Mad Hair Day

I was talking to an old friend the other day and she was envying (!) me for running my own business, working from home, having three delightful children and a man who, most days, does not make me want to smack him on the head with a shovel and bury him under the patio. I am, admittedly, a lucky woman. But there are downsides to all this. Having It All seems to equate to Doing It All and I’ve been burning my candle at both ends and melting in the middle to boot.

This week my mother staged an intervention (she clearly watches far too much Oprah) and sat me down, told me I was doing Too Much and presented me with an appointment for a facial and a voucher to go with it. I must really be in a sorry state when even my mother thinks I am too ugly to be seen in public. So, off to the face-kneader I went and, as much as I hate to admit it, my mother was right. An hour of pummeling, unguents, steaming and a marathon tweezing session on my Eyebrow and I felt like a new woman. Sadly I still looked like the old one, but I was a bit more relaxed about it.

I’ve been galvanized into action to tackle a few other things that are getting a bit out of hand. My cleaning lady (whom I love with a passion brighter than the sun) has returned from her luxury holiday and now once again my house is regularly scraped out and the debris dusted. My constant battle with The Laundry has been won by bringing in the mercenaries as I have contracted out my ironing to my insane sister who enjoys doing it and who is saving up for our Annual Girly Weekend Away when we shop like stampeding buffalos and shamefully neglect our families for four blissful days.

I also decided that guilt has no part in knitting. I’ve been trying to work up some enthusiasm for finishing the Mint socks but right now, it’s not thrilling me and I just can’t be bothered. So, in true floosie fashion, I dumped it in the corner and started swatching. And frogged, and swatched and frogged and started a lacy scarf and frogged… you get the idea.

Then, disgusted with it all, I got out the sewing machine and sought a quick win. My littlest daughter wanted a new nightie.

This headache-inducing ensemble was made from cotton jersey fabric, bright pink and purple swirls with dancing frog princesses and the pattern was made by laying a favourite garment onto some newspaper and drawing around it. I bought the overcast foot for my Bernina Bernette 65 (which I love with a passion second only to that I have for my cleaning lady) and knocked this out in a few hours. She loves it. I made a second one even quicker by leaving off the sleeves and turning them into a pocket which I sewed to the front and she stashes her little teddy in it. It took me an hour.

I know it lacks the intricacy of lace, the endurance of socks, the mind-over-maths victory of short rows, but somedays, well, somedays nothing but a quickie will do.

I love a bargain. I really, really do. And I love the Internet almost as much as I love shopping for bargains, so when the two worlds collide and I get a really fabulous price on something I really want AND I get it delivered… Well. Let’s just say I’m having a happy day right now.

Him Indoors and I decided to buy our own Valentine’s Day presents. That way we can treat ourselves while feeling good about getting each other exactly the right thing for once.

I’ve been on Trade Me which is New Zealand’s phenomenallly popular answer to eBay and look at what I bought:

It’s a drum carder!! (Yes, I know you can see that. I also like pointing out the obvious. It’s a knack)

Actually, it is a really, really FILTHY drum carder. This has been sitting in someone’s shed for a very long time. I scraped off some cobwebs and batts of dust before I took it out of the box and put it on my kitchen floor. And the price? I spent in the region of $50.00 NZD. Yep, this cost me less than $35.00 US. Am I pleased? Ooohh yes.

I had originally planned to replace the spiky cloth which covers the rollers with some nice new spikes and then I found out that it was very expensive stuff. So, with nothing to lose by trying, I thought I’d give a bit of elbow grease a try and clean it up myself. If it didn’t work then hey, nothing ventured; nothing gained!

I looked online for instructions on how to clean your drum carder and came up with lots of sites which recommended a little gentle doffering and the occasional use of a toothbrush and meths. But this grime laughs in the face of ‘a little gentle grooming’ and piddles with pleasure on your methylated spirits. So, with generations of carbolic-soap-saturated Yorkshire women before me, I decided that there was nothing A Damn Good Scrub wouldn’t fix, including this festering thing.

So, for the delight, instruction and edification of carder-enthusiasts everywhere and for the benefit of those who look fruitlessly for details of how to get the yuck off the spikes, here’s how I did it.

