One of those weeks...

 Gooseberries and a few black currants are topped and tailed.  I've popped them in the freezer for now.   I didn't weigh them yet.   However, I'm fairly certain that with what I have from last year, combined with this haul, there will be enough for a batch of gooseberry jam.  

There are more berries on the bush and I might get around to getting them.   I pick the berries just before they are ripe.   The first couple of years here I waited until they were ready to pick and they were eaten before I could get to them.  It seemed like there was a full bush one afternoon and by the next morning the bush was fully stripped of berries.    So vexing!

This year I've left the red currants for the birds.  I got the first harvest of the white currants, but today I realized that the birds had eaten the rest of them.  So much for that.  The black currants are just ripening.   There are raspberries beginning to turn red.  The blackberries flowered a bit early and some of them already have fruit, albeit very green fruit yet.  There should be blueberries in a week or two.   If I get around to picking them, the wild black raspberries may give a good harvest too as there are a lot of volunteer brambles this year.

My sweeties truck spent a bit of time in the shop getting fixed.   Then my car needed a routine

servicing.   I didn't want to wait at the dealership while it was getting an oil change.  They do manage to fit simple tasks like an oil change in, but I've waited 2 hours for it to get done and really didn't want to risk that happening.   As well, they are a bit laissez-faire about sanitizing.  The iffy mask wearing and the wiping down of things with a few squirts of cleaner on a dirty rag icked me out. So I had my sweetie pick me up and while I waited, we went for a walk along the river.   It was so nice.  The weather was perfect.  There was enough breeze to keep the mosquitos away too. 

 I'm switching the servicing of my car to my sweeties mechanic, as the rather rude call after I got home, demanding that I fill out a survey and give them the score they wanted, before I knew the questions that would be asked, really turned me off.   

The dishwasher died.   It's been faultless for over 10 years but the electronics have gone screwy.   Sadly, we don't think it's worth fixing.   I've discovered it's a joyless task looking for new appliances.   Half of them have delivery dates for the fall.  A bunch more just aren't in stock, with no timeline as to when they'll be back in stock.     I can't seem to get curbside pick up set up.  Nope, I don't want you to install it for some stupidly outrageous price when I have people who can do that living here.  Argh.   I want to just stash my dishes, press a button and come back later when they're clean.   I don't want to wait until September or October to be able to do this!

The the clothes washer started making weird squealing noises.    It's never ending...

 

Just playing around with colour

I found a ziplock baggie with 89g of white merino stashed away.   It wasn't in a place where I expected it to be.   I pulled out the slow cooker which never got hot enough to actually finish cooking whatever food was in it, and put in a couple of inches of water, and a few glugs of white vinegar.  I put the merino roving in to the slow cooker to soak for a bit, then turned it on and added some red and yellow dye.

I'm happy to say that while I never actually was able to finish cooking a meal in this slow cooker as it never seemed to get hot enough, it did an admirable job with dyeing.   I did keep a check on it now and again, but I was pretty much worry free.   After a few hours in the pot and the dye was exhausted, I turned off the crock pot and let it cool down overnight.   The next morning I pulled out this lovely flame coloured roving.    Yay for colour!

Then in the same box, of odds and ends, I found a bag of purple and pink mill ends which I'd dyed a while ago.  I didn't feel like dragging out the drum carder, so I just pre-drafted the bits that I could and hand carded the rest.  

Once I'd finished spinning the second bobbin of cotton, and plying the two for 318 yards of white 2 ply  cotton,  I started spinning the purple/pink.   I'm on the second bobbin so will hopefully get to start plying soon.   There isn't a lot of it but it's pretty and after spinning all sorts of white fibres over the past few months, it has been a joy to play with colour.

Playing with colour and paints.   The top row is trying out a new set of watercolours in pans.  The bottom row of cards is using the old gouache paints I've had for ages.  So much fun!

Spinning

This is 298 yards of 2 ply merino.   It's lace weight and I haven't yet spun enough of it to use it for any real project.  Maybe a scarf could be made from this, but I really, really don't like knitting scarves.  I'd want much more yardage in order to weave scarves.  If I'm going to dress the loom for a scarf, I'd better have enough supplies for 2, 3 or better yet, 4 scarves.  Same amount of work to dress the loom,  for more woven items!   

It's super soft, bouncy and I've no idea what to use it for.    

