blue

We were fortunate to go to a Blue Rodeo concert last night. It was a terrific show! If you get a chance to hear this band live, do it. Jim Cuddy is an amazing talent, both vocally and with a variety of instruments. The rest of the band was great too. The opening act was a young group from Toronto called Cuff the Duke and they were very good too.

It's interesting that Blue Rodeo's latest release was designed specifically for vinyl, although you can buy it as a double cd too. I like the idea of vinyl making a comeback because this is what we still have from the early days of our marriage (i.e. before parenthood).
A Bang and Olufsen stereo system and a lot of albums. I figure we're sitting on a gold mine. I can dream, right? Of course, some repairs would have to be made before it becomes valuable to a collector. When Geoffrey was a toddler, I found him dotting the moving turntable with dribbles of milk from his upside down bottle. The needle was pretty unimpressed. Also, one of the speakers' membranes got blown out when my nephew Christopher turned the volume to max before turning on the radio. This stereo was not designed to survive young children.

On a totally different blue tangent, I'm a little blue about my Gotland fleece. This is what it looks like after cleaning.
The fiber is a pretty steel blue gray color but almost half the length of the locks is sun-bleached brown. I think (hope) I must have felted it in the wash tub. I have to tear the blue fiber apart. It's still possible to flick it apart but it will be a lot of work.

Here is a bit that I flicked.

And a mini-comb's worth of fiber.

At least it's nice and soft. My gut feeling is to cut off the brown tips and save them for another blend. The blue wool is such a lovely color that it's a shame to mix the brown stuff in with it. I'm going to wash some more of this fleece and see if it comes out nicer. I thought I was being very careful washing the first bunch but maybe I agitated it a bit too much when I was trying to get the sudsy water through it to clean out the smelly dirt and vm. I haven't had any trouble with felting the other fleeces that I've washed but none of them was as pungent. If it is still felted after a more careful wash, I will be an unhappy camper.