Assemble the following items:

1 utterly filthy drum carder

1 equally filthy flick carder (it came included in the lot along with a broken and dusty Lazy Kate which is now shiny and glued and working perfectly)

A bottle of any cleaning liquid (I used  Ajax Floor Cleaner liquid and, when that ran out, some kitchen cleaner- Mr Muscle, with essence of oranges (why does our soap have to smell of fruit? I like soap that smells of soap. That way it tells everyone who enters your home that you have actually done some cleaning and not just squirted some air-freshener about)

An old baby bottle brush – actually, a nail brush or scrubbing brush would do. It just has to be easy to hold and have bristles a little longer than the spikes on the carder.

Assorted screwdrivers and pliers and wrenches and spanners.

A hot pot of tea. Obviously this should have been top of the list. Consider it prioritized.

Copies of any assembly instructions you can find that pertain to your particular model of carder. You’d think this was rather a blindingly obvious thing, the bit about the instructions being for your carder. Yes. Well. Read on.

A digital camera with lots of space on it and fresh batteries. Not just for the narcissistic or for the blogging-obsessed, I can promise you.

One pair of sacrificial rubber gloves. There is going to be filth, very hot strongly soapy water and they WILL get holes in them. I guarantee it.

One digital camera.

So first of all you take your filthy carder and put it down on your nice clean carpet (the freshly washed, recently flooded carpet which has now never been cleaner thanks our wonderful insurance company, thankyouforasking) Take photographs from every angle. Ignore comments from Big Hairy Man (should you have one handy. If you do, send him to make tea) about people who can’t do anything without blogging it on the internet.

Unscrew everything you can unscrew. Put all nuts, bolts, screws, rubber thingies (your Big Hairy Man will become incensed at this point and want to give you a long lecture about how they are called grommets or something. Send him to make more tea)

Take more photographs. In fact, everytime you take a grommet, gasket, wingnut or sprocket off(I don’t know what the hell they are called but I like the sound of the word ’sprocket’!), take a photograph!

Drink tea. Apply band-aids to punctured fingers and hide grease-spots on previously pristine carpet with strategically placed hand tools and empty mugs.

Observe the hairy horror:

Dig out and disembowel every dust bunny and cobweb liana you can get hold of with whatever tool gets the job done. Ignore groans and squeaks from BHM about incorrect application of favourite hand tools.

Remove drivebelt taking ridiculously huge numbers of photographs at every step. From every angle. Really.

When you have taken the entire thing apart apply more band-aids. Take to the nearest big sink or bathtub. Prepare somewhere to put the scoured parts so they can dry.

Plunge one or two pieces into very hot and soapy water. Scrub with the brush of your choice. I washed all the wooden parts first. They scrubbed up nice:

Then brace yourself, hoick the carder rolls into the bath and scrub them with the brush. I found not fighting the spikes worked best – scrubbing in a diagonal direction worked out to be easiest and still effective. Every now and again you will have to dive in with the flick carder and drag out great tussocks of matted soapy fibre on its bristles. You will work up great clumps of yucky foam. This is good, especially when the foam stops frothing up brown and starts looking nearly white. Keep scrubbing. This could take some time. Send for more tea.

When the carder is clean then rinse thoroughly under running water and repeat with the second drum. Treat flick carder to the same treatment.

Then wash the drivebelt. You might want to check it very carefully first. With any luck it won’t be cracked and brittle.

Now dry everything with a towel and air dry in a bright room. This is a good time to check for woodworm, rot, rough edges (sand them down with a little sandpaper or you’ll be forever plucking stray fibres out of them). Polish with wood polish, if you have such a thing. Alternatively, just give it a quick sniff of the dregs of Mr Sheen and say “good enough”

Lay everything out in the reverse order of how you took them apart. So, last out is first in.

Realize you can’t remember which drum came out first or what the grommety rubber things did.

Find digital camera. Find replacement batteries for digital camera. Review photographs and realize that you should have used the flash.

Consult online instructions (or booklet if you are lucky enough to have one) followed detailed re-assembly instructions avidly.

Realize that your model pre-dates the one in the instructions by about 30 year. Curse impressively.

Decide to wing it. You are, after all a resourceful, intelligent woman. Fit part A to flange B and secure with bolt C, etcetera.

Become horribly confused by the convolutions of the drivebelt around the little wheely things. Thread and remove when it won’t fit between the wheels.

Rethread and pinch fingers. Swear in genteel fashion. Wonder why it is too long now. Has it stretched in the wash?

Rethread drivebelt and wonder why it is too short. Consult many photographs of how it looked before. Swear like bad-tempered navvy. 

Ask for help from frightened man in the corner. Curse him for his cowardice and work it out on your own.

Reassemble drum carder and congratulate self on only having four odd pieces left on the carpet.

