I forgot totally about the fact that I also finished up 4 hats.  These are double toques, which are meant for the very cold weather.   One is small and will go into the gift bin.   One my husband claimed immediately and 2 others I kept for myself.  I wet finished and blocked them both.  The grey one took a weird turn when I got it wet and swished it slightly to even up the knitting.  It stretched out.  I tossed the two, and a shawl I knit over the summer into the washer for a few minutes.  The hand spun blue and white hat was perfect after a few minutes.  The grey shawl was perfect but the grey hat, knit with the leftovers from the grey shawl, was fulled up and required much stretching while pinning.  Totally odd.

However, here is why I dislike blocking knits in the cold weather.

Really kitties, my wet, blocked hats are not there to be convenient resting spots, despite them being set up close to the fire.

Finishing up some woolly projects

 I've been working on Christmas knitting and finishing up cranked socks.   I'm not sure what I was thinking about sizing though, because some of them are way off of what sizes my calculations suggested.   This is mainly for the socks, but I still have time to crank more if necessary.

I always knit myself  a pair of mittens or more, depending on time.  I like to leave a pair in the house to use in the barn, a pair for wearing to town, and a pair for in the car.   This allows me to misplace or lose a pair, or to wear the wrong pair in or out, and be easily able to keep my hands warm regardless.   So this fall, I couldn't find any of last year's mittens!  Since I hadn't lost a pair although one mitt had a tiny hole in it, I'd no idea where I'd stashed them in the spring.   

I knit up the black pair, which fit nicely, but were the most difficult thing I've knitted in a while, due to the colour.  I started on the grey mitts, using the same brand of yarn, the same calculations, and the same needles.  Despite the stitch counts being the same, the tension must be slightly different, because they are just a tad too big.  However, by this time, I'd found the mitts from last year, so I'm good to go.  The black and grey mitts may go as presents this year because they should fit my daughter and daughter-in-law.

The little shorty socks have been waiting to be finished since the summer.  My daughter gave the the yarn  for my birthday since she thought it was "my colours".  It's not really, but I do like the combination.   They are colours that my daughter would have adored in combination as a child.  (The socks still need to be blocks, so ignore the curling cuff)

These socks are all cranked on my Legare 400.   The vivid orange socks were cranked at a Westfield demo.  They have a cute little picot stitch hem, because it was a bit slow when I was starting off, so I had the time to try something new.   One of the blue pair is for my son-in-law, hopefully.  They should fit, but I'd adjusted the tension a bit, and while it's easier to knit now, without worrying as much about dropping stitches, the final tension, once the socks  have no weight is a little tighter.  I hadn't accounted for that, so they measure off at a size 10 mens, instead of a size 11.  It shouldn't matter as there is a lot of stretch.   Two pair should fit me, at least the red and black.  I made those for me though, so hopefully I got the count right by then.   One pair which was supposed to be a size 7, is a ladies size 5 and I think that one might just be too small for the intended recipient.  I'll hopefully find the time to redo some of them and figure out what to do with the rest of the ones which I sized wrong.   They're all finished up, so I can't rip them out and redo them now.

In all, 2 pair of mitts, 6 pair of socks and 1 pair of shortie socks finally finished, isn't too bad for a couple of weeks downtime playing.

Happy snow scene experiments!

Plus I painted a new landscape, to try out a new idea.  Husband asked why I was painting more Christmas cards, since because of the postal strike, I haven't even been able to mail out this years cards.  However, it was just playing with wet water colour paint and salt.   Very cool effect when used in the right situation.  This made me happy to just play around, and I loved the results.   Lots of drying time needed between steps though.  

It was nice to do a wintery scene without the stormy skies.   We've had non-stop snow squall warnings for the past week, with freaky amounts of wind.   Happily, we've been on the far side of all the squalls, so have missed the major snow accumulation.   My son says that the town he works in has almost half a meter, and a nearby city had dramatically more than that.  North and a little east of here got totally dumped on, so I'm not complaining.  Just the winds and drifting snow makes for unhappy driving and I've been home, tending the wood stove all week!

