What I feel like doing today: sitting in a recliner knitting on that shawl, drinking lots of coffee.

What I will be doing today: packing boxes and making a post office run, and dyeing this pile.

Everyone should have such problems, eh what?

The several days of rain — for which I’m incredibly grateful, after the June drought — seem finally to have lowered the dew point below 75F, and dropped us out of the mid to high 90s. I’m hoping the absence of crushing heat, combined with high doses of caffeine, will conspire to cause incredible productivity today.

Oh, so what’s in that pile to be dyed? Well, I probably won’t make it through the remnants of that Merino bump (and yeah, there’s another one on the way). My superwash/tencel isn’t here yet, so that won’t be on the list. That brown blobby looking stuff is loose camel, which is destined for blends. There’ll also be some tussah silk (not pictured) for blends, plus a few special requests for silk colours. Oh, you know — have you ever seen a bump of tussah silk sliver?

Now you have. A typical 4-year-old could probably lay down next to it and be similar in length. The 4-year-old would be heavier, though; this is 6 kg (or 13.mumble pounds). It’s floppy; the silk bumps are in a put-up essentially like what you often get with pin-drafted roving. They can be a little hard to wrestle into a storage area neatly so you can pull fiber off them in a hassle-free way. I often wrestle them into submission in the hall as a result, then move them into the pre-dye closet which isn’t exactly the same as quarantine since I’ll dye stuff before quarantine is up, due to the fact that I dye with prolonged heat, which kills, you know, the eggs of the M word. But otherwise, it’s a 3-6 week quarantine on new incoming stuff, just in case. I really can’t talk about that more though, because They might be listening. You know, them. I don’t want them to find me.

So anyway, here’s the in-progress tussah, which I think is about half gone. I’m sort of okay for tussah right now, what with one full bump and about a half of another, right? 20 or so pounds oughta be enough to do a little work with, I think (not counting what’s already dyed).

Okay, enough of that! Here’s what I think you’ll really like, though:

Yeah. Know what that is? I guess it doesn’t look like anything all that awesome in this form. You know… yet. C’mon, somebody knows what that is! Anybody?

If we’re all lucky — seeing as how I have already blown my “personal stash” budget for the month, and shouldn’t really go into hock to Franquemont Fibers (yep, I have my own bar tab, and it comes out of my pay) — that last stuff will be up for sale this weekend. In all sorts of colours. You will all be saying “Ooooh,” even though right now, it looks like… nothing.

And that sort of gets to the real point of this post, which is: look what a difference colour can make. I mean, there’s some fabulous, incredible fiber here, but yet, this is about the blandest blog post ever. It needs… more zazz. I might as well have just written a list, and included no photos at all.

Oh, Kaylee says she loves the days when boxes come in. Here she is with an empty to play with, taunted by a pair of boxes which contain my new motorized Mr. Skeiny that I still haven’t had a chance to unpack.

I think that Shrek bucket was giving her a hard time, truth to tell.

And with that, I leave you, to go slave over hot dyebaths all day.