Riveting yarns!

I thought I'd better try spinning some of the cleaned fleece to make sure I don't spent the whole summer washing it wrong and not being able to spin, so I hauled out my lovely drop spindle, one of the nicest presents I've ever had, and hereby show you my first output of spun yarn from my handwashed fleece, ta-daaaa. Words can not adequately express the total smugness and joy I feel about this. Not only am I learning to spin on the spindle, the wheel will have to wait a little bit, but I'm spinning my own processed stuff.

It's lumpy beginner yarn, but heck, it's yarn. Yarn, yarn, I tell you.

The other pictures are of the spinning I did of some of the roving (?) that came with the spindle as a present, first one a sort of ball of stuff, second one showing current output wet to set the twist, at least that's the plan, and drying on a plexi board, put there largely in order to get a picture of it! not stretched, just sort of wound on.

Here for the moment ends the gripping yarn about yarn. I know you will all be so sad that I have stopped putting up pictures of filthy fleece and mud, but oh well, you'll live...

Meanwhile, what I'm reading, among all this excitement (and other excitement relating to Handsome Partner's health and our household arrangements for helping me a few hours a week, both are a bit dodgy at the moment, but I don't want to dwell right now): Lisa Scottoline, detective novels, on CD for walking purposes and in actual printed books for just reading, what a concept.

She's one of those people who really annoy you, because she was a trial lawyer, is brilliant, is now a terrific novelist with a social conscience, and is beautiful, too. Not fair, is all I can say.

But I do recommend her writing, very exciting stuff set in South Philadelphia, which you don't have to know in order to enjoy it, but she sets the atmosphere of the Italian community just perfectly. Several of her main characters are lawyers, women, who find themselves detecting in the course of their normal work, and getting into all sorts of scary stuff as a result.

But there's a serious thread running through her work, too: she takes on causes. For instance, did you know that during WW2 in real life, there was mass internment of Italians living in the country, had been here decades in many cases, lost everything, homes, families, businesses, etc., and were shipped to Montana.

No guilt of anything ever shown, just they were Italian and we were fighting in Italy. I had never heard of this bit of US history, though it's very much like the internment of Japanese, even Japanese Americans, for similarly loony political reasons. Very sad stuff, but important to know about.

At night I can't read exciting stuff like Scottoline, so I fall back on Nancy Mitford! Currently Love in a Cold Climate, which I've read numerous times, but still like. Easy stuff at night when you're tired. And funny even the nth time of reading.