This is Olive:



Her favorite pastime is breaking things (not catching snakes, as one may imagine, though she's developed quite a passion for it). In her first six months with us, she broke nine (9) wedding presents and more than a half a dozen holiday gifts. There was a point where we considered drastically shortening her life span, but in retrospect it seems we made the right decision to keep her on.

I've been trying to spin with a drop spindle for several months with a crappy kit I got from here. Not only did I look completely ridiculous attempting to get the thing to spin, but the wool--well, let's pretend it got carried off by the wool gnomes and leave it at that. I was ready to give up on the whole spinning thing. I could dump all the pretty roving I got from here, but that bag (at least a pound!) of alpaca from North Carolina?

Olive, for once, broke something useful. I just wish it hadn't been 4 am when the crappy spindle hit the floor. Oh, and when she batted around the whorl until it lost itself under the bed. Just sayin.

It gave me the chance to get this when I was at WEBS:



A top whorl spindle.

So yesterday, I went to see some sheep.



Sheep are particularly nice, in my book. All sweet and soft and stuff. Here are some sheep with my friend Terry and the boy:



(I think there are some bloggers in the background there.)

Terry remarked that a sheep being sheared bears a strong resemblance to a reluctant toddler.



(Ms. Sheep's head is at the top. Imagine attempting to dress make a small child do anything he/she doesn't want to do. That's what shearing looks like, apparently.)

Lest I forget, I was party to the biggest potluck lunch I've heard of in a decade. Of the bazillion (ok, maybe 25) knitbloggers there, I knew two: Cate and the Kelly. Had I not sat between the two of them, I might have been vastly overwhelmed and run into the path of the oxcart rides. I hope to God to figure out who everyone there was.

On the addiction front, I got a tutorial on how to use the sheep-flavored spindle. My teacher? None other than Diane Golding. This may be ordered in the near future:



or maybe this:



I got a promotion Friday. If I want, I can finally. Finally. FINALLY. Call myself a Librarian. With a capital L. I might celebrate with a Golding spindle.

I bought some Icelandic roving from her, and proceeded to spend a good bit of time giddy with excitement. Look what I did!



It is half of what I got, just a measly 2 oz. Had I known, I would have bought So. Much. More. Now I just have to figure out how to ply.