Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Spinning wool in the backwoods

This year's Tour de France started while I was on holiday and frankly, there was so much to do I didn't get spinning, myself, till the sun set.


The next morning I was smart and did some spinning before breakfast.  If I'm going to spin along with the Tour de Fleece, and I want to even though I didn't get organized to sign up for any teams this year, I will have to be nimble and wily like that every day.  But that's the point of Tour de Fleece, for me.  It's great motivation to keep on spinning - to make something out of all that fiber I've bought over the course of the year - even when other things seem more important or urgent.

So, that's days 1 and 2 up there.  Day three, the spinning of which happened midmorning after some lake time, looked like this:


This is the rhythm I established at the cottage:
get up and eat something,
then work at something,
then take a break in the water,
then eat something else and do some more work at something,
take another break in the water,
work some more,
throw something on the barbeque for supper,
work some more,
and take another break but probably not in the water this time because

OmiGOSH the bugs.

(I have so many bites: in the night my toe was hurting, and in the morning I checked and another welt had popped up there. The bugs, they are merciless. And worse on the other side of the lake apparently because we get more breeze on our side.)

The bugs were not the big problem though: it was the mice.  If I hadn't looked in one cupboard full of glasses that had been painstakingly washed last time, I would have thought the mice had stayed outside altogether since I put my foot down, but it seems they didn't - and furthermore, there was one critical place they spent some quiet moments I did not think to check before.

I discovered it when I put on the oven to cook some frozen food that accidentally thawed on the way up.

Yes.

So, meet my new stove:


You know how when you're reading Yarn Harlot there will be references to Sir Washie, the washing machine that Stephanie Pearl-McPhee loved so before she had to replace it?  And maybe you will think Oh, isn't that cute, it's an APPLIANCE.  Well, after about two hours of the new stove being in the cottage I realized I love that thing like I have never considered it possible to love an appliance.  It's so clean and compact and easy to use!  And there isn't a big gap under the door for mice to get into the oven through!  And yes, these are not logical reasons to love an appliance but I do anyway and I'm not going to try to figure out why. 

There are two noteworthy things about the picture above.

One is the element covers, which I bought immediately after picking out the stove (I say 'picking out' but really nobody offers choice of 24" stoves) because it seems that once a mouse has pee'd on your elements you will never, ever get the smell off.  Now that I have them, I love them almost as much as I do the stove, because I can put a cutting board on there for extra counter space if I need it when the elements aren't in use.

The other thing is just off to the right hand side of the frame - the little spot of pink that is a carnation.

Yes.  The delivery guys who showed up at 7:15am with my 2:00 pm previous-day's purchase of new stove... and new sofa since they were coming anyway... not only took away my old stove... and old sofa... but gave me a flower.  To thank me for my business.  Folks, if you saw the pitch of the cottage driveway I think you'd agree that the thanks were entirely in the other direction but Okay!

(also on top of the microwave you can just make out a bottle of mint oil.  I'm putting mint oil on cotton balls and leaving them hither and yon because I heard mice hate the smell of mint.  nothing if not determined, I am.)

Okay, back to spinning, and backwoods.


I did not realize just how backwoods this cottage is, having been a child when I went regularly and a city girl for most of the time since.  But I timed it on the way out and in a car it takes 20 minutes to get to the nearest town and nearly 10 of them are entirely woodsy.  The other ten are also woodsy but the homes have clearings around them.

In the woods, the air smells great and the light filters through trees.  There are bugs, but also birds and interesting spiders and other things you can watch as you spin.  Mostly I spun on the new sofa, which is unremarkable except for being
a/ affordable
b/ a sofabed
c/ available for next-day free delivery
d/ SO COMFY

even though I really thought I would love to spin out on the deck.  I can see the deck from the sofa and that'll do, at least until August when the bugs start to die off.


What I think would be really cool is to take the wheel through the woods to the dock and spin out over the water.  Wouldn't that be amazing?  Maybe next time.


Hope you all had and/or are having a lovely holiday yourselves!

1 comment:

Trish said...

SO ENVIOUS!