woolen singles, and the end product is a 3-ply worsted. All of the above yarn is worsted singles (except for the solid blue, which was already plied).

Late this afternoon, we treated ourselves to dinner at the neighborhood sushi bar, and then I took a 2.5 mile walk (about 4K) around the neighborhood just before sunset.

Ordinarily, the 10-meter sprint from the air-conditioned house to the air-conditioned car is the most outdoor excercise a person can handle in Louisiana in July. Anything more strenuous and you'd have to hire an ambulance to follow you around.

But this evening, I walked all the way to the end of the neighborhood, where the creek empties into a small lake, and back again, to the accompaniment of deliriously happy frogs and toads. Birds bathed in the fresh puddles, and shy green anole lizards licked raindrops from the undersides of leaves.

While I was walking, I also remembered that the pesky Mercury retrograde is over. So I came home, paid a pile of bills, pulled out my hand carders and that Ouessant fleece from Jo, and oiled my wheel. I'm plannning to spin this yarn woolen for loft and softness, but two-ply for light weight so it goes further. Once it's spun up, I'm sure it will tell me what it wants to be:






I'm happy as a frog in a puddle, for a few days, at least.

--Mambocat