Sustainably harvested, organically produced, free-range, cage-free hydrogen, carefully and humanely separated from the oxygen atoms in water molecules.

See those bubbles? The ones on the left are bubbles of hydrogen, the ones on the right are oxygen bubbles. The bubbles in this picture were produced with a hand crank by me and a couple of people after we’d eaten a nice supper and had really delicious cake and cookies. (So, does that mean the dessert made the bubbles? Hmm.) Later bubbles (not pictured) were made with the help of a car battery and jumper cables. The hand crank was hard work!

The object of this was two-fold: to do a science experiment that I had never done in high school (my high school was deficient in…well, just deficient), and to allow me to actually make my own water. Because of course my whole modus operandi is to get to basic principles and try to make the materials for from scratch things from scratch. And then those more basic materials from scratch, and so on. It’s really turtles all the way down, and I really want to see how many turtles I can discover on the way down. But you know what? I got to see water separated out into its constituent atoms, then apply a flame (okay, I wasn’t the one with the flame actually) to recombine the hydrogen atoms with free-range oxygen atoms to create my own water! Which is exactly what happened, even though it was in such small amounts, we didn’t actually see any water, but that’s how the chemistry works.

(I want to build one of these myself and hook a bicycle up to it! MOAR hydrogen! Moar artisanally made water!)

I still don’t have pictures of my pillow in progress, but this is the cloth left over. It’s on the large side for a napkin on its own – being about 21″ square – and I’m not at all sure about the weird diagonal texture that’s developed, but it gives me hope for way more colorful plain weave cloth and napkin potential! (And look at those not-at-all-bad selvedges!) Stay tuned. I’m developing a color plan.

I finally got to the end of a whole bobbin! And let me tell you, these bobbins are huge.

So, what’s going on in that picture? Well, swapping out bobbins is a giant PIA, so I came up with a quick and easy way to wind the yarn onto a cardboard bobbin using my cordless drill (yay, multitasker!). It also means I don’t have to buy more wooden bobbins at the moment when I can buy was less expensive cardboard bobbins.

And here are two almost totally full cardboard bobbins. WHEW. That took a lot of hours. But, my yarns are getting more even, and I’m getting a bit faster, so I have hopes for getting through these fleeces sometime this year. (ha!) Seriously, this yarn didn’t even leave a dent in 421’s fleece. You can’t even tell. SO. MUCH. WOOL. STILL.

I’ll ply these two bobbins and we’ll see how even my spinning really was. If the resulting two-ply ends up curling up on itself after its soak in hot water, then I’ve not quite nailed it. But if it’s nice and smooth, then I’ll have very workable yarn!

And look! I’ve had another visitor!

This is the third time I’ve seen a fox in the back yard in the last couple of months. I kind of hope they stick around, though I have noticed a distinct lack of chipmunks, squirrels, and, dare I say, mice, so the food sources might be getting a little thin. The Barred owls have stuck around – I’ve heard them hooting in the woods behind my neighbour’s house, so there might be some competition for the foxes. Well, in any case, I consider myself lucky: up until this year, I’d only seen a fox once in my life, and he or she was running away into the woods at top speed as I was driving past. Maybe this spring I’ll be lucky enough to see kits. Here’s hoping!