Freyalyn's Thoughts

I have driven to work this morning (because I'm off to Carol's for lunch and am carrying a large lasagne* which I'm cooking here this morning) and this was the sunrise over Roundhay Park, just before I get here.  I'd been watching it all the way over, but this was really the first point I could stop and take a photo.  Very cold and icy again.


We finally got this up last night.  This is the creel that we bought at Masham, at one of the itinerant stalls that spring up around the Sheep Show.  Mark finally varnished it on Sunday, bought hooks and pulleys and stuff, put the hooks up too, and we hung it together.  It hasn't fallen down yet.

There are three fleeces hanging here - left to right, there's a Clun and a Shetland (both from the lovely Sarah) and the coloured is the half Polwarth from Robin McEwen King.  I washed them all (!) on Friday afternoon, when I bit the bullet and thought I'd try and see if the washing machine went into its spin cycle quickly enough to spin fleeces out without felting.  It did.  So I can now wash fleeces much, much quicker, much more easily, and using much less water.  An all round good thing!  These fleeces have been in the freezer racks since then, and although they're mostly dry there was still damp in the middle.  I hung them over the creel last night, and they're beautifully dry already.  I can package these away today or tomorrow, and wash the four remaining unwashed fleeces this week (two more Shetlands from Sarah, and two Corriedale crosses from Denise.

Denise is not having a good time.  She and her husband have a wonderful smallholding over on the Yorkshire Wolds - we went to her birthday party in September - but her husband Tim nearly cut his hand off chopping wood the other week.  The operations seem to have gone well, but very scary.

*Tuna lasagne, suitable for those who don't like meat.  Usual recipe.  Large amounts, so there *should* be some to bring home.