Keeping busy

 I've been doodling around with this year's Xmas cards.  I actually tried to start them in October, so I'd have the choice of putting them into the mail early. We are having rotating Postal Strikes right now, which could end up being another full fledged strike by December.    It's  really odd because it's hardly noticeable because we get so little letter mail anyway these days.  There are ads and flyers but those go into the recycling bin generally before we even look at them.   It also feels odd because I used to be a prolific letter writer with several penpals.  I enjoyed that a lot.

I've decided that I should probably invest in some better water colour paper.   My current paper was all I could find locally and it was fine for several years.  This year however, I'm finding out its limitations and issues.   One technique I was trying really didn't work well and it was a paper issue more than a me issue!   I remembered I had a few sheets of handmade paper that I'd gotten at a paper making class at an SCA event a couple of years ago.   I hadn't used it because I wasn't sure my skills were up to using handmade paper.   The year after I'd made the paper, the instructor did a demo on how to size it with gelatine, so paints and ink wouldn't soak in.  So this evening, I mixed up a batch of gelatine and painted it on the paper.   I seem to remember the person demonstrating this using fairly longish strokes.  I had to use gentle, short strokes on the paper.   I did up 3 sheets and have it sitting between felt sheets.   If I had something heavy to sit on it, I'd weight it, but there is nothing handy right now, so my fingers are crossed and hoping for the best.  Some instructions suggested it could be 2 or 3 days before the sized paper is ready to use!  

I broke down and bought new shoes the other day.   Shopping for clothes is not one of my favourite things, but sometimes needs must.  Anyway, I do like them, but managed to leave them on the floor, nicely out of the way.  I woke up to the little obnoxious cat of my husband's biting at them.   I rescued them and wiped off the cat spit.  I woke up quickly enough that there wasn't much of kitty tooth marks on them, so that is good.   Still not my favourite way to wake up when Kevin the cat is getting into trouble making activities. 

I've almost got the small raised bed cleaned out.   I went at it today because they are calling for snow in a few days. I got enough done that it will be easier to deal with in the spring.  Now just to grab 5 cloves of garlic and finish off the row that I had decided I didn't need to finish.   Hindsight being what it is, I can't believe I made that decision.  That half row won't be used for anything else, so if I don't pop the garlic in, it will be wasted space.  That would give me just under 50 heads of garlic for next year if the crop is successful.

The last bit of autumnal colour.  Taken before we had a storm with much more wind than rain.   The leaves were flying around  making for an interesting visual.   I'm so really not ready for winter to come waltzing in early as they've forecast, or not. Either way, I'd be happy with a late winter.   The long range winter forecast says an early and harsh start to the winter in this area, and then possibly a slightly milder end to the winter, with high risk of freezing rain possibilities.  Somehow that doesn't seem much better to me.  Being on the edge of the snowball means we sometimes get hammered with snow. :(

A cold and frosty morning and new chooks!

It wasn't quite 8 am when I had to head out the other day.  This was the view from my driveway.   The sun was just rising and there was frost on the grass and all the fields.    It was very pretty but just a tad cold out side.   I still had my coat in the car from the springtime, as I sometimes just toss on a sweater or hoodie when I'm running about to the shops.  I keep spare mittens, a toque and a jacket in the car just in case there is car trouble during the in between seasons.  This summer though, I just tossed the jacket in the back instead of bringing it inside, so it was where I left it instead of where I needed it that morning, rather than inside so I could wear it!

My hubby has been bragging about how nice his seat and steering wheel warmers on on his new car.  I sent him this photo of my steering wheel warmer.  Interestingly enough, the mitten photo was taken just seconds after this one, having backed out, parked in the driveway and pulled out my phone.  The sunrise had already faded due to the rising sun.   

 Yes, that is frost on the edge of the windshield.  I had to scrape the windows, which wasn't fun.   I may have had mittens and a toque in the car, but I had moved my ice scraper into the garage in the spring and had to run into the garage to try to find it.   I couldn't find it quickly though, so I had to run inside and grab the tiny hand ice scraper that I used to process flax and sometimes nettle (although a dull butter knife works best for nettle).  We went out today and bought me a brand new snow bush/ice scraper tool since the old one has gone walk about!  It will certainly get a lot of use one way or the other this winter.

