And that's not all . . .

They built more stuff today.  Again, they showed up before the sun did, and I learned that the work in the dark is always done at the same corner.  The yellow truck pulls up the driveway and shines its lights at the far wall of the barn and they get to work.  I've been able to see the headlights from the house all three mornings this week, which means that they are making no effort to distribute their darkness-induced mistakes evenly.  I'm not sure how I feel about this. At least it's the spot that I can't see, though.

Today's order of business: the roof.

I was careful not to watch too much of the part where people were standing on the actual roof.  If I look too long at the chicken coop, I still have flashbacks to the feeling of pure terror I had every time I tried to scramble from the van onto the roof to do the shingles.  Let's not even talk about what it took to get me down afterwards. I'm pleased to see, though, that others have adopted my brilliant innovation of using the nearest handy vehicle as a scaffold.

This, though, is my favorite part.  See that man suspended in the upper half of my mini-barn?  He is standing on the new floor of THE LOFT.

Now he's reading some building instructions.

But there he is, IN THE LOFT.  I can't say this often enough.  THE LOFT.  MY LOFT.  This is the closest I've ever come to having an attic.  When I was younger, I thought that an attic would be the coolest place EVER to live.  My best friend had her bedroom in the attic and she had pointy ceilings and funky nooks and crannies and it was the best.  I always wanted one, but we had a thoroughly unromantic crawl space instead.  And now, I almost have one.

Here is the other really cool feature:  they have framed the upper doorway.  The one that at some point might have a functional pulley so that we can haul things up to THE LOFT.  We had a barn at our first house, even though it was on a tiny little lot in the village, and that barn also had a loft and a little loft door and a pulley.  But we never got past the stage of thinking of it as a future hideout for our kids, and we moved before they got old enough to use it anyway.  And now, we have one again.

On the fiber front, knitting has been painfully slow.  I'm in a never ending stockinette slump and if there has been any progress, I haven't been able to measure it.  It's like I'm knitting a tapeworm instead of a shirt.  I keep putting more and more stitches in, but it seems to have no effect.

As a colorful alternative, I have some spinning progress to show.  I wish I could take credit for having done all of this recently, but the first two were spun and plied over the summer and it is entirely possible that I have posted pictures of them already.  But, that would have been before I got my new camera and a well lit bay window to use as a photo studio, so even if you've seen the yarn, this is a greatly improved picture of it.  And the first one has part of a cat butt in it, so it's got that going for it, which is nice.*

The next two were done this fall.  One of the great advantages of working from home is pretending that I commute. Instead of driving, though, I take half an hour (or so) and listen to an audiobook while I'm spinning or weaving.  Rarely knitting, because that always feels to me like something I shouldn't do until after my work is done.  And I never "commute" home from work, although sometimes I take long enough in the morning that its just like I've gone out and back.

this one will be done in a couple more days.  I'm not normally an orange/yellow person,
but I am madly in love with this color.

All of the fiber was from Spinner's Hill, which has fabulous colors, nice wool (and blends) and great prices (I'm not kidding about that last part:  one of the reasons that I buy so little fiber at festivals is that I'm spoiled by this stuff). I'm thinking that the berry and the gold together would make a great Catkin.

Pizza just walked in the door, courtesy of El Husbando.  Time to go!

*I take that back.  The cat just barfed on my office floor.  I'm no longer convinced of her merits.