It’s one hundred million thousand degrees (Centigrade) in my house and I am not exaggerating even one little bit. It’s so hot that the butter melted into the inside of the cupboard and the cat has spent the day assuming various lewd positions to try and cool off. With humidex, it’s 36 outside (that’s 97 F) , and it is definitely hotter in the house than it is outside. Last year we had a little room air conditioner we stuck in a window, but that’s dead, and there hasn’t been the spare change to replace it. We’ve managed to claim a used one, but it’s not hooked up and Joe’s out of town. It sits there by the door taunting me with my complete inability to hook it up, even if I marshal the girls into helping me. It’s just too damn heavy and we need to go to the hardware store (for what, I am not sure) and it’s too hot to go to the hardware store and dudes…. it’s just too hot. I’ve been taking refuge outside in the evenings, and it’s been more than lovely, and the only place you can be that your wool doesn’t stick to you. Saturday night, a few other spinners had the same idea as we began the Tour De Fleece. We spun in the cooler night air, quaffed few cold ones and were entertained by babies who have clear interests in the Fibre Arts.

(Edited to add: I know I just said it was really hot but here this poor baby has a sweater on. I swear it was cooler that evening – we aren’t out to poach poor little innocents who are helpless to defend themselves against our sweater/wool/knitting zeal.)

Jen won the evenings award for multitasking when she managed to rock and nurse her baby while simultaneously learning to Navajo ply.

(I still can’t believe she could do it. )

I happily spun away, working on the first thing in my 1500g challenge (that is never going to work by the way. I’m starting to understand how wrong I was to set it as a goal) … a practically antique mohair/wool roving from Blue Moon.

This roving is so old (by roving standards) that Tina doesn’t even work with this fibre anymore. (She just does the sheep to shoe.) This roving is also so old that it had felted a little from being jockeyed around my stash. That made it hard to spin smoothly, since it wanted to stick to itself in a really dedicated way.

I stuck with it though, getting through about half of it that evening, and the other half on Sunday evening, then plying Monday morning before the searing hot day star came up and roasted my house.

That’s about 300m or (really, really poorly spun) yarn where there was fibre. That’s about 200g of my Tour de Fleece challenge, with my goal being 1500. So yesterday there was 21 spinning days remaining, about 1300g left to do, and I did the math and worked out that means I need to spin about 61g of fibre a day to make my goal.

If this heat keeps up, that may end up being about as likely as fairy princesses showing up to do my laundry.

Last night I took the wheel into the backyard (actually, the tiny patio that pretends to be a backyard) when the heat broke and it was possible to have fibre slip between my fingers again, and I started working on this:

This is a pretty, pretty merino/tencel blend from The Sheep Shed, in a colourway that I can’t remember and is probably irrelevant anyway, since I bought it way back in 2004 at Rhinebeck. It’s interesting, this decision to go back into the stash and spin some of the oldest stuff first. I’m all surprised by my own stuff… It’s like it’s Christmas in your own stash.