We didn't want any new chooks this year.   Honestly, we have 5 older girls and they still lay enough eggs to keep us well stocked and allow a few for co-workers.  Not as many as we used to have, but more than enough for us.   However,  I was chatting at the feed store and we were discussing how they had a chook delivery just a couple of days earlier and a few people hadn't replied to their phone messages, for their chooks, but still wanted them.  They were able to arrange a delivery of ready to lay hens the next day and not only the red sex link layers, but they had a few leg horns available.  I ordered 2 leg horns.  They lay white eggs.   When I do Pysanky (Ukranian Easter Eggs), I have to spend a lot of time and aggravation looking for large white eggs, without date stamps on them.  One year I ended up finding duck eggs.   They were mixed colours, blue, green and white, but they were telling me that their spring duck eggs come from young ducks and that's why they were still small.   Hopefully these girls will thrive and I'll have my own decent white eggs for this spring.   They're already laying little tiny pullet eggs which look so small against the giant brown eggs.

More inkle, a garden treat and some seasonal colour

 

I started a new pick up pattern.   Actually, I started one before this, but cut it off the loom.  I'd used 2/8 cotton for the background and 4/8 for the pattern threads.  It was pink and burgundy and looked very pretty in the 11 thread pattern. However, with the fineness of the threads and the dull daylight hours we've been having, it became way too fussy for me.  There were too many mistakes, and way too much unweaving.   Eventually I cut it off and re-threaded in something that is easier to see.

This is a 7 thread pattern, so easier to begin with.  However the blue and white pattern area gives a lot of contrast and when I'm weaving at night, it's much easier.   The pattern turned out to be a 6 step repeat either forwards or backwards, making it even more fun once I realised that.  It was pretty easy to memorize.

The big issue is that I didn't double my pattern threads.  It's fine and looks okay.  There isn't quite the full coverage nor the slightly raised texture.  This is a flat band.   My recommendation is to not try to warp your inkle loom while watching the Blue Jays come back to even the playoff  series.  I did a bit of unweaving last night too from not paying quite enough attention to my weaving.

The poor chooks have been inside for the past few days due to my being busy.  It's just safer to leave them protected, despite them being not quite so happy. about it.  Soon enough we'll have snow and they'll not want to go out anyway, so as long as the weather is nice enough, I let them free range.    This morning, I let them out and as I was walking by the tomato plant which I'd not yet pulled from its planter,  I saw a flash of yellow.  There were 4 ripe yellow tomatoes, of which 2 were just slightly soft, so I gave them to the chooks for a treat.   The other 2 I brought in, plus 2 of several remaining green tomatoes, which will hopefully ripen inside.  There were another 4 or 5 green ones, but they were just so very tiny.  This was a nice surprise.

I made blueberry jam at Westfield yesterday.  I wish I'd taken a photo though, but I didn't.  I brought my own, very dry wood to start up the stove, which worked a treat.  It hardly smoked at all.  Often, because this year's wood has been green and unseasoned, we've had huge smoke issues when starting up the stove.   It was very windy, but weirdly warm and then we had a lot of rain.  While the stove was burning hot enough to boil, the jam wasn't boiling as the breeze was cooling down the jam from the top of the pot.   In the end though, it turns out that even if the jam just barely boiled, if you cook it long enough it still reduces down, the pectin sets and you get jam despite everything.   I'd popped in a batch of scones into the oven before I started the jam, so we had something to test the jam with.

The drive yesterday was so pretty.   This past week the leaves, really started to change colours.   Lot of oranges around here with some patches of red.  Along my route yesterday, the area has tons of red maple and red oaks, which were all in their full blazing glory.  The colours were spectacular.  On the way home though, because there was still a bit of drizzle and because of the rains, the colours were enhanced.  It was truly a glorious sight.    This little leaf met when I got out of my car at home.

The photo below is what I saw hanging over my usual Westfield parking spot.   It wasn't noticeable when the tree was fully leafed out!   Luckily I'd never noticed the wasps at all this summer, nor in the fall.  Yesterday they were still quiet, so all was good.  I didn't move my car either.  Just left it there because I figured if they hadn't bothered me all summer, they weren't likely to do so yesterday either.

More Inkle Weaving

 I've done a little bit of pickup pattern weaving on the Inkle Loom, but using Monk's Belt threading.  I found it pretty straightforward and fairly easy.  It was a tad tedious though, because it was much slower than regular inkle weaving.  It made a lovely pattern though.  I'd never tried Baltic  (also called Norwegian and I've seen it as Lithuanian) weaving.  It's also a block weave, although a bit different set up.   I'd found written instructions somewhat confusing and unclear.  I ended up watching a few videos, some of which were of limited help, one which seems like it was just wrong, and then a couple were clear in both instructions and in photography.   It was  a light bulb moment.  

 I dressed up the loom in a simple pick up pattern.  After a few mistakes and some fiddling, I ended up just weaving a simple part of the pattern to get my hands understanding what they had to do.  Then poof, it was good.  That being said, I have learned to unweave quite a lot, because if you miss a pickup row, everything goes to pot.  It is slower than just plain weave, but some of the results are well worth the efforts.