Treasure Hunting Success

 Yesterday I woke up to everything covered with snow.  Not a lot of snow, but just enough to make it known that Mother Nature was 1 up on the weather forecasters.  It was enough that we had to scrape it off our cars and windshields though.   Today, I headed into a nearby town to go to the thrift store there.   There were off lake snow squalls, but they looked light enough, so I didn't worry.   It wasn't bad to start with.  About half way there, the roads started getting wet and slushy.  Then there were blown over and drifted areas on the roads, in areas with few trees or hedge rows by the sides of the road.   The snow got heavier  and then poof, I turned onto the highway, and it was suddenly sunny.   All the rest of the way there was lovely.   I got out of the store with my few treasures, and the snow was coming down heavily, with more than a little wind.  It got worse on the highway.  Thankfully it was a short drive to my turn off.   The next turn I needed to take, I thought I might miss because there was near zero visibility.  It eased off just before I needed to turn.   The roads were snow covered and sloppy.  Then halfway home, the roads dried up, the snow stopped and it was sunny.   What a weird weather day!

I did get a few treasures though.  I was sent out to get whatever "junk" I wanted.  I disagreed with that description, but none the less, I continued.   These are treasures for sure!  The melon mould is almost a replacement for the damaged one I lost.   It's longer than the one I really liked.  This one has a small dent in it, but it was $1.50.   I can live with the dent for that price.   The cup and saucer was $4, which was a reasonable price for it.  The little lustreware pickle dish though, was $1.   I couldn't leave it there for that price!  It's a weird purple, though it shows up as blue in the photo.  It's simply labelled Japan.  I don't know how old it is, but it's pretty and the price was a bargain.

I also found this old canning jar.  I've been looking for one of these for quite a while but they are always out of my price range.   I've seen them in the $30 to $65 range and I've only seen 2, maybe 3 over the years.   This one was sitting on the shelf, waiting for me and priced at a grand total of $3! 

 In all, I spent $17.50, which included $8 for an older apple peeler.   I have a modern one, but the suction clamp is broken and the slicing blade rusted and became dangerous.   Now it only peels and you have to hold it down.  The new to me one, has a screw clamp for the table and all the parts are clean and not rusty.  It's quite heavy too, compared to the modern one, despite the modern one being metal.   I'll have to get some apples to see if it works.  It's pretty though, and I love the red colour!

There were a few other things I would have liked to get, like a set of old ceramic mixing bowls, some enamel pots and even an old Foley type food mill.   However I didn't really have space for any of those items, except maybe the food mill, which I have been looking for, mainly to strain seedy berries for jam.  However, it was a bit wobbly and had some black discolouration, so I left it there for the moment.

A Sunday hike

 

trail beside the river

We went for a walk yesterday.  It was relatively mild, although breezy and grey out.   The temperature topped out at 9C or 10 C, but the breeze made it feel a bit cooler.  We bundled up and went for a lovely walk in an area where there is a lake, a river, and it feels like you're walking from one type of terrain to another.   The trail meandered along a river, through some fir forest, up through an aspen and poplar grove, up through an open field and then through a large stand of cedars before we ended up near the start of the trail.  We traversed a small piece of preserved railroad track, by the 2nd lookout point for the lake, not the one I usually take pictures from, and saw a lot of browns, with occasional splashes of colour.  

This is the side view from the lake.  Usually I take photos from the right, where the shore line curves around and the lake ends, or begins I guess.   There used to be a lovely picnic table here and we used to pack a lunch and eat looking over this view.  It was lovely.  Then they moved the table.   It's now in the middle of the V where the trail breaks off into 2 different routes.   Nobody eats there lunch there because there is no privacy from all the people and all the dogs.   They did replace it with a very large, long metal girder or beam.   If you don't mind sitting on the metal, hot in the summer and cold the rest of the time, then you can still sit and view the lake.   It's not quite as easy to share a lunch there now though.