Ignore timid warnings from Big Hairy Man in the corner who realizes that it is more than his life is worth to offer to help at this stage.

Attempt to turn handle. Realize what little rubber washer things are for.

Disassemble drum carder. Insert rubber thingies. Reassemble.

Turn handle. Adjust rollers. Realize that rubber thingies are on the wrong bit and nothing lines up with anything else.

Disassemble drum carder. Remove and relocate rubber thingies. Reassemble.

Wonder where that nut has appeared from. Surely it wasn’t there before?

Weep.

Disassemble drum carder. Replace nut. Reassemble drum carder.

Check carpet in paranoid fashion for any other stray parts. Ask Big Hairy Man to check also.

Turn handle. Marvel. Feel awfully, awfully pleased.

I am declaring our house a Valentine’s Free Zone. There will be no Hallmark cards, no red roses, no stylishly gift-wrapped boxes of enticing secrets and absolutely, positively, no candlelit anything. In fact, we are not even spending the evening together as I shall be dining with 30 other woman, most of us married, all of whom have no other plans for this commercially decreed Love Fest. Every year, despite all the years that have gone before which linger in my addled memory, right about now I begin to tell myself that things are going to be different. This year, Him Indoors, big hairy man of my dreams, will suddenly transform into a Mills and Boon cardboard cutout and come over all soppy.

And every year I am disappointed.

But not this year. Oh no. This year I am preparing early. This year I’m writing it down. And, as I obsessively check my blog for comments (I LOVE comments!) I will be reminded, several times a day, that I knew how things were going to be, because while the first step is admitting you have a problem, it helps if you can remember what it is.

Him Indoors is not romantic. He’s never bought me a Valentine’s Day card. He doesn’t approve of Hallmark Holidays, he says. He feels this is an important principle to stick to and, by heck, he’s stuck to it. But then, despite the Mensa membership, IQ like a phone number and ability to know the answer to every Trivial Pursuit question ever, he knows diddly-squat about the female psyche. For nearly a decade this man has watched me cry through movie after movie. I cried through When Harry Met Sally (because I knew how it ended), I cried through Jerry Maguire (despite loathing TC), both Bridget Joneses and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I’m not allowed to watch Steel Magnolias. I cry at soap-opera weddings, weep openly during live ones and am reduced to tears by bridal shop windows. And yet, he doesn’t know that I am a romantic, an addict for whom love scenes with background orchestral music are as irresistible as diamonds for Zsa Zsa.

In my fantasies (I lead a rich and full fantasy life, it is the only way to remain moderately sane whilst raising small children in a house which has been overtaken by the Laundry) he will one day suddenly notice, understand and appreciate my love for John Donne. He will remember that I am the girlfriend who likes coconut (I could explain but the teeth-gnashing gives me jaw-ache so let’s not go there). He will feel the urge to buy me flowers, book a romantic getaway for the two of us (doing the whole organizing-the-babysitting thing himself, of course) and whisk me off to a remote island without making me do the packing for us both.

The sad fact is that he is not a conventional romantic. In fact, to wring any schmaltz out of our relationship at all one needs the forensic skills of a TV detective with personal problems and an electron microscope.

So, part two of my Two Step Program for Getting Through Valentine’s Day is to pick through our time together like a monkey looking for fleas. (Gosh, can’t you just tell I’m feeling romantic already?) You see, I’m coming to the conclusion (and please don’t disabuse me here folks, it works for me) that romance does not have to be the off-the-shelf media-decreed experience that bad TV movies might lead you to believe. For the edification of all the pink-satin-heart deprived, let me list the ways in which a man can be romantic without even knowing it. Chaps, pay attention; it might get you some.

You can be truly crap at dating. That doesn’t matter. You can say the wrong thing, look like a psycho and wear bachelor clothes to your blind date, as long as you are clean and punctual and hold the door open for her.

You can become completely tongue-tied on your first date and forget your own name, just don’t forget hers!

Hold her hand. A lot. Remember to let go eventually so she can eat her dessert.

You can stare at her in a rather scary way when she is doing something mundune like fighting the laundry and when she asks (somewhat nervously) “Why are you staring at me?” you reply, “Because I can’t believe my luck”.

When you buy her a birthday present in plenty of time for the big day it is okay to give it to her a week early because you couldn’t bear to delay making her happy for seven more days. This might lead to multiple presents. This is okay.

You can insist on walking on the traffic side of the pavement. She might think this is to stop her from making a quick getaway, you must explain this is so the out-of-control truck (which might come along at any moment) will hit you first.

