It, uh... it's been a while.

I'm not sure if you knew this or not, dear reader, but getting a PhD is HARD. Or perhaps I am making it unnecessarily hard. I'm enrolled in three courses this year, plus two language reading groups (Catalan and Attic Greek), plus I am TAing for my first time and running three tutorials a week plus marking and consultation, and trying to put together a paper to give next term, and also recovering from giving one *this* term, and sometimes feeding myself and washing.

I am looking forward to having two weeks off at Christmas so I can collapse in a pile of yarn and sleep.

I have been busy, though! Thecla and I continue to get along well, though she complains about how dry our apartment has been now that the forced-air heating is on. I feed her a good meal of spinning-wheel oil every day before I sit down to spin, and that seems to settle her a bit. She spins well, although the mother-of-all doesn't adjust well enough to accommodate the smallest whorl on the new flyer, which means that spinning fine laceweight requires substantially more work than it should. I am going to take a drill and sandpaper to her over the holidays to widen the slots in the MOA so she can slide far enough to align the smallest whorl more evenly with the wheel.

She eats fibre, too! So far we have been doing a lot of long-draw, which is my favourite technique at the moment. I picked up some carded romney a few months ago from the Purl and spun it up in no time. Loved the fibre so much (despite the VM and heavy remnants of lanolin) that I bought another half-pound from a different supplier on Etsy. I think Romney may be my favourite fibre of all right now since it is so wonderfully crimpy and sproingy and crisp. My finished yarn has an incredible bloom and a friend has called dibs on a pair of slippers from it. The new Romney I'm spinning up now is even softer and a much lighter colour and I think I might keep this all for myself.

Two weeks ago Sophie and I went to the Royal Winter Fair and wound up buying a massive bag of Angora, which I will write about later, but suffice it to say I am virtually swimming in animal fibre right now.

Knitting is picking up, too. I have a bunch of projects on the go including a SUPER BORING hat for my husband, who insists that everything I knit for him must be in a 2x2 rib. GRAH. So to compensate I am also knitting a Central Park Hoodie and a pair of Ringwood Gloves, all for myself. And socks, too! But there are always socks on the go.

Today is going to be a day for sitting in and knitting. I was planning a trip down to the Purl but we slept in far later than we expected so I think that plan has to go out the window. I just want to curl up on the couch with a pot of coffee and some soft angora yarn and knit away the afternoon. Mostly to avoid marking.