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My forays into the world of wool and spinning in general are coming on hugely and I am having a whale of a time processing the wool from literally just off the sheep's back right up to the finished knitted article.




Its a time consuming business and when friends of ours mentioned that they had seen spinning wheels in a local Antique (junk) shop I was intrigued enough to take time out to go for a look.  Of course I didn't come home empty handed.  There were three or four wheels... one was just a jumble of bits on the floor - along with three or four distaffs complete with flax attached.  My heart started racing, just a bit.  I had already been told by an elderly Spanish acquaintance that they used to grow flax here in Extremadura, but not any more.  It sort of explained why there was no real tradition of wool gathering.  The annual sheep shearing is more about getting the wool off the animal and less about the quality of the fleece.  The wool is almost worthless to the shepherd,…

The weather has been warm here for a few weeks now, but it was still changeable and sometimes the evenings were quite chilly.  A distant memory now.... its suddenly got a lot warmer, our thermometer is measuring 32C in the shade of the veranda this afternoon.


I don't have much wardrobe space so in order to make room for the summer wear I have to pack away all my winter clothes.  Its not by design, but by accident that most of my winter stuff is the sombre colours of green, brown and black.  Such a contrast to my summer clobber which is a rainbow of brightness.


I dragged the box of Summer out from under the bed and greeted my dresses and skirts like old friends I haven't seen since last Autumn.  Crisp cottons and cool silk, some badly faded now, but all precious memories of where I wore them, who I was with, or when I bought them.  I have a story that is clothes related that I think sums up my feeling towards my apparel.  During the making of the epic film Gone With The Wind th…

We have had a lot of visitors this spring and as the last of them waved goodbye we sat down with a sigh of relief and great plans for a really lazy bank holiday weekend.  We are retired so the fact that it is a holiday weekend is neither here nor there to us, but all the same, it was a good excuse to do nothing... except what we wanted to do...


Which didn't include emptying and cleaning the cupboard out because Mr Mouse has come to stay.
Actually I am surprised that this is his first visit since we moved in two years ago... so I guess we are not doing too badly... but with one cat on sick leave (and back in his cage... that's another story... for later) and the other too well fed and too lazy to care, Mr Mouse is presenting a bit of a problem.



He can only get access to two cupboards... one didn't have any food in it at all, just my baking pans and cake tins.... but he still managed to chew through two silicone cake tins, and not cheap ones either...!  Very annoying.


In the…