The weather right now is tolerable enough… 75F/23C, a little hazy, slight breeze. But they’re forecasting 92F/34C with 70% humidity as the day wears on. This promises, despite air conditioning, to leave me completely wiped out. I’ve got to get a move on and try to get all the running around out of the way early as a result, and I predict a minimal willingness on my part to go cover myself in fiber, bending over a hot carder. Sounds better than slaving over a hot dyepot today, though, and the club batts for August must start to pile up today in order for the whole shebang to ship by Friday. So it’s errands and carding today. Almost a pity, that, because this would be a great day to go hide in an air-conditioned basement with my knitting.

Speaking of the knitting, I think that with perseverance, I could have the Pagoda shawl finished mid-week or so. So I shall, as they say, endeavor to persevere. And drink more coffee. And when I get something off the needles — anything, at this rate — I vow that the next thing I put on a set of needles shall be on big needles. At least a US 5 (call it 4mm-ish). At least. And something smaller, too, like maybe a sweater. I might just rip that one sweater back from last summer — which has already been ripped once — and see if I can’t get Amy’s Sprout out of it.

Foggy, Foggy Dew has been much more interesting to work on, but it’s slow going. For all of last week — probably 4-5 hours spent on Foggy, Foggy Dew all told — I have one full repeat. Depending on how you count a repeat. I count it as one, but some folks might count it as two. It’s really one, though.

My digital SLR is hanging out in the TV-watching zone next to all the real projects which aren’t moving fast enough for me, right now. I’m hoping, I think, that if it’s handy, it’ll catch sight of a fabulous shot that’ll prove I’m getting tons done. And I can’t go get it because I’m too apathetic to go up and down a couple of flights of stairs. Perhaps this apathy should be telling me something, eh?

So instead, I’ve grabbed the fits-in-my-pocket digital camera, which has lesser optics and is slow to write files, and snapped a couple of photos of my apathy projects, which sit on my desk forever, and incremental progress is made here and there.

Here’s a batt I ought to be sampling. It’s a leftover oddment from a run I did for someone else, and it’s a tweed, featuring merino, BFL, Shetland, silk, alpaca, and maybe something else. I have this here to sample.

Of course, right now, I mostlyl just look at it and go “I really ought to sample that.” And then there’s this:

This is one of my fancy-schmancy Bosworth spindles, which arrived at my house after I told Sheila I wanted… let me think… I think I said “Something burly and pretty, and some kinda fancy shaft, and maybe a longer shaft actually, and I think this time a mini. Or a midi. I don’t know. Something pretty. Not the lightest thing you can find, for once. I should try something different now and then.”

Or something like that. So it’s a beautiful burl wood mini whorl, and a cochin rosewood midi shaft. And I’m using it to spin a thicker yarn than is my norm.

Oh! Right, and the fiber is leftover bits from the Peach merino/tussah silk/camel.

As far as “thicker than my norm,” especially with a spindle… well, that segues nicely into the next apathy project.

I take drum carder trash, bits of trash fiber, discards that get picked out of problem blends, and spin them fine. Then I ply them and they turn into things like this, in my “Another Man’s Treasure” series, so called because they’re made entirely from trash — fiber that I’d throw away if I had any sense at all.

That particular yarn is now being turned into the following apathy project, which appears to be tying up a small set of Addi Turbos, and I haven’t touched it in over a year.

In fact, I moved it to my desk a month or two ago because I hadn’t touched it in so long, and it was actually sitting in a drawer. The needles look to be 0’s or 1’s, or “itty bitty.” I’m clearly making up the pattern as I go. I wonder if I’ll ever touch it again? It looks like I must have worked back and forth at the ends there, to make one more diamond, so it would be slightly more rectangular. I must have it in mind to do that again a few times to create a rectangle. Seriously, the last time I touched this project, we hadn’t even decided to move to Ohio yet.

There are other apathy items all over my desk. Note there’s no photo of the desk; it’s too messy. That in itself is clear evidence of apathy. Or something. But there are also several skeins of yarn, a bunch of random fiber, and some half-scribbled pattern notes and whatnot. Ooof!