I love the smell of...

hot, wet, wool in the morning! I've been dyeing that special churro. It's a time-consuming process - one day to mordant, another day to prepare the dyestuff, third day for first dyebath. That's where I am now. The yarn/dyebath is cooling, then I'll wash the yarn and hang it to dry. I've tentatively decided to over-dye it to get a soft green, so I need to set up an indigo tub. Another day! Updates to come.

I've been dealing with serious computer problems. The infernal machine has been slower and s-l-o-w-er lately. I did the whole virus, spybot, defrag scan thing. Still slow. Got an e-mail from my computer protection suite that described my problem exactly. Said expert e-mail maintained that cleaning my registry would solve all my problems.

Well, perhaps in comparison to all my new problems. Now, slow seems a blessing. I've spent the last two days trying to straighten this mess out, over an hour on the phone with tech support, then worked my way through 5 pages of fix-its. Now I have internet access restored, but still no e-mail. And 39 other files were also deleted - I guess I'll be finding out what else doesn't work as I try to use other programs. Just ducky.

In the meantime, while I've been waiting for my slow computer to cope with all of the repair commands, I've been working on the red purse. Did I mention that the Taos Wool Festival is 2 days away? I want to finish this thing for that, even though it doesn't exactly coordinate with the socks I'll be wearing. Nothing wrong with being colorful, is there? I'm on the strap and looking for buckram to stiffen the body.

I'm also looking at this:

This is accidental Halloween yarn I dyed last summer. The gold was, well, orange. The brown/black was much more intense than I had in mind. I was looking for neutrals with a little spice. I got all spice. Must watch those concentrations! Thus, Halloween yarn. So, while I've been waiting for my computer to slowly return to functionalitly, and my churro to dye, I've been looking at this and thinking about Halloween patterns.

I'm really excited about a new heel variation I may be un-venting. I was looking for a reference for another heel, couldn't find it, and stumbled across a decrease method I can't wait to try. If it looks as smooth as I'm hoping, well, it's easy, so how great would that be?

Back to the computer fixing mess...