Hobbies 4

We went round last night and played bridge with X & Y. We had fantastic cards and had a lovely evening – not so X & Y!

One of the more interesting stands was the local coloured wool weavers and spinners. I was surprised at the price they were asking for two or three sacks of wool they had there. About thirty dollars. Admittedly, I suppose they contained about four fleeces, or at any rate three – and I did get $7 for my biggest one the other day. They had one large bag labelled in large letters COTTED FLEECE, which was word I hadn’t come across before. It apparently meant so tangled and matted that it was practically impossible to pull out and card. Most of mine are a bit like that!

She was keen to have a demonstration of spinning on a wheel. We had a bit of wool there and I managed to get her wheel going reasonably and spun a little bit, and she then had a go and after 15 or 20 minutes had got the hang of it and was producing some very reasonable yarn, which pleased me.

We have borrowed a couple of more up-to-date books on ACOL which are proving fairly disastrous while we are in the process of adjusting our bidding system! So far Monday does not seem quite such a pleasant evening to play as Tuesday. It may be of course that most of the people are just much better than we are! But whether or no, a good many are rather patronising to the poor little ‘jumped-up Tuesday pair’ – and also a bit rude in that as you move to the next table they are quite likely to continue their post-mortem without so much as a nod of welcome.

X no doubt told you of our catch of fish – three was quite enough for me, and I decided that even if we had been staying I didn’t want to go fishing any more until I had discovered an infallible method of finishing them off, and taking the hooks out.

I’ve spent a good deal of time constructing a balsa wood plane from his grandfather: a grossly optimistic compliment to his nimbleness of mind and body! We did have the satisfaction of it flying in the end, although I must admit it was aerodynamically rather unpredictable, veering to the right and flying into the house on the first flight and zooming to the left and getting shredded in the fence on the second.

My head of X is going slowly, I try to leave it for a day or two so I see the mistakes, this morning’s was rather major, the forehead has to be built up, and I’m not happy about the eyes. I suspect one is set further back than t’other… [later] I’m far too ‘stressed’ to use my new typewriter! I’ve been battling with my 4^th attempt with X and everything that can go wrong has – I now have it caged in 4 or 5 layers of plaster of Paris with heavy iron bars set in back and front. I expect I’ll try the next stage, but I’m not hopeful of the result – maddening when I remember my first 3 which I made casts for on the kitchen table in between meals – I feel very old today!!

The National Management game is in full swing again. We’ve made our first two ‘decisions’. Did I tell you that X is on a girls’ team this year? Their business sense is non-existent, their maths worse but their industrial espionage has to be seen to be believed; why, one of them even married an opposing team member to extort information!