If she asks you over to fix her computer (insert here any appliance of choice) you should come over and fix it. Then you must sabotage it brilliantly so that it will break down very soon in a different way so she will invite you over again to fix it once more.

You arrange to call her the next evening. Then phone at breakfast time because you couldn’t wait another 8 hours to hear her voice. And tell her so.

And when you’ve been together for ten years and she points out that her bum looks big, you must say with, wild enthusiasm, ”Yes! It’s gorgeous!”

Who needs Hallmark anyway?

Despite being a bit of a harridan, I am, deep down, a bit girly. I adore pink although I rarely wear it. I like frilly things and sparkly things and dressing up. I have a shamefully large handbag collection and, once a year when I get the chance, I get a kick out of painting my toenails and wearing strappy sandals.

Yet most days I wear black. Or denim. Or shades of neutrals and sensible shoes. I have tissues and Band-Aid in my capacious knapsack and spare pairs of pants for assorted offspring. I own lipstick but I have no idea where it is.

But I do love pink and, for the delight of the other Miss Piggy types out there, here is a little pink for us all to enjoy:

The pink yarn at the back is the divine skein I recieved when I swapped my October Sock Club yarn with Debbie  Lovely creature that she is, she also sent me the organic chocolate that came in those little boxes. It was delicious. (You didn’t actually think there would be any left, did you?) This month’s Posh Yarn sock yarn is there too. As is my current quick-and-nasty project in stripey acrylic on (gasp) dpns at the front. Any guesses what that is? (You’ll never work it out, I’m sure!)

My lastest indulgence from Him Indoors is there too, the latest Nicky Epstein which arrived in the post today. I love Amazon and their wishlists, I really do. And the horribly crumpled blue thing underneath? That is my new spinning apron, made extra large so it covers all the bumpy bits (of which I have many) so that I may spin in black, white and odd moments. I clearly haven’t ironed it (my mother would be mortified that I was showing it to you all in this state) but I have no idea where the iron actually is. I think the Laundry might have taken it hostage, the pile having taken over and occupying most of the living space in my house and making bold territorial advances into the hallway). Some days I try to be domesticated. Other days I don’t try but just pretend. Today, quite frankly, I just can’t be arsed.

So I suppose you could be excused, if you didn’t know me very well, for thinking that I was not perhaps the ‘fluffiest’ of women. I don’t giggle, I don’t flirt and I don’t do the feeble female act when a man is nearby. I can change my own tyres, kill my own spiders (I don’t though, Mr Vegetarian likes to Set Them Free in the garden) and I can put up a shelf and expect it to still be there in the morning.

So I was a little bit surprised when, as I showed my knitting to a customer, another one leant over my shoulder, expressed amazement at the fact that I knitted and said, “And I thought you were one of those feminists!”

What exactly gives someone the idea that knitting and feminism don’t mix? I AM a feminist (quarter of an hour later this man was in no doubt about THAT) and am proudly so. I abhor the assumption that to be a feminist means one must be hob-nail-booted and boiler-suited and probably a card-carrying lesbian. I know girly lesbians, I know butch heterosexuals, I know knitters of both. Why would anyone assume that an interest in the fibre-arts excludes a sense of equality with the opposite gender and an expectation of fair treatment when it comes to economics, law and employment? What is it about knitting and sewing and baking and, dammit, flower arranging that makes them think that we are not politically aware and active?

This reminds me of a conversation I had recently with the teenaged daughter of a friend on the same subject. She declared herself not to be a feminist. I asked her if she expected to be paid the same as a man for doing the same work. She said yes. I asked if she expected to be given the same legal rights as her brother, the same control of her finances and the same scope of choice. Again, she agreed. I asked her if she intended to vote. She said no.

Now I know I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet (that’ll be my pink, girly bonnet) about this and I do hold forth frequently on the subject. But I am amazed that so many young women don’t understand that the choices they have been given are not enjoyed by all womankind on the planet. And they were hard-won by brave women and men who fought and campaigned for a long time to get them. I wonder if these girls would be keener to vote if they were not allowed to do so. What if they were disqualified from owning property in their own name or denied an education because of their gender? Would they care enough to do what our ancestors did?

Let’s make no mistake here folks, chauvanism, discrimination and sexism are alive and kicking. Today I had a consultation with a man who refused to discuss his computer problem with me. Because I was a woman. I explained that I was qualified, I gave details of my Masters Degree in Computer Science, I pointed to the many certificates of my technical qualifications. I told him I was not the secretary but the Managing Director of the company. He replied (scoffed, actually) and said “I don’t think so!” My technicians took a step back, knowing they were about to see a re-enactment of the End of Pompeii.