This is the simple part of the pattern.  It practically weaves itself for the centre part of the pattern.  You can see my fiddling about to see how the threads come up and down at the very bottom of the photo.  

 The main thing is that in this "pick up" weaving, you both pick up and drop the pattern threads.   The background threads remain the same, to be the actually weaving and stabilising aspect of the bands.  As the pattern colours get picked up, they show on top of the background.   When you drop them, it does leave a gap, that is filled in by the weft thread.   It makes a sort of basket weave or half basket weave and when using the same weft colour as the background, you can't see it at all. 

  You can't beat too hard or parts of the pattern will be squished and uneven.   

The pattern threads should be thicker than the background threads.  In this example, I used 4/8 cotton.  I used a single strand of blue for the background and weft and a double strands of natural for the pattern threads.   

This is the complete pattern.  The nice thing about Baltic pickup is that the back of the tape is just as pretty as the front.

Cookies and my Pepper Harvest

Westfield's theme last weekend was Cookies.  Apparently many other historical villages bake cookies as demo items, because they are pretty easy and appealing.  However it turns out that most of the  Westfield historic cooks cook other things far more often.   This opened up having a village wide theme  of cookies.  It was planned that we'd all make different cookies.   I made hard gingerbread.  Shrewsbury cakes, jumbles, rock cookies and thumbprints were being made throughout the village.   It was a tasty day for sure.  I handed out so many little gingerbread men to visitors that there were only a few left for the staff!

Back at home, I've been working on the garden.  The weather has been perfect, warm enough to not need a jacket, but cool enough to make for easy working.   I've cleaned out the raised bed that had been dedicated to green beans this year.   Then I harvested peppers.  It was a very good year for peppers this year!   I planted sweet banana peppers, jalapeno peppers and some kind of chilli pepper, that I'm pretty sure was mislabeled.   All the plants were very productive and had huge crops of fruit.   The jalapeños were small in size though, and all the hazy skies and clouds reduced the actual sunshine hours which for parts of my garden area, was an issue for actual ripening of the fruit.

I spent the morning threading each of those little hot peppers onto sewing thread to hang them to dry.  I'm not sure why I didn't anticipate how long that would actually take, but I actually turned on the tv and watched 1.5 episodes of Vera while I dutifully threaded the peppers individually onto the thread.  They're hanging in the kitchen now.   I'm packaging some peppers for my kids when we get together on the weekend.  It seems appropriate to share my garden bounty on our Thanksgiving.  

Tomorrow I'm going to harvest the last of the herbs.   I have some chives, parsley and a huge amount of leaf celery or soup celery.  I priced out dehydrators today but right now they are out of my price range, so I'll have to air dry the herbs.    

My son brought in the lemon tree yesterday.  It's so weird that we've still had lovely weather this late into the autumn.   While there hasn't been any frost warnings yet, the low temperatures for the next 3 days are supposed to hover just barely above freezing, which means at the very least patchy frost.  Getting the rest of the garden harvested before then just means less work of covering all the plants at night to protect them.     

Just a quick ramble

 There have been combines and harvesters about the area in the past few days.   On one day, all the surrounding bean fields had been harvested.   With the size of the combines, the beans were off the fields really quickly.  the neighbour across the road has been harvesting some of his cord for silage.   It's interesting watching him because every once in a while he starts harvesting a new area and his tractor and harvester just suddenly and unexpectedly pop up in a new area of the field.  

We've not had rain for ages.  Everything is dry.   Hubby ran the lawn tractor yesterday, just to get a few weedy patches and a dense grassy area over a leach bed.  It didn't really have to be done, but better that then giving any mice and other rodents an easy way to get into the house in the fall.  

I've been prepping for giving a presentation on Inkle Looms for the guild.   Somehow I thought that it was next week, but it's the week after so I have a ton more prep time.  I've samples of different patterns but some of the bits that were left from other projects are missing.  I think that maybe I tossed them out, thinking that I'd not have a use for partial lengths.   It's either that or I put them in a safe place thinking I'd know where that would be a couple of years later!   It's probably the safe place and I will find them after the presentation !  I'll bring my ukulele to show the wider strap I wove but I'd been hoping to have the sample of the banjo strap too.  I'm not hauling it to the meeting, nor removing the strap for a short program.

