On topic
The LYS that asked me early in the summer if I'd be willing to teach some spinning classes has finally gotten around to asking me about scheduling. We agreed yesterday that after Labor Day will be a good time to start but that leaves me with little time to actually build my presentations and gather materials. I operate well under pressure and most of my suppliers ship quickly so I'll build cheap CD spindles and hijack a friend to help me put together fiber kits, but writing the handouts will be time-consuming!
Spinning: a few more ounces of fine gray wool, then plying it off and I should have enough for a sweater.
On hold: Kathmandu sweater, waiting for two balls of yarn in the mail to finish. This is itching me, because I *had* it finished then decided an off-the-shoulder look really isn't appropriate for me hehehe
On needles: Blue superwash sweater for one blue-eyed red-headed boy. I'm knitting the thing three inches longer in the body and arm than current measurements require, with luck he'll be able to wear it a couple of times before he outgrows it. If not, I have extra wool, I can always pull off the yoke, lengthen appropriately and reknit the shoulders. Also various singleton socks waiting for mates, and I found one finished and one half mitten in the stash last week that I don't remember ever working on >:\
Planning: I'm poring over my Starmore trove looking for a fisherman's sweater I like well enough to knit. Her colorwork is stunning, her arans leave something to be desired. But, I have a sweaters' worth of gorgeous charcoal tweed heavy worsted (aran weight) yarn asking to be an aran, so I'm doing my best to accomodate the stuff. I will probably end up ganking a cable here, a cable there, putting them altogether and hoping for the best. Slapdash knitting is my thing, apparently...
Off-topic
Weather here continues hot and dry. I continue watering the house foundation via soaker hose and major landscape assets (two oaks of caliper about 3" that have been in the ground two summers now, the $#!@#$ holly bush my husband loves so much, my ornamental pears and redbuds in the back yard) with a trickle system I devised using cheap dollar store hoses and sprinkler system manifolds at the faucets.
Our water bill is surprisingly low, especially as compared to the "maximum landscape" neighbors who are attempting to maintain golf course greens in 100+ heat and no rain in more than 8 weeks. Fortunately we're not in a "mandatory landscape" HOA so I can let the crappy lawn die every summer and all I get are dirty looks from the golf course managers around me :D
Our electric bill is just unmentionable despite the high R-value insulation we specced when we built the house. I guess it's time for me to buy one of those gizmos that measures draw for various appliances throughout the house to find out where the juice hogs are and start replacing what I can reasonably replace. I suspect a major draw is the garage freezer, which I picked up at a yard sale a couple of years ago. I keep it full, but it was an older model to begin with...I really don't relish the thought of replacing a 20cf freezer right now, but I'll do it if I have to.
I took some of the neighborhood posse to a swimming hole west of town earlier this week. None of them had ever been to a spring-fed swimming hole so it was great fun watching spindly 8-9-10yo boys with zero body fat hitting 68f water and literally *levitating* back out while screaming at the top of their lungs "OH IT'S COLD IT'S COLD!!!"
*chuckle*I of course had the same physical reaction but it was more tolerable for me because 1. I knew what to expect and 2. I've got a quite-adequate-thank-you layer of body fat to act as insulation. One boy did turn up with a case of pink-eye the next day, but everybody else was healthy and remains that way so we're writing off the pink-eye as having some other cause. We had some skinned knees, one wasp sting (absorbine JR to the rescue!) and some horsefly bites (more absorbine JR) but no broken necks, no broken arms.
+++++++++++++Reply to the list as I do not publish an email address to USENET. This practice has cut my spam by more than 95%. Of course, I did have to abandon a perfectly good email account...