But I kept my calm. I behaved in a professional manner. I diagnosed his computer problem and ignored the way he asked my staff for a second opinion. I gritted my teeth and bit my tongue and, when he was gone, had a good old-fashioned scream in the garden.

We’ve come a long way, baby. But we’re not there yet.

… because you might just get it.

Little bit of rain anyone? We’ve got some to spare. Bucketloads.

See that interestingly planted swamp? That’s a succulent bed next to the entrance to our house. Yep, that pond there is the pathway to my front door. 3 inches deep in water, all in the space of an hour. You’ll notice the raging torrent in the background. That’s a river, widening by the minute where there was once only grass. Now four acres of swamp. Accessible only by boat until the digger came to rebuild the driveway where it got washed away.

And here is the real gut-kicker. This is our office. The Bat Cave. Techie HQ.

And that’s not nice shiny tiles on the floor, folks. That’s carpet under a big slice of farming-country run off. It came down the slopes, burst the banks of the 6 foot ditch and joined us here in the office. This water came from the farms and orchards uphill. Any guesses what it smells like?

Some interesting observations on the events of the day:

    You get a faster reaction from the insurance company if you cry when you are on the phone. I am ashamed to say that this was not news to me and they were crocodile tears but they did get the flood-damage man here within two hours.

    Truly disgusting things live in drains. New life forms evolve in pipes under your patio and you’d never know it unless you stick your hand down there in the torrential rain to unblock whatever-the-hell is causing the backlog of rainwater to start seeping into your parquet flooring. 

    I am good, if slightly scarily maniacal, in a crisis. Who knew? 

Some people react to a crisis by running around in a bit of a flap, getting all stressy and doing things willy-nilly and vascillate wildly between losing their tempers and plumbing the depths of pessimism. These people should be fed to a passing shark.

No prizes for guessing who I’m talking about here. (And it’s not me!)

Other people turn into Dickie-Attenborough-in-the-trenches with full wartime cameraderie, brewing endless cups of tea and Pollyanna-ing everyone along by saying ludicrous things like “Worse things happen at sea” and “If not duffers, won’t drown” and “Ahoy there.” They chirp optimistically at everyone about how they were planning to get the carpets cleaned anyway and that the cupboards needed a good sort out, so really, this deluge of biblical proportions couldn’t have come at a better time. These people should be held under said floodwater until the bubbles stop.

But that’s okay. I wanted to wash my hair anyway.

Well, it was bound to happen, and we had a good run of fine weather (it seems awfully British to be talking about the weather all the time. I guess old habits die hard) but the rain finally came – to New Zealand anyhow. The folks in Oz are still getting crispier by the day but over here we have this:

If you look carefully you can see the rabbits under the hedge lining up two by two.

Speaking of rabbits, we have a visitor. A few weeks ago we noticed there was an addition to the happy band of bunnies who enjoy our free-range garden, easy access to water-features (there’s a stream behind that hedge) and round-the-clock smorgasbord (our neighbours have a courgette field right next door). Clearly our garden is a des res for the long-eared and, unsurprisingly given our no-poison, no shooting ethos which is fully in keeping with our I-love-fluffy-bunnies and He’s-a-vegetarian lifestyle, the rabbits are living very happily at the bottom of the lawn. A black rabbit, much larger than the little wild brown rabbits suddenly appeared and every day gets bolder and bolder about coming closer to the house. He is also a little, er, ‘frisky’ and we are often called to the window by our daughters shouting “Look, the rabbits are playing leapfrog again!”

We assumed that he was an escapee, a desperate creature on the run and, like the B-movie that is my life, he was soon joined by an equally dissolute friend who, if Hollywood scriptwriters had a hand in this, would probably be called Mungo. The new rabbit, more friendly and hungry than his chum, is the biggest bloody rabbit we have ever seen. No kidding, I have had cats smaller than this bunny. Here he is sitting under a tree, very close to our porch, washing his face in a puddle and looking hungrily at my succulents.

He seems very tame and was quite happy to be approached but waited with something vaguely like a sneer on his little furry fizzog until I was within a few inches before taking off like greased lightning to the other end of the garden. We are in two minds whether to turn him in or not. Nobody has reported him missing and, apart from the slightly crazed look in his eye and the way he licks his lips when he gets close to my roses, he seems harmless and perfectly happy. Him Indoors has dubbed it the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, which almost inevitably, led to an afternoon of Monty Python and an incessant chorus of ‘Neep’ from the little ones who don’t get the jokes but know that constant reptition of a single word can eventually give Mummy that funny twitch.

