Garden update and CSM trouble

 We've had 2 lovely summer days which were cool enough at night for good sleeping, and not hot, humid nor windy during the day.   It's been such a nice change from those crazy warm days.   It's been so hot that some days, it was too warm to fuss with weeding the garden.  While I normally water the garden beds mid afternoon, so the plants have time to dry properly to minimise the risk of powdery mildew, blight or other diseases, there was one evening I actually watered the garden beds because it had been so hot I didn't think the plants would survive the night without water.    We've had a bit of rain in between, so mostly I haven't had to water a lot this summer.   

Due to the blight issues last summer, I only planted a single tomato plant this year.   I'll hunt around at the market or see if there are local farmers selling their extras when I want to put them up.   Not my favourite way, but it gives the garden a break this year.   So the single tomato plant I chose was a sweet 100, a cherry tomato type that I plant for both use in salads and for just eating out of hand when I'm working in the garden.  While all the plants in that tray had little plant stakes declaring that they were all indeed Sweet 100, this one obviously was mislabelled.   These are not cherry tomatoes!  Nor do I have any idea what variety I might have here.  It's fruiting already though, so that's nice.

I planted more pepper plants than I usually do.   There wasn't a lot of variety choice this year, unless I wanted to spend half a day hunting through different garden centres.  The large one at the grocery store had minimal choices and they weren't looking all that happy.   I usually just go to the feed store up the road and get whatever they have unless it's something special that I really want.  So this year I planted Hungarian hot peppers, Jalapeños and one plant without a tag, in a tray with several different varieties.  I planted no sweet peppers because they are easy to find locally during the summer.

I have baby cucumbers too, from some old seed I found in a packet from a year or two ago.   It's some fancy variety I think, but since I couldn't find any cucumber seeds at the shop, I thought that it was worth the trial.  I had 4 seeds and 3 plants grew.    I also did zucchini that way, from seed in a packet that I seemed to have ripped off the variety.   I had 2 seeds and lucky me, I have two plants, one already flowering.     I planted onion sets but they need weeding desperately but I've held off due to the number of mosquitoes in the cooler evenings.

I took apart my CSM (Circular Sock Machine) to clean it.  It took several hours getting the cylinder clean due to yarn fuzz.   Then I put it together wrong and had to put a call into my mentor to send her videos of what it was doing, which she diagnosed over the phone, told me how to fix it.   It took me 5 minutes to fix, since I just put something in the right place, but the wrong location, if that makes sense.   Anyway, everything on this machine, a Legare 400, needs to be set up at 6 o'clock to be in the correct location - crank hand, yarn carrier and making sure the ribber stop is also correctly places.   So I'm going to see how it works by making my daughter hiking socks for her birthday.   She liked the shorties I make for myself for the summer, but wants them just a little bit higher to fit in her hiking boots.

I can't believe I forgot to post!

I've been spinning an awful lot the past few weeks.  I have spun about 1300 yards according to counting yardage on my niddy noddy.  It's not totally accurate because it doesn't account for the stretch that is difficult to eliminate while winding the yarn on the niddy noddy.   I finally dragged out my jumbo flyer to get larger skeins.  The downside to that is that the bobbins are double the size, or almost, and it takes a lot longer to fill them.   I do like the larger skeins though.  Anything in order to have less ends to weave in!  I still need to wet finish all these.

I've made a few pumpkins for Westfield's pumpkin day.  I don't think it's called pumpkin day anymore, but it's autumnal, we cook with pumpkins and the whole village is decorated with pumpkins and has pumpkin crafts and activities.   Some of these pumpkins are knit on the sock machine, and others are hand knit.   I have a small cylinder on the sock machine right now, and had been knitting with a fairly tight gauge, so the machine knits socks are fairly small.  Usually I've used a 72 needle cylinder with a looser gauge so the machine knit pumpkins are much larger.   The hand knit ones are colourful using yarn I purchased from a guild silent auction or had leftover from another project.

We took a walk by the Thames river while waiting for a play to start.  We got there early to get free parking, but there was a soccer game, so parking was in short supply. We ended up having to park at the end of the parking area.   It was a perfect evening though, so walking wasn't a problem.   Walking back from the theatre though was interesting because of course everyone else who had parked there was leaving too.  The lack of sidewalks on the parking side of the road meant you either walked on the road, or the grass.   We chose the grass, because neither of us were wearing light coloured clothing and didn't want to risk not being seen in the dark.   We could have crossed the road to the other side, where there was a sidewalk, but didn't think of it until we got to the car.

I poorly planned our theatre trips this year, mainly due to seat sales and not thinking about it properly, so 3 shows are crammed into 5 weeks, and 1 saw one in May with my daughter.  We're seeing Dirty Rotten Scoundrels later this summer.

