an ent knits

…the beach edition.

It had been far, far too long since I’d spent time at the beach.  Last weekend was wonderful–peaceful, relatively quiet….  (except for the end of the drive back, when there was pretty bad traffic).  I played in the waves some, sat and looked at and listened to the water some, watched the gulls and pelicans and cormorants and plovers/sandpipers, looked at the stars some (so many stars! stupid light pollution), and got to hang out with my parents.  I also got to spend a few hours driving a really nice car, since I splurged on Zipcar (for convenience) rather than trying to find a rental-car deal, and the most convenient car is/was a Mazda 3.  So nice!  (Except that its extreme zippiness evaporated when I turned on the air conditioning.) I really do love driving, when the circumstances are right.

I haven’t edited any of them, but I uploaded all fortyish of my beach pictures to flickr; click through to look at the rest of them.

I went off to meet my parents at the beach for part of the weekend (so much fun! more on that later), where I traded some of the dishes I can’t easily store in the new apartment for a giant bag of fleece.

Oh, my goodness, so much fleece.

I took this photo after S. and I had sorted through about a quarter of the giant bag of wool.  Those two piles are “medium crimp” and “high crimp”; in the first half of the bag, it looks like there’s one very crimpy fleece, one not so crimpy fleece, and parts of one or two fleeces of intermediate crimp.  (Fortunately, S. has a room that can be closed off from the rest of her apartment, and that is where the fleece is now.)

I’ll try to get some good pictures of the fully-sorted-through piles, which will be huge…

This is from the biopond garden, late last month (though I think these’re still flowering). I’m pretty sure it’s some variety of geranium.

*

I’ve had a bit of a cold this week, which has not helped my energy levels at all.  Still, work is progressing, and I’ve managed to spin on most of my walks in, first some seawool from Creatively Dyed, and now some mostly-corriedale tan wool blend from Amy Boogie.  I was amazed at how much more smoothly the wool blend drafted this morning–I think that 5 ounces is going to go pretty quickly.

First, some late-Friday eye candy:

It’s not from today–it’s been rainy and overcast, but wonderfully autumnal–it’s from my direct walk to work.  (I’ve started going to a nearby coffeeshop to write before going to lab, on days when I don’t have early-morning microscope time.)

So, yes, I’ve been putting lots of time and energy into work, but I’ve been spinning a bit to calm down in the evenings.  I got some new-wool-breed-to-me fiber recently, which I carded last weekend and have half spun now.

I had hoped it would turn out more brown than purple, but I’m not really surprised.  I might’ve added in some brown BFL or alpaca, but I wanted to spin the Falklands wool by itself.  So far, I really like it.  It seems a lot like nice Corriedale.  And I know enough people who do like purple that I think I’ll be able to find a use for this stuff.   It’s also beautifully heathered, from the colors in the handpainted fiber, which makes up for its being less than my favorite color.