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bothered to teach me, but my best guess is that it might work like making paper, and that at least I've seen someone do.
    I thought about it this morning, while collecting more wool and chasing sheep.  The sheep, the ewes at least, aren't as aggressive as I thought, though they're skittish as anything.  I targeted the middle-sized ones, that don't seem quite fully grown, but aren't being babysat by their mums (and don't have much horn!).  My paper scissors aren't nearly as effective as shears, but I can get nice big hunks by sitting on the sheep's back and chopping away.  All morning collecting wool, and now I have a massive pile of the stuff and am working my way through boiling it while trying to make a mould for the felt.
    I'm using the road for the base, a section of large squares where none of the stones have been displaced.  Smaller stones and a log gave me an outline of a big rectangle, and I'll lay out a nice even layer of wet wool and then squish and mush it as flat as I can and let it dry.
    I don't know if they use any glues when making felt.  Probably, knowing my luck.  Just pressing the wool together won't be enough – I need to make it stick together.  I may have to do a whole bunch of different attempts, adding different things to the mix, but the first time around I'm going to try without additives.  Just lots of water, and heat.  I figure boiling all the clean wool again, for a really long time, and stirring it up, might make it break down and go gluey and more like paper pulp.  Or not.  I'm just guessing, but I have plenty of wool to experiment with, and am going to go find some more big bowls to boil it in.  My own lakeshore factory. 
    I'm so looking forward to sleeping on soft wool tonight.
    Tuesday, December 4
    The Pre-Industrial Mountain
    Today I made another, better broom to sweep out the rest of Fort Cass.  It's so stupidly hard to make tools without other tools.  Try putting together a broom without large amounts of industrial glue, a nicely finished handle, the straw or whatever it is that they make bristles out of, a drill, a saw, nails, a hammer.  Everything I do involves a monumental pile of preliminary tasks, and the simplest thing takes so much time.
    The scale of it all got a little much for me this morning, mostly because one of the bowls I was using decided life was too hard and fell to pieces, nearly putting out all the fires and sending me ducking away before I was scalded beyond recognition.  I about died of fright, then had an epic tanty and stomped off.
    Till now I'd steered clear of doing more than hauling water out of the lake and washing at the edge.  This place could be this planet's equivalent of Loch Ness, after all, and I'm not keen on monsters.  Even in Australia, it's best not to jump into water unless a local has told you whether there's crocs or stingers or sharks.  Since I don't have any locals, I've been watching the wildlife, waiting for a fin to surface or a massive toothy maw to snatch up animals which stray too close.  So far I've seen lots of waterbirds bobbing about happily enough, and occasionally fish flipping in the air.
    So I went swimming.  The water's cold, but since the day was hot and I've been hunched over pots of boiling water, this was a good thing.  In a proper story, when the heroine goes swimming naked the very handsome prince turns up to try not to watch.  Complete failure on the handsome prince part, but lying back in the water staring at a sunny blue sky, I could pretend I was anywhere.  Just Cass, on an extended lakeside holiday.
    My school uniform has seen better days.  Grubby, worn, with little holes burned in the skirt from all my fire experiments.  The jacket's a bit better, since I only wear that at night.  Probably I should make more of it just nightwear. 
    Nutbars
    This diary is my volleyball.  I didn't get shipwrecked, and I don't have a face painted on it, but it's what I talk to.  Did Tom Hanks talk to the