It's nearly July

Yesterday as I was walking along the street, I smelled handspun.  Or rather, hand-dyed fiber ready to be handspun. 

Fiber from 2012, some of which is still unspun and available... hmmmm...

Do you know the aroma I mean?  It combines vinegar and wet wool and whatever dye smells like, with a soft nesty feeling, and hope, and a sense of purpose. 

(I was passing several restaurants at the time and I'm trying not to think about what foods produce the same smell.  Would you want to eat something that tasted like hand-dyed fiber, I wonder?  I'm not sure I would.  Though I do like things with vinegar in them, so... maybe?)

Spinning does not feel like it's in my immediate future because even though my wheel has been sitting for over two years beside the very chair I am sitting in to type this Hug and is therefore extremely accessible, I am supposed to be doing a lot of other things that are not Making More Yarn.  Mostly in fact, I am supposed to be converting yarn I already have into items that pack neatly or can be given away, because I am storing too much stuff to take back to the house.  You can put in SO many hours of work with unspun fiber, to end up with something that is the same volume as the unspun fiber.

On the other hand, it's also nearly July, and isn't July the month I spend spinning?  You know, the month that bicycle athletes spend riding the Tour de France and a lot of crafty folk set up their wheels in front of the television to spin more or less alongside them?  I've been a long time out of my routine but I am pretty sure that's true.

And I might have time to spare, because in spite of a growing inclination I'm not quite there with the packing.  A lot of our stuff is already packed, and a lot more isn't coming home at all - IKEA furniture can only survive so many moves - and what is left loose is stuff we still need to be able to get at every day.  Also, a lot of messy finishing work is being done on the house right now so we can't take anything over there yet.  Well, we could, but we would have to clean it all off again after a week.  I think that time could much more profitably be spent making things.  Probably I should treat myself to something special for what looks like it will be a super rainy Canada Day Weekend (we are celebrating 150 years!) and pull out the roving box.

Yesterday Pete and I went out to get pizza and I took some pictures with my phone to document the magnitude of this unique event (sarcasm alert).  I was entranced by this chimney:

more clouds!!!

and then tried to guess how old the building is that's under it, by its brick.  Some of the brick looks like this:

and some like this:

and some has graffiti on it which I think is a real shame because the brick is so obviously geriatric.

Across the lane from the back of this very old building is a much newer building with ivy growing on it:

Do you recognize this plant?  It's so different from the exuberant green ivy you see on buildings, with their generously large, bright green leaves.  These leaves are glossy and sharp, and the suckers are tenacious, and the rusty red of the young leaves and the reaching armlike branches always strike me as a bit bloody.  Any ivy can damage pointing and gradually tear down a brick wall, but I don't suppose they are as hard on concrete.  And even a slightly vicious looking plant like this is still texture and colour and life.

And it keeps aiming high.  In fact I think one of those shoots is aiming right up into the window, don't you?

Well, either way - I liked the shadows the plant was making.  Looked at from this angle it looks like a Tom Thompson painting of rugged evergreen trees along the shores of a weather beaten lake.

Which is another thing July is good for - the lake! 

What will you do to fill your July when it finally gets here?