only 5 more sleeps to go

After an unplanned 2 day hiatus from spinning and knitting , caused [ as my nearest and dearest and FB friends already know ] by an argument with a serrated bread knife ] I'm back - slowly and carefully - spinning along with the TDF.
I'd normally have to characterise the cut as completely inconsequential, piffling, barely worth a couple of bandaids, except that - due purely to placement - it clearly did have a consequence this time ... no spinning or knitting for enough days that I was in serious danger of slipping into a decline.
Luckily I was well supplied with plenty of mags and books, TrueBlood and Dr Who DVDs and a whole menagerie of small, warm, furry, bodies, all eager to share my unexpectedly vacant lap in front of a roaring fire
and
the finger has now mostly healed [ except where I keep knocking it open again ]
so
while knitting may have to wait a while longer, today has seen:

a plethora of plying [ which for the uninitiated, means taking the two full bobbins, and sending them on another journey with the wheel spinning backwards, so that they twist around each other into 'proper' yarn ]

followed by a slew of skeining,

a welter of washing and whacking,

and the resultant 442 metres of sacred alpaca

is currently warming its backside by the fire

and if you're puzzling over how any of the above relates to the post title, puzzle no longer:
Australian Wool & Sheep Show
Bendigo,
this coming Friday [ and Saturday and Sunday ]

and to give you the teeniest sense of what that means
here's a couple that I prepared earlier