I was a bit tired of spinning fine white yarn though, so I dug through some of the bits and pieces looking for some dyed wool.   I found absolutely nothing in the way of dyed wool roving in my stash.   How did I let that happen?   Next I thought that I'd spin some flax. Spinning flax and cotton are both fibres I need to practice periodically.   Since I spin neither of these fibres as much as I do wool, I like to keep my spinning muscle memory active.  I can always tell when it's been too long as it takes me a few yards to get warmed up and spinning them comfortably.

I had this idea to spin some flax.  I set up my wheel for flax spinning.  I filled my lovely little pottery flax water pot and hung it on the wheel.   Then I routed through my stash for some flax, but instead grabbed a bag of Egyptian cotton sliver.   Why I changed my mind, I don't know.   It's not like I don't like spinning cotton.  I love it.  It's a fairly fast spinning fibre, using a point of contact long draw.   I spin it relatively well.  What I don't really love is this particular cotton sliver.  It's white.  It's commercially prepared, so while it's relatively long staple, about 1 1/4 inch, it's super slick and slippery.   It takes a bit more effort to get it to spin nicely than the coloured cotton rovings which are processed with a bit of crimp left in, making them easy to spin.

I started off spinning this years ago, by making punis from sliver, to give it that little bit of tension which made it easier to spin.   A puni is a very tight, small rolag.   You roll the fibre off the handcarders, using a thin dowel as a puni core to get the cotton fibres rolled tightly.    Then you slide the dowel out and the puni is ready to spin.     It's been a while  since I've spun this particular cotton sliver, so I'd totally forgotten that I needed to make punis.   After spinning a few yards though, I realized that I didn't actually have to make punis and I was spinning it just fine.   I guess practice does make perfect.

I emptied 3 bobbins with flax singles on them.   It took a while, which was why I'd kept putting this
chore off.  It's done and they are stashed with the rest of my spun flax/linen yarn, for a future project.  I also dug through the bin and noticed that I'd been tossing in the bags of flax fibre.  I'd thought I was out of flax, but nope, I have some left.  I'd just hidden it.

Yes, the flax is pretty much the same colour as the weathered board.   Maybe a little browner, but washed out because at the particular moment I snapped the shutter, the sun came out!

 

Finished the Socks!

 A while back, before the latest Covid lock down, my daughter gave me 7 balls of sock yarn, suggesting that we trade.  She'd give me the yarn and I'd give her back socks.   I don't think I'd have made this trade with anyone else, but since she's my daughter, I didn't mind.

It had been several years since I'd knit socks, so I had to relearn the steps.  It wasn't difficult, but I did have to restart several socks, a couple of times because I'd forgotten how the yarns worked.   Kroy is a sturdy and easy to knit yarn, but it's not as fine as most sock yarns, and I needed to change my stitches and gauge.

The bright unicorn fart yarn wasn't in the original back of yarns.   Instead there was a bright red yarn, but it was wool, rayon and nylon.   I didn't really like the rayon aspect, so I switched it out for the stripey yarn.  At first, I was going to make them for me, but the more I thought about the rayon sock yarn, the more I said nope...just not happening.   So my daughter got the fun striped socks.

I also used this project to experiment with different heels.   I did the German Short Row heel.  Ick.  It didn't fit me at all when I tried it on.   I also had to use markers to keep track of my stitches, which became a royal pain in the butt.   My next heel type was the square heel.   That was one sweet heel to knit.  It was easy to knit, looked fine but also didn't fit me at all.   I ended up doing the round heel that I normally use on the final pair of socks.   It fit me just fine.     Nice to note though, that they all fit my daughter just fine.   

I was doing some rug hooking but having a wool rug on your lap when it's 30C outside and no AC inside, just isn't doable.   If I had a gripper strip hooking frame on a stand, or a Cheticamp style frame,  then hooking could happen.   However I use a small, plastic hoop.  It isn't big enough to be supported and ends up flopping the whole rug on my lap.   It's just too warm right now, with this unseasonably early heat wave!

I have spun and plied some lovely Merino.  It's another skein of white yarn, so I haven't yet photographed it.   I'm beginning to wish I had some dyed roving to play with, just for a change. 

 

Woad plants are happy.   Japanese Indigo is very happy.   I have Weld plants again this year which makes me happy!  Yay!