Photos and Such

I've been a bit tardy about downloading a few photos from my camera, so I thought I'd share a couple things from this past week I haven't blogged. Firstly, last Saturday David & I took a drive up the coast and a tad inland to pick up fresh blueberries from a blueberry farm where I've been getting them for the last few years and my mother's been getting hers for several years. I also picked up a flat for the landladies. This is what 20# of blueberries looks like all ready for the freezer (actually, nearly all - I saved a little for eating fresh):



I love living in Maine.

After leaving the blueberry farm, we stopped at nearby Hope Spinnery, which is a small wind-powered spinning mill. We got a tour of the production area and had a nice chat with the owner about the industry. Maine actually has a fair number of small spinning mills doing both custom work and their own small lines of yarn.

On Tuesday, I went over to see Juliette, now 5½ weeks old, as I hadn't been there for a few weeks. She's recently had her first haircut. The baby fleece is generally clipped a few weeks after the cria is born, as it is otherwise prone to get matted and felted at the tips by the time of their yearling clip. So now I have a bag of butter-soft, chocolate-brown fleece waiting to be spun (someday).



Lastly, I was talking to David tonight, and he pointed out that I never posted any photos of the tattoo he got touched up just before we left Hawai'i. So a little belatedly, here is the before:



Not so pretty, eh? So here's the after:



Much nicer.

Future Project?

Today I've really had Fair Isle patterning on my mind. I've been reading Sheila McGregor's Traditional Fair Isle Knitting and contemplating Meg Swansen's Schoolhouse Shetland Pullover from Knitting in America, which was republished last year as America Knits.

I've actually been contemplating it for several months, but today I even went so far as to e-mail Yarns International, who are apparently the sole US distributors for Jamieson & Smith's Shetland 2000 yarn, which is a line of naturally-colored, undyed Shetland jumperweight. I'm thinking it might look nice in moorit & mooskit.

Of course, that assumes I'd ever manage to finish it, but one must be optimistic about such things.