  Sense and Sensibility was well done, fun and fluffy.  It was enjoyable.  They stuck to the story quite nicely and the characters were believable.  

  Anne of Green Gables made me wish we'd gotten tickets to the show in Charlottetown last summer.   It was really well done, but the ending bothered me a bit because they modernised it and moved it to central Canada. I still got teary when Mathew died though.  I know it was part of the Children's programming, but I'm a traditionalist when it comes to Anne of Green Gables.  

 The last one we saw was MacBeth - yes, the one with motorcycles -  When I mention it to anyone, that's what they say,  Oh the one with motorcycles? Yes, MacBeth was moved to modern times, with e-bikes decked out to look like motorcycles, a grungy motel and a modern motorcycle club.  The not traditional setting worked really well.  The performance was good but also very nicely enhanced by fabulous stage settings and dressings, incredible special effects both visual and audio.   

With careful planning and watching the Stratford Festival website and social feeds, there are enough really good ticket sales to make it an affordable outing.   I was really a bit dismayed though by the partially filled theatres.   I've no idea how many there were for the Anne show, because we were near the front and I didn't look backwards, but MacBeth had a lot of visibly empty seats, and I bet Sense and Sensibility was less than half full.   That was sad.  I hope attendance picks up because all the shows were worth seeing, despite the late 8 pm starts which gets us home closer to midnight.   If you are only going to see one, I highly recommend That Scottish Play, with Sense and Sensibility coming in a fun and fluffy second place recommendation. 

  

 

Wild Flower Bounty

 On a short hike today, there were lots of wild flowers.   This particular trail looks different in every season, and different with whatever trail or paths you follow. The terrain goes from field, to woodland, to wetlands to lake side, with softwoods, cedar, pines and some deciduous areas as well.   The fields on both sides of the trail were full of wild poppies.  They were so pretty and the little dots of red, with the white clover and purple alfalfa.   There were pops of bright green spurge as well.

Canada Anemone was blooming all along one of the riverside trails.  It was so very pretty.

The Fleabane has started flowering there, well before anywhere else that I've seen this year.  I don't think that fleabane actually deters fleas.  It sometimes takes over a bit in places in my garden, but it's pretty, so I don't mind too much.

I think this is some sort of Coreopsis, but I don't think it's a wild flower.  However there used to be a pollinator garden plant display, so I wonder if some of these flowers have been seeded from that garden.  There are a couple that seem more like garden plants that wild flowers.

Like this Dianthus, or Sweet William, which I think must have been seeded from the old pollinator garden, or someone sprinkled some wild flower seeds, or other flower seeds in some areas last fall.   

Ox eye daisies were blooming on some of the sides of the trails in sunny areas.   I remember making daisy chains as a kid and braiding them into my horses mane and forelock.  He was a very patient pony! The walk today was so much fun with all the flowers.  I'm sure hubby was a bit frustrated at times because I stopped an awful lot to take photos.  It was so lovely to see the pops of colour along the trails.

This is one tiny part of one of the fields of wild poppies.  The spurge is a bright green, in behind the poppies.   It seems like something I should try to paint, with all the greens and pops of reds.   

Fleece Prep Steps

I've been working with the Dorset/Friesian fleece that I was given. It's not a super long staple length,  or super soft, but it is long enough mostly just over 3 inches  and soft enough to make it fun to work with and really nice to spin.   The first step to processing a fleece is washing.   I've taken to doing a cold water soak to remove and loosen the dirt before washing with soap, degreaser and hot water to remove the remaining dirt and the lanolin.   It's worked beautifully in getting the fleece very clean, using fewer hot water washes and rinses. This is the cold water soak I started earlier today.   It's amazing how quickly the dirt starts to soak off.  The water is really, dirty now.   I'll drain it and wash it tomorrow.  After an overnight soak, it should be good to go.  I don't want to leave it too long or it will start fermenting.   This is good, if it's not in your laundry tub, in the back room of your house

I set up my laundry rack on the deck.   I have a roll of fibre glass window screening that I spread over the top bars and spread the fleece out to dry on top of it.   If it's breezy, I put another piece of screening over top of it and peg it down with some clothes pegs to keep the fleece from blowing away.   A bit of breeze will help it dry quickly, as does using a salad spinner, laundry spinner or even just putting the fleece in a mesh bag and whizzing it around quickly in a circle to extract the extra moisture.   It was nice enough out that this dried in a few hours.  I did check it part way through and pulled the few damp spots left, to expose them to sunshine and air.   It was all dried well before supper time.  This was good as I needed to have it for the spinning gathering the next day.  

