This is the colourway I have been spinning up for the show.  It is dyed by Treetops Colours out of Western Australia and the fibre is so soft and fine.  I had purchsed the wool to used for felting, but with the show looming, I grabbed it and started spinning.  Although this stuff doesn't need it, I have been predrafing this fibre in an attempt to get a really even yarn.

Last night we played our third game of touch footy for the season.  I made a try... my first try for two seasons.   This is my third season of touch footy, and it is the first team sport I've ever competed in, so I suppose I'm not programmed to read play and anticipate where I should go to maximise my chances of getting the ball at the right moment.  I sort of see myself as being good at wing defence, I understand what I have to do and I do it well.  I love it when the other team thinks they can target me out on the edge, but they can't get by me (most times) :-)

Madras colourway from Treetops Colours

I've probably lost most of my spinning readers since I have been largely silent on the spinning front for well over 6 months now.  A combination of 1) I haven't been spinning much and 2)  when I have been spinning it has been plain old white yarn for my jumper.

So.  On Wednesday I borrowed a drum carder from my spinners and handweavers club.  I had visions of me being able to process huge quantities of fleece in one night so I can just concentrate on spinning spinning spinning!  Well I don't know if it is just me, my technique, the wool or the carder, but I really hate the batts I have produced.  They take ages to produce and then end up on the slubby side anyway.

Compared to my lovely hand carded rolags this is a real let down.  I also think I can card my fleece faster using hand cards too. 

Anyway, I thought I try out some blending on the drum carder and grabbed some old merino tops and mohair clumps and roughly carded a batt up. I put it trough twice, so it wasn't really blended.  The above little skein is the result.  It actually looks better in the photo than real life.  I quite like the colours, I'm sort of bummed that I have run out of the greeny merino and this is all I will ever produce of this 'colourway'.  There is only 45m of yarn here, so it is pretty much unusable.

I've wound up the endless white yarn into balls so I'm now ready to embark on the sleeves of my jumper.   Now I've just got to find my copy of Knitting without tears so I can workout how to knit them!

Brown and yellowy green merino 'blended' with bits of orange and red mohair

I can start the sleeves of my jumper now

Whew.  I'm ready for a quiet couple of weeks now.

Riscy and I had a romantic weekend in Melbourne, flitting aroung the Melbourne International Arts Festival and shopping and eating and drinking :-) Sometimes I wonder how my life got so good.  A statement which, if this were a soap opera, would trigger impending doom.  Of course. 

We attended a concert by the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa from Japan, it was a tribute to Hiroyuki Iwaki who was chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra 1974 - 1989. We were three rows from the front  and the ladies next to us were a bit annoyed by the seats because they couldn't see what was going on, but I quite liked being so close.  The same ladies also shared their chocolates during intermission :-)

My favourite bit (and the reason I REALLY wanted to go to this concert) was Ross Edwards Oboe Concerto with soloist Diana Doherty... she was amazing!  Dancing and moving around the stage whilst playing this piece which was composed for her.  Riscy and I also both loved Prokofiev symphony No 1 and we bought a CD the next day :-)

We saw a piece of theatre called Navigators at the Victorian College of the Arts which was quite experimental with many performances going on at once - we had a brush with fame as Paul Kelly was there.  Not that I'm a particually big fan of his music, as he tends to speak rather than sing.  Anyway, the performance came with a zine, so I'll have a good look at that over the coming weeks.

On Saturday night we saw I La Galigo billed as "epic music theatre retelling an indonesian creation myth".  The show was 3hrs long with no intermission and the program informed us that the audience is permitted to leave the theatre and re-enter at any time during the performance.  Unfortunately the State Theatre is NOT set up for this.  There is no way to leave your seat and get out without causing everyone else in your row and behind extreme annoyance.  About an hour in I started to get very thirsty and twitchy and had to take my watch off because I kept checking it every 5 minutes.  So I didn't enjoy it.  Riscy loved it - and plenty of others did too as there was a standing ovation at the end.

I know this post is becoming a little epic too, but just a bit on creativity:

I have discovered that my workroom really does need to have a certain level of messiness or it just doesn't seem right and I can't get going.  So it is now a little messy, but I'm trying to keep it functional too.

Last night I painted over a scrap piece of paper I had printed ages ago, then I cut it up and sewed it back together.  I'm gonna have to iron it to get it flat though 'cause it is wonky and bumpy, above is a detail veiw.  Click here if you want to see a larger view... the scanner still wasn't big enough for it but you get the idea.

A more orderly shot