Anyway...I got a lot done today:

• Finished spinning and plying three skeins of yarn for my youngest son. He wants a rainbow colored scarf + hat + mitten set. I didn't have enough roving in those colors to make all that, so what I did was to ply each rainbow single with a strand of natural black. So each of the three skeins goes sequentially from violet to magenta to red to orange to yellow to green to blue (several shades of blue of course!) to blue-violet. If I'm careful, the items made from this yarn will preserve this order.
• Set the twist in all the rainbow/dark yarn, two big skeins of Shetland, and a skein of merino in cool tones.
• This merino is also spun in such a way as to change gradually from one color to the next. I think it goes from purple to blue to teal to brown to olive green (feels like I'm missing a color). I could have Navajo plyed it to preserve the color order, but that would reduce the amount of yarn by a third and make it nearly three times as thick- unacceptable. However, it was thin and kind of fragile as merino fiber tends to be (although very soft) so instead I fulled it, which is almost like felting and gives the yarn a lot more strength. Setting twist involves a single dip into very hot water. Fulling involved a dip into boiling water, a drizzle of soap and vigorous massaging, thwacking the skein of yarn against the snow several times, dipping it back into hot water, thwacking on snow again, etc, until the strands of yarn began to stick to one another. The rapid temperature changes, combined with soap and friction, cause the wool fiber to felt/full.
• Then I did almost all the dishes....and trust me, that's an accomplishment when you have to melt the snow into hot water first. Also- found out that the dishes can be pre-washed with snow and my trusty institutional style dish brush! The snow combines water and abrasion. This really saved on dish water, as the good hot water didn't get so dirty.
• What else....minor moving stuff around, bringing firewood in, splitting kindling, that sort of thing.Seems like I did something else...at any rate, I got caught up on all the handspinning, plying, and twist-setting. Now just have to calculate the length of each skein and figure out whether I have enough to make certain items.
• Oh, that's right- the wool slippers. I finished one and am almost done with the other, They're really ugly so I hope that they're at least warm!!! Because...my feet are still cold.