There was this single vine of bittersweet, with red, almost fuchsia husks, with the little orange berries.  It was almost the only bright colour outside of some very limey greens from very young pine trees.    

All of this scenery would have still been stunning if we had blue sky, but we really get a lot of pale, grey and almost white skies during the late autumn and the winter.  A few years back, one horribly grey January, it was recorded that we got a whole 14 hours of sunshine in the month.  

Gah, we have another wasp in the house.   There is some type of wasp that is wintering over in our stacked winter wood.   It's larger than a yellow jacket and at least it's fairly calm.  We're getting several a week, maybe every other day or so.  It's both frustrating and irritating.  As a bonus, this weird, unseasonably mild spell, has brought houseflies back inside.   There should definitely be no flies and wasps in November!

A new weaving project.

I warped up the rigid heddle loom.   I purchased some Sugarbush Drizzle, a mohair/silk yarn which is really thin a couple of years ago.  I bought 2 different colourways and since I had no idea how much I'd need, I bought 4 or 5 skeins of each colour.   It was $3 a skein, so it wasn't a huge outlay to be prepared.   I wove up a purple scarf which was lovely.  It wove up quickly and easily.   I ended up giving it away as a gift.   Two nights ago, I had finished the novel I was reading and didn't have a new one chosen yet.   So I dug up the second colour way of the Drizzle and warped up the loom.  This yarn is perfect for the rigid heddle loom.   I'm using the 7.5 ends per inch reed and the yarn, although very fuzzy, works up well at this sett.   It wasn't quite as easy to start weaving with as I remember the purple being, although time does tend to soften some of the memories.   Once I got into a rhythm, it's working up quite quickly.   The colour way is called Sailor's Sunset, and it really is a lovely combination.

The first photo doesn't show the colour variations very well or at all really.   It's also a photo I should have colour corrected because there is virtually no pink in the yarn at all.   

I did make a stupid mistake, totally my doing.  I forgot to attach a tape measure when I started weaving.  I usually pin one into the centre of the item I'm weaving to try for a fairly accurate idea of the length that I've woven.  I didn't notice this until after I'd advanced the weaving more than a couple of times.   I could unroll the weaving from the front beam, but my experience is that it doesn't always re-roll up with the same nice even tension.   I'm going to guesstimate its length and it might end up being a long scarf!

The corn is being harvested.  It's been dry for ages now, partially because we had such a dry end of the summer.   I found a partial cob in the yard, perhaps missed and thrown by the harvester, or dragged out of their field by a persistent raccoon.   It's a good yellow colour and really hard.  I thought the squirrels would have gotten it, or the chooks, but it's was just sitting there.   Then what interested me, is that the neighbour baled up all the corn stalks.  I'd never seen that done before.   I had to look it up to see why it's done.  Apparently it's used as feed.  It's fairly low in protein though and some of the websites considered it a very low quality fodder, that is usually only fed to cattle in desperation.  However, other websites said that if it's slightly damp, it will start fermenting.  This would make it more like silage, so maybe increase the nutrients a bit.   When I was a 4-H leader, we had a great trip to a dairy farm and good silage smell very much like fermenting beer!  I guess at least the cows would be happy.

Fall colours, the loss of the same, and run up to Xmas

 Ahhhh Blogger, you've updated several times recently and things are now harder to use and my original settings have been changed, hidden or apparently are no longer applicable. Something to keep me on my toes I guess.

We went for a walk on a local trail.   It's one with a nice boardwalk beside the river.   I suggested we take this one because soon our weather will change.  The cold, wet and snow will make the boardwalk slippery and difficult to traverse.   We no longer take this trail in the winter because it's just not fun.  Winter walks on the trails can be a little bit harder, but not so much fun when you're also dealing with ice patches or long lengths of snow covered rutted ice, which is what that boardwalk becomes.

