Potpourri, treepourri, peepourri

The neck fleeces have been spoken for – by the same wonderful woman I've sent them to in years past. Turns out she didn't want to be greedy, while I figured she and her students were tired of dealing with the VM.  ;-)  I'm delighted to send them to someone teaching traditional home arts to young people. Wanna see what students and teacher did with my neck fleeces last year? Oh yes, you do! Hang onto your hats, folks:

This is what Mary said: "All my kids spun singles after they washed and picked and combed (what else could they do to remove all that vegetable matter?) and the best of the group did the plying to try to even things out. In our dyeing class about half of what was spun was dyed a deep blue and half of all the end results came back to me.

"I have always admired the tile work of the middle east, places like Morocco and Turkey, and I wanted to knit a cardigan that had that same feel. So I pulled out a flower pattern I liked (I think it’s a Starmore pattern). I call it “Blue Iris” and this is what your lovely neck wools turned into." Wowzers!

No loggers yet today. I decided I needed to document our landscape before it changed, then remembered the handy-dandy panoramic setting on my iPhone camera. So here is our view (kinda; the clouds are obscuring the valley to the east) from due north to due south, standing on our deck (click to biggify):

The taller clump of firs in the center of this photo are in our lower pasture. Rick would like to cut those, too, to open up our view; our relationship could do without that challenge. :-/

After plying and skeining the Black Glitter singles, I was inspired to finally skein off my Tour de Fleece project. What fun to see all the colors again; I may have to find a pattern for this yarn sooner rather than later!

Dicey is in her usual spot; this is where she wants to be whether I have room for her in my lap or not. Earlier this morning Brian came over, picked her up, and took her to his room to be with him while he listened to a class lecture on DVD. I thought about trying to dissuade him, as she didn't want to go and she hadn't been outside in awhile, but figured he'd just argue with me so kept quiet. Moments later he stormed out of his room with Dicey and put her outside; apparently he had put her on his bed where she promptly piddled. Dicey is now banned from his room; I don't think she will mind. ;-)

That's it for today from . . .