I do have samples of several techniques though, including monk's belt, some plain inkle patterns and even a bit of a narrow band of tablet weaving, all of which can be done on an inkle loom.  I was hoping to get a sample of Baltic or Latvian pickup as well, but this weekend turned out to be crazy busy.   We tried to go to the local garlic festival, but the line up to get in was really, really long and it was really, really hot outside by 11 am.  Neither of us wanted to wait out in the sun for that long, to get in.  We went to the market instead and I picked up really nice cauliflower for a very good price.   Hindsight being what it is, I should have bought more and frozen it.  However, it would have had to wait until next week for me to have time to put it up, so I left it there.  But really, I could have gotten it done on Tuesday, since I don't have to do the demo then.   I picked up cat food, and it was a pet event.  I got tons of cat food samples to use as treats, some treats, toys, supplements and even a nice new silicon cat food tin lid, in a kitty swag bag!   There were two adorable orange kittens at the pet rescue display.  I refused to go and pet them because I was I figured I'd bring at least one of them home.   I'd like another cat, but maybe not so much a kitten, but a little bit of an older kitty needing a home.  Not too old, but a couple of years old.

It's cookie day at Westfield tomorrow.   I'm making Hard Gingerbread from The Cooks Not Mad.  I used the 1841 version, but it's the same as the 1831 version.   It's a highly spiced, very delicious gingerbread which everyone who has tried it has liked it.

• 1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup butter, softened 
• 1 cup fancy molasses
• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tbsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp each baking soda, allspice, cinnamon and nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp cloves
• 1/4 tsp salt
Instructions:
Grease baking sheets or line with parchement paper. Preheat oven to 350° F.
Combine butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in molasses until well blended.
Combine dry ingredients and stir into molasses/butter mixture being careful to not over work the
dough.
At this point you can refrigerate the dough divided into to discs for about 30 minutes to help make it
easier to work. You can roll it up into logs, wrap in plastic wrap and then foil to freeze for future use
or just roll it out and cut lovely little cookies.
Roll about 1/4 inch on floured surface, or cut logs into 1/4 inch slices.
Bake 8-12 minutes until done. Let cool for 2 or 3 minutes on the baking sheet and then transfer to wire
cooling racks.
( I sometimes don't bother with the cloves or the salt – it works nicely that way too.) Spice can be
adjusted to taste, but the joy of these is that they are highly spiced and very flavourful

The Local Fall Fair

 The very hot and dry weather this summer has made for a difficult growing season for my garden, since I'm using both deep raised beds and large planter pots.   It was difficult to keep them properly watered.  Sometimes they needed watering twice a day, but watering in the evenings usually causes mildew and other difficult to control diseases.   The only plants which seemed to thrive in these conditions were the basil, leaf celery and the peppers!   I was at a club meeting and asked for suggestions to use up some of these peppers as I wasn't thrilled with the pickled pepper recipe I used last year.   The gal on the fair committee said to enter them in the fair as they were a bit low on entries this year.   

So I entered the peppers, and a few other things.  The banana peppers which were rapidly turning red rather than yellow, took 1st place and the mystery hot peppers which weren't supposed to be hot, came second.  I was really pleasantly surprised at getting a ribbon for my meagre gardening results this year.

I also dug through the items I'd made over the past year or so and entered a few things in the hand craft division.  I certainly wasn't expecting to see this 1st place ribbon and a rosette for most points when I peeked in to the exhibit hall when I arrived to demo weaving on the first day of the fair.    

I may have entered more things than I realised.   Not everything won a ribbon.   A few things got the nice little thanks for entering sticker.   I entered 2 shawls from historic patterns, in 2 different sections.  The one section judge wrote lovely comments on the back of the entry tag saying it was  warm and congrats on finding and using an old pattern which was still a good pattern. The little stuffed bear also got a comment on how it was creative and child safe since I used safety eyes on it.

Most of these items are things that I just knit up in the evenings because I hate when the tv goes on and I have nothing productive to do with my hands!

a few items are missing due to lack of space

I was doing a demo on the Saturday with the Weavers and Spinners.   The fair was super busy and the two gals who were demonstrating table looms, spent the entire 5 hours teaching kids and adults alike, how to throw a shuttle, change sheds and use the beater bar.   It was totally awesome.  I usually bring my spinning wheel, but didn't this time, because sometimes people spend so much time talking to me about spinning and telling me their memories of relative spinning that they don't check out the weavers quite so much.   Next year, if we're invited back, I'll bring the wheel out to play.  I kind of missed that this year, but I'm happy I simply had a my little inkle loom because the other two demonstrators got so much attention.  It was great.  On Sunday I took my display of Dorset Buttons.  It was much quieter that day, so I had time to catch up with another demonstrator which I don't see very often.

The local fair is interesting because they've done away with a mid-way.  They've geared it to younger kids, with pony rides, games, bouncy things but kept it relatable for most others in the community by keeping the horse shows, the sheep show, the 4-H classes, the handcraft division, crops competition and live music the whole weekend.  I did demos both days and it was a great, albeit tiring weekend!