My birthday present from Rob arrived today - a swift and ball winder to help me with my knitting. I had lots of fun opening the box and setting everything up on the table. The picture below shows my singles of autumn coloured merino (I finished spinning last weekend - more details coming soon) being wound into a centre-pull ball for me to ply from. It looked so nice when I was finished I almost knit it up instead.


I also got some Blue Faced Leicester fibre in the mail today but I was having so much fun with the swift and the ball winder that it didn’t get opened until almost ten o’clock.  The fibre is beautifully soft and just a bit shiny. It still smells a lot like sheep and reminded me of trips to the petting zoo in Stanley Park, Vancouver. Zeke found it fascinating.

Rob and I dressed the house up for Christmas a couple of weeks ago. It was a lot of fun to set up the tree and rediscover all the ornaments. There are a few things I haven’t managed to find yet (like my Christmas Jell-Gems) but we got most things set up.

We’ve discover that Zeke is particularly fond of the Christmas tree. Not only does he enjoy sleeping under the lights but apparently it tastes really good too! He climbs onto the side of the couch to get the higher branches or just stands on the floor and gnaws on the tips of the bottom ones. It must be a pretty good flavour because you can hear him purring from across the room. We do our best to discourage this since there is no way of knowing what the tree is made of.

As far as sleeping under the tree goes, Zeke looks quite cute. He’ll sit under there and watch me in the kitchen. He seemed a bit annoyed when I finally started to put presents under the tree.