However, in the nice weather, this trail is interesting.  All the Ash trees have been cut and left lying around, so that it looks in places like something out of a bad Sci-Fi movie.   The trail runs right beside a train track and an industrial area, so there is sometimes a non-nature like soundtrack to accompany the walk.   Today though, it was the light creating interesting reflections on the river which caught my attention.   They were very clear, as the water was oddly still.

The trail was pretty despite the many downed logs.  I noticed that there were some new ones which weren't Ash trees, and there were some still standing which should be cut down as they were obviously going to be a falling risk soon.   Mostly the woods have young trees.   There isn't a lot of undergrowth in places, so the visuals of looking through the forest is interesting.  The undergrowth usually obscures this.  

It was lovely tromping through the fallen leaves.   This was just before the windstorm which meant the landscape went from lovely fall colours, to stark, empty trees in one afternoon.  Waking up the next morning to virtually no leaves left on the trees was interesting.  It was like we had an autumn colour season which went from green, to full colour, to bare trees in just over a week.   I didn't even get a lot of photos of the fall foliage just because the timing was so quick.

There is always an exception though.   This maple always colours last, and always holds its leaves.  It's just starting to drop its leaves and the colour is still turning.   It's really lovely this year as it's changed from the usually all yellow leaves, to yellow, orange and red.    I have a loom looking out the window at it, and it's always lovely to weave in the autumn with that view in sight.

I've been working on this year's Xmas cards. I've found if I don't start by the beginning of November, they become a bit rushed and stressed.  I'd trialed several ideas.  I watched a bunch of online tutorials for new techniques and ended up just painting something simple.  I like them well enough, although my brain tells me that they still need something.   I'm not sure it does though.   Only had 2 mishaps, one where the tape stuck and ripped a bit of the painting and the other when I was mucking around with the sky ideas and I ended up with one which was too dark for my liking. 

  I tried the remove background feature and it did, relatively well, although it did dump some black spots on the one card, which aren't there in real life.  Also, I haven't figured out how to not have the original save as the edit.  On my old computer, I could just save the edited photo as a different name, but this one applies everything to the original.  This works really well for when I'm writing things up as but I'll still need to figure out the photograph part of things.   

I did figure it out but I like the photo with the messy background better.  I painted 15 landscapes for Xmas cards, all similar but not quite the same, just to keep things interesting for me.

October Colour

 

I had to leave the house at 7:50 am.  The sun was just rising.  I had to stop in the driveway to take this photo as the light and colours were spectacular.   While the mornings are late in coming, I'm really not looking forward to the time change.  I'm on the side of keeping one time zone and not switching back and forth.   Switching seems to cause more issues than not.

This was the view across the road two nights ago.  The light was perfect.  The leaf colour change this year have been odd to say the least.  We've been stuck in a no colour zone for ages.  There have been a few trees changing colour but mainly lots of dull green leaves.  Then a couple of days ago when I was locking up the chooks, the trees were still mainly green in our yard.  The next morning though, it was like every one of them had coloured overnight.  So amazing and beautiful, but definitely odd.

The one zucchini plant left was hit by powdery mildew a while ago.  It survived, albeit damaged with greying leaves.  However I went to pull it out the other day and not only is the plant still flowering, but there were 5 zucchini still growing.  One was starting to get too big, but these 4 are still perfect.   I'd though there were only a few leeks left, but this was a lovely surprise.

I saw this stump full of shelf fungi by a woodpile.   While the trees are finally coloured and the leaves are falling astoundingly quickly, there is still a lot of green in the grass and weeds.     This made a nice contrast.

Soon the world around will be white.  The skies will be grey, or watery, pale blue.  We'll get limited sunlight hours, so I'm enjoying the sun and colours while we still get them.