of sheep and paper

I've had a box of wool sitting in my home office now for at least 3 months, and I finally got around to dying about half of it last week:

Not that I spin, although I've tried my hand at it. Practice makes perfect, I know, but in the meantime, I'm a bit frustrated at how chunky and not-so-neat it turns out in the meantime. But the dying part of it is fun. And, of course, I keep forgetting to wear plastic gloves while I dye, so for the weekend I had purple fingers. Very gross, but I didn't mind.

I've also succumbed to collecting stamps again. Not for myself, but for others. I've an uncle who collects used stamps, although I'm not sure he does still any more. But, my MIL's brother does, and since she's going to Ireland next month to visit him, I thought I'd invest the next month or so to collect what I can for her, to give him. So far I've got stamps from the U.S. and Hong Kong. When I received my package of noro kureyon a while back, that envelope had Hong Kong stamps on it which I already gave her to send over, and she seemed very pleased with them. So, why not collect a few more? I figured that ones from Hong Kong may be harder to come across for her brother, so it'd be neat to have those to add to his collection.