A lot of fibre projects getting finished up!

Last weekend's maple syrup production was just over 