Busy or Not Busy - that was the question

Depending on how I look back at the past week and a half, it's been both busy and not busy.   We had this crazy wind storm for 3 days.   To the south of us, they also had crazy snow, but we had only flurries.  However, the wind was ridiculously strong and the day I had to go into town, I think it was trying to blow all the cute little cars away (hopefully to someplace warm and sunny!)   The stormy days were good ones to be reading!  Days spent reading definitely feel not busy, even if I'm running around doing chores and stuff in between chapters.

I helped teach a class on weaving rag rugs.   It was hit or miss if we were going to have the class at first, but almost everyone made it in, despite the weather.   It was fun, and all participants finished their projects.    We had a teenager weaving who produced a lovely rug.  When I talked to her, it turned out that she weaves on a regular basis, on a jacquard loom no less!   We were lucky with the warps though.  We had wound on what should have been enough for 2 projects, but the first class was allowed to weave whatever amount they wanted and no-one thought to see how much would be leftover.    It was just barely enough but since it wasn't my class to organize, it didn't even occur to me when I had to step in to help out.   Next time though, I will suggest they either actually measure each person's project or put on extra warp length for security.   They all chose lovely colours and ended up with really nice looking mats.

The next two days were spent at Westfield for the March Break Maple Syrup days program.  The Wednesday was brutally cold and windy.   I was in the Lockhart log cabin, which used to be one of my favourite buildings, but it's a bit of a barn in terms of size - it's a huge log cabin, and it doesn't warm up.   There were two of us, standing right in front of the blazing hearth and we could still see our breath.  It quickly changed my feelings for working that building.   It was too cold to be enjoyable.   I had brought the fixings for a vegetable soup for lunch and I put a pork roast and veggies in a dutch oven to bring home for dinner.   The soup was delicious but because I'd used the same veggies for both, it meant a lot of carrots, potatoes and pumpkin to eat for that day.

I cut a pair of jeans into 1/2 inch strips and wove off another sample of the log cabin project warp. When I did the math, I calculated the whole project, including the normal amount of loom waste, despite the fact I was tying it on to the old warp.  The magic number was 3.3 yards and I rounded up to 4 yards, to make for easier winding.   Now I'm wondering why I did that, because I've got 3 samples woven and it looks like between 1/3 and 1/2 of the warp still left to weave off... ARGH!   I'm ready for a new project but not quite so ready to cut it off.

I've bottled 4 gallons of cider - 1 of apple cider, which was really tasty and 3 gallons of apple/cherry cider.  My auto siphon decided to have issues and at one point I was spraying cider and Star San everywhere.  The rest of the time though, it just sucked air in through a loose hose and I didn't have enough experience to figure it out while I was bottling.   A hose clamp will fix the issue until I can replace the plastic tubing. The other issue I have with the auto siphon is actually height related and there is not much I can do about that.   Tonight I'm bottling 5 gallons of an Irish Red Ale.  I'm waiting until later so that he with longer arms can prime the auto siphon for me.    I really think know I need a bottling bucket.  They work so much easier for short arms.    I don't think I'll do 5 gallon batches too often though.  Do you know how many bottles that is? 

Bettina - the reason you didn't see the error was because I hadn't actually posted the photo of the rug with the glaring mistake.  But here it is in all it's glory.  I love the feel of this rug and the look, just wondering how I could actually miss that mistake!

I'm still spinning white cotton.   I think I'm going to have to dye up some funky roving or something, just to have a bit of a colour break for spinning.