If anyone is wondering if I’ve actually done any knitting lately then rest assured that I have. The progress isn’t exactly impressive though as I have been SPINNING! Yippee!

It’s been ages since I’ve had a chance to spin and I’ve found that knitting is slightly less hazardous around small children (unless they ‘help’ Mummy with her sock-knitting which brings on the aforementioned twitch and much howling.) The girls can’t resist ‘helping’ with the treadling and, sooner or later, one of them sticks her hand through the wheel and there are tears before bedtime. While the girls are at home it is too dangerous, when they aren’t at home then I’m working. And in the evening it would be me crying (ask me how I know) as I fight with tension, twist and my inability to do two things at once with opposite ends of my body.

This Monday the local Spinners and Weavers were invited to do a demonstration of, you guessed it, spinning and weaving at Waitangi. This, for the non-Kiwis, is where the Treaty of Waitangi (you’ll notice the connection there) was signed between the British and the Maori and they generally agreed to stop fighting each other with guns and start fighting each other with lawyers instead. Debate continues over the meaning, intentions, translation and implications of the Treaty but, in the meantime, it has given us a public holiday and an excuse for lots of ceremonies to mark the occasion. Like the launching of the waka (Maori war canoes) from the beach which took place conveniently just before my turn at the spinning demo was to begin. Look:

Here are four waka ready to launch. They have a leader- the chap in the cape (which is called a Korowai) and the crews are made up of old, young (some looked about 12), men and women. There was singing and ceremonies beforehand and watching the nine boats being launched was great fun. The carving on them is very intricate and the crews were, occasionally, half dressed. So, a little eyecandy for those amongst you who like their men solidly built:

Around the corner from Waitangi is Paihia, a tourist town which is home to these guys. They are not wearing a lot at the back under those skirts (Piupiu), a fact which generally shocks/delights the tourists as they are seen around town during peak holiday season. All in all, there was a lot of women taking photos on that beach (I do like a man who doesn’t look as if he’ll snap like a twig when you jump on him.)

There were many men, and women, who were wearing the maori tattoos (Moko) which show their heritage and genealogy. I really wanted to take photos of their tattoos but I was feeling a little shy and didn’t and I’ve been kicking myself ever since. Next time, I’ll get a grip (of me, not them) and ask, I promise. They were walking works of art, some of the men were covered from knee to wrist.

Once the waka were launched they headed up the inlet to Haruru Falls as the Bay of Islands was pretty rough and choppy. The flotilla was an impressive sight.

I spent the next few hours spinning at the Treaty House in Waitangi and demonstrating to international tourists exactly just how inept I was at the task. I also widened the vocabulary of a few non-English speakers. Here are the fruits of my labours (I spun two of these):

You’ll have to excuse the crappy focusing, it was the only photo I managed to take which accurately showed the colours.

I had some dyed roving in my spinning stash which didn’t seem enough for an afternoon’s spinning so made up another batch using some Kool-Aid-type drink crystals, working on the principle that anything that contained more than one E-number and is guaranteed to stain the best clothes of your offspring is likely to colour my fibre. I bought the cheapest I could find (guarantees Stainability!) and zapped the roving in the microwave. Then I mixed up my efforts with the older red and orange fluff and grabbed random colours when spinning.

I’m planning to ply this with some white although I have no idea what to do about the Dylon dyed stuff (the older roving) which still stains my hands. Also stained my nice white blouse, skirt, basket etcetera etcetera. Any ideas? Another trip though the acid solution and a few blasts in the microwave for the completed skeins, perhaps? I’ll have to soak and hang them anyway to set the twist after plying, I think.

One day I’m going to knit with my handspun. I’ve been spinning (okay, not nearly enough) for a year now but so far I haven’t knit anything at all with my yarn.

In the meantime, the sewing machine is out and I’m whipping up a quick spinning apron. I’ll inflict more of my corner-cutting sewing on you another date. Right now, I have a date with some stain remover.

Transition Man

Exorcise my ghosts

and the man who’d become all men

until I smelt your different skin,

uniquely biscuit, warm and thin,

your ribs – a toast rack for our feast.

We laugh till breakfast. Yes,

who loves last lives least.

by C. Slattery, 1997