  

The fleece does have a bit of vegetable matter, mostly bits of hay that are fairly easy to remove.   The worst VM that I've experienced was either in some Shetland fleeces, from barn kept sheep which was overwhelming to pick out, or the Jacob fleece I was given that had huge bugs in it,  Keds I think, and they were dead but oh, that was so unexpected and awful to deal with.  I gave the fleece back!

Anyway, much of the VM falls out while carding or pulling the locks apart before carding.  The rest mainly falls out or can be picked out while spinning.  The few bits that remain, are just part of the process.    

I've been mainly hand carding the fleece.  Although it's a little hard on the hands due to repetition and arthritis, it is still a lovely preparation.   I've put a bit through a drum carder too, which is faster, but a bit different to spin.   The skein is my sample and the bobbin is my next try at a slightly thicker yarn.

Short forward draw, not counting really, but 1 treadle per about a 1 1/2 inch draft.

This is my second sample.  I did two full bobbins and plied them together.  It's a slightly thicker grist that my first sample and will work for a sweater.   I'd planned on dyeing it after spinning as I don't know what colour I want yet.  Then today I started second guessing myself, thinking that I should have dyed it in the fleece and carded it together for a more even colour.  I'm almost finished another bobbin though, and have the remains of the second one as well,  so do I knit a patterned sweater?  Maybe a simple fair isle type design?   Or do I keep going as I've started.  

  Regardless, it's fun doing. a big project like this with a fleece this nice.   I got a bit distracted and a bit burnt out from the Master Spinner class, spending 6 years spinning to class requirement.  I've heard this is an issue with a lot of people who do that course.   However, having people to spin with again has re-ignited my passion for spinning, which I'm so happy for.    Now to find a knitting pattern for my new sweater.

A Crazy few weeks, but still things get done.

 What odd and icky weather we've had.   Sunday we had frost warnings and apparently there was a frost delay on the local golf courses.   It's been cool, so cool that we've had to run the wood stove until the very end of May, which has never happened before.   Today though, was lovely and I got to hang laundry, dry fleece and spend a lot of time outside, without a toque, mitts and sweater.

The garden is half planted.  The beds aren't warm enough yet to plant the beans and I'll need to get a few more onion sets as a raccoon got a few the first night I planted them.  I've now got towers of tomato cages protecting freshly planted seeds and seedlings.   I've a couple of pots left to clean out and have a few more bags of composted manure to spread.  The cool weather though, means that everything else I'd like to plant is delayed anyway, so I'm not really behind.

Today I saw this pretty butterfly that I identified as an Eastern Swallowtail. It was gathering nectar from a late flowering lilac bush, a Persian Lilac.   Its scent is different from a true lilac, but it always flowers.  Since it flowers after the true lilacs, it nicely extends the season, which is good for extra colour in the garden.

I've started washing Dorset/Friesian cross fleece that A gave me.  The first batch was done my usual way, which was 3 washes and 3 rinses.  It works well and the dirt and lanolin was all gone.  Today, I soaked the fleece in water for a couple of hours before washing it.  I was going to  soak it 24 hours, but then A called up asking if I was available for a spinning day tomorrow.  To make sure I had enough fleece to spin, I drained it, washed it twice and rinsed twice.   Instead of using my salad spinner to spin out the water, I whizzed the laundry bag of fleece around outside.  I was amazed at how quick and effective this was.   I laid the fleece out on the deck,  between sheets of screening on a laundry rack.  It dried in just a few hours.  I've now run a few bats through a drum carder to use tomorrow!

It's really dark black, not grey.

I made a hat for a Christmas present for my daughter.   It's black.  I was going to make black mittens to go with it, but have decided that I really don't like knitting with black yarn that much.  It was commercial dyed black and the stitches were so difficult to see.  I think I started it 8 times before I bought a new, very short needle to make it work.  I'm very happy with how it turned out though.  I over exposed the photo so that the pattern could be seen, because it looked solid black otherwise.

The grey and black sock yarn scarf is off the loom and needs to have the fringes twisted and to be wet finished.   I'm not going to pass judgment on it yet, as I think wet finishing will remove the spinning oils and could end up with a different feeling project.

The SCA A&S event on the May long weekend was a success despite a bit of rain and some very cool weather.   It took me almost a week to unwind from it, which is mainly because I picked up a couple of good novels,  an Ann Cleeves mystery and a hilarious sort of romance by R.J. Blain.   I do enjoy a few days just to read.    

Dyeing and Spinning

 My friend A gave me some white roving to go with the pink she'd given me a while back.  She'd dyed some Dorset/Friesian fleece a lovely dark pink and processed it with her awesome Brother electric carder.  I sort of claimed it when she was showing me because it was really a perfect colour.   I'd spun it up and brought the full bobbin to show off at a spinning day.   She asked what I was going to do with it and I'd said I was going to find some grey to go with it and then hopefully have enough for a hat and mittens.  I think 200g should do that.  It's worsted weight though.  Anyway, she grabbed another 100g of the same fleece and gave it to me, offering me some grey dye as well.

