best rabbit hole ever...

i am sat up in bed, watching nonsense on You Tube and eating floor-Oreos. hopefully i will do a better job of holding on to the opened pack next time around... hopefully.

it is Monday evening as i start writing this, and i am already waiting for this week to be done. last week was an especially rubbish one around here, and the weekend left me expecting that we were in for more of the same. i called my mother on Sunday, and my greeting to her was a dour, but apt one. "we are still alive. happy Mother's Day."

in that spirit of celebrating the tiny victories in life—including life itself—i present to you a tiny glimpse into the randomness that has brought some measure of joy to my corner of the Universe of late. 

we pulled a couple steaks out of the freezer and made a special meal one random day... just because.

these smashed potatoes have become his favorite dish of the moment. i boil whole potatoes (red potatoes in this case, as that is what we had on hand) in super-salty water, then smashed them lightly, and drizzled on a mixture of olive oil, melted butter, salt, black pepper, and a generous helping of crushed garlic. they go into a 425°F oven on a parchment-lined baking sheet until they are toasty around the edges, after which i turn on the broiler for the last couple-few minutes. i added a sprinkling of freshly-grated Parmesan cheese and shoved them back under the broiler for the last minute. not gonna lie... they are really tasty. he likes the leftovers served up with sour cream, so we make extra for the next day. so ridiculously good!

speaking of ridiculous... i woke up one day last week to find a new box in the entryway to our apartment, which currently serves as the 'quarantine area' for all incoming items.

me: was this here before?
him: uhm... no.
me: is this an 'unauthorized purchase'?
him: uhm... possibly.
me: what did you buy now?
him: it's a Master of the Universe. you like them. 
me: open 'er up.

after the absurdity of life of late, he can buy whatever nonsense he wants. so... welcome, Skeletor.

may you find peace among the countless other homages to a never-ending childhood that are already occupying our home. trust me... that is only a tiny fraction of the insanity in the studio. whatever makes him happy.

he hangs on to the boxes with interesting artwork, so this one was a definite keeper.

as i see it, we are all allowed our own brand of insanity. which reminds me...

i washed those two fleeces i talked about last time. this usually requires a lot of room to spread all that wool out to dry, but that would be asking for trouble in a home with three bored cats. so i divided the fiber into several batches that could be dried out of paw-reach, and washed them over the course of a week or so.

i separated out the 'best bits' from each fleece and took special care to try to wash them while maintaining the lock formations of the fiber, like this bag of cleaned BFL/NCC mule fiber. [i explained what that means in the previous post.]

i love the variation in the fiber from this one fleece. it is hard to believe that all of this came from the same sheep.

i did the same thing with the purebred BFL fleece.

this may look like a tangly mess, but i can easily separate the locks, which will help when it comes time to prep the fiber for spinning.

there is enough 'best bits' from the mule fiber for a generous sweater's worth of yarn, so i am storing all of that in a recycling bag until i decide what it will become. the BFL was a much smaller fleece, so those 'best bits' are living for now in one of the shopping bags that was sent along with my box of wool.

as for the mucky bits of both fleeces, they were washed in a less-organized fashion, using some plastic strainers and mesh baskets that i keep exclusively for use with fiber-related things.

i am going to need to open a few chakras before i can begin to tackle prepping this stuff for spinning. however, in all this madness, i welcome that challenge.

there were some impressively-long sections of the BFL fleece. i am actually considering getting one of their longer fleeces next year... should we last that long.

i am making progress on the summery top featuring my first ever batch of hand-dyed cotton-based yarn (which i spoke about two posts ago). i am taking all sorts of license in re-interpreting the designer's instructions... because i can. the top should be finished by this weekend, unless i get distracted by some other... hey, is that a butterfly???

oh, and i am still carrying those damn socks (from a few post ago) from room-to-room, although i must admit to having added not a single stitch to that project in over a week.

____________________

it is roughly twenty-four hours later and i am pleased to say that i have fallen down a rabbit hole that began with the Betty Boop classic "Minnie the Moocher", and has resulted in the past couple-few hours being spent watching segments of swing music/dancing from a truly impressive list of old movies. between the likes of the Nicholas Brothers, Cab Calloway, and Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, i have hummed, snapped my fingers, and tapped my toes enough to chase away most of the gloom that i feared would cloud the next few days of my life.

best rabbit hole ever!!!

i wrapped up my evening by returning to where it started... with good music and classic animation. this time, it was the Warner Bros classic "Three Little Bops". [the only video i could find that includes the whole piece was this one from Vimeo. and, yes... the video quality sucks.]

then my favorite animator walked in.

him: are you listing to the "Three Little Bops"?
me: yep. been listening to it on repeat for the last twenty minutes or so.
him: i was listening to that just yesterday.

then i smiled. it is nice to be reminded that our insanity intersects every once in a while.