1. Today’s new word is affineur. As you might guess, it’s French, and refers to the person in charge of affinage, or the refining and ripening of cheese.

2. Speaking of cheese, the Hawaii Island Goat Dairy on the Big Island is looking for interns: They’ll give you room and board and you’ll give them two to three months of bottle-feeding kids, feeding goats, farm work, and making cheese.

3. And speaking of farms, yesterday I received the color card (like a fabric swatch book, but with yarn) that I had ordered from a merino sheep ranch in Montana. Now, usually natural fiber yarn has either no smell or a faint-but-not-unpleasant animal smell. I don’t want to sound like I go around smelling cats, but it’s comparable to the smell of a cat: clean and fresh but furry. But the Montanta yarn on the color card, even in two-inch sample lengths, smelled like cold springtime air and flowers. Seriously. I don’t know what they’re putting on their sheep up there, but I want to go visit and see/smell for myself.