In January the rug hookers have a silent auction and I purchased a bag of old, some really old Cushing's dyes and a book of dye recipes specifically for rug hooking.   I also have a a set of base primary colours of weak acid dyes and of fibre reactive dyes, so I figured I had enough to get a decent grey.   In the Cushing's dyes there was a packet of "silver grey", so I decided to try it and see if it worked.   

I was a little worried at first because first, dyeing roving, beautifully airy, ready to spin roving can be difficult to get it evenly dyed without any compacting or felting, and second, I'd never used any Cushing dyes before so when the dye mixed up a purple-ish colour, I wrestled with my decision.   However, I was brave and gently dribbled the dye mixture around the edges of the roving and gently lifted the roving and tilted the pan a bit to get the dye dispersed.  I was worried that I'd start felting or breaking the wet roving if I removed it from the pan.

I did a good job though.  While some of the air from the roving was definitely removed, so it's not as light and fluffy as it was, there has been no felting.  It came out of the pot with a hint of pinkish grey, by the time it dried it was a lovely grey.  

It's spinning up very nicely.   I've had no areas which were compacted and no felting, so I'm incredibly happy with both the colour and the good dyeing that I did.   I very rarely dye roving unless it's superwash, since you can't do much wrong with that in terms of felting.

The grey colour is maybe a tad uneven, but not so much that it's horribly noticeable.  Also, not really knowing how much dye I needed for 100G, since I didn't actually find the details to do the math until after everything was in the pot and simmering away made colour depth a little bit of a guessing game.  I was maybe trying for a slightly lighter grey but it's a really nice grey all the same and I'm very happy with the whole process

The grey goes so well with the pink.   As I'm plying the pink with the grey to get a marled yarn, (barber pole striping), it has a similar depth of shade so it's not overpowering and noticeable.   When this is knit up, I suspect that it will be more of a tweedy look or maybe even more of just a slightly subdued pink.  I'm really happy with the results and am looking for suitable patterns for that hat and mitten set.

A good start to May

We've had a very slow time easing into spring.  We've had snow storms, ice storms, wind, rain and cool weather.  We're even still loading up the wood stoves because the evenings are cool or uncomfortably damp.  However, that doesn't seem to stop Mother Nature from keeping things from happening.    There is a green haze on most of the trees.  We have baby leaves!   The oak trees and a few other very late  leafing deciduous trees aren't quite there yet, but they never are this early.   Some of the flowering trees are in bloom.   We always have leaves on most of the trees by Mother's Day, and despite people's worries about the trees leafing out late this year, it's happening just like it should.

I got my little tray of watercolour paints out and played around with some new techniques to make non-wintery scenes.   I've played with flowers, winter scenes obviously because I paint my Xmas cards, and have started experimenting with summery scenes.   These 2 worked out well enough that I'm happy with them, but I'll practice some more. While I've seen a few sunsets like this one, with pale colours, many of ours tend to be a bit more dramatic with deep oranges and purples.  Sunrises though, often have pale pinks and lilacs, if you catch the right time.  They are fast and the colours don't last all that long.   I decided to send out a few birthday cards though, so I figured I should practice about bit for summer cards.

I've been spinning up some of the leftover bits and pieces from my "stash" of leftovers from over the years.   This is some green ramie.  I had purchased 1/2 lb of it, and spun up maybe 3/4 of it and left the rest.    I remember it being quite slippery and an effort to spin.   Obviously my skills have developed because instead, it's just effortlessly sliding off my fingers into lovely, fine singles.    I should have divided it into two equalise pieces of roving before I started though, so I could have spun two bobbins for plying.  Instead I'm going to have to much around with either guessing or plying from a centre pull ball.   While that is how I first learned to ply, I've found over the years, that you have to be very careful when plying fine yarns from centre pull balls, so that they don't collapse in on themselves and tangle before you finish plying.  It's been fun to spin though, because I don't seem to have to really think a lot about it while spinning.  It means I can chat or "egads" watch the hockey game at the same time.

This is my friend A's dog Teddy.   While he's getting older and a bit greyer, with thinning fur, he still blends remarkably with the rug.  He's exactly the same colour as the rug and in the right light, and angle, the parts of him that are his original colour really could be the rug.   He's a sweety and a very cuddly dog with his kids.   Today though was funny as he was sleeping when I arrived for spinning day and he didn't notice for about a 1/2 hour.  Then of course, as the good watch dog he is, he made sure to let everyone know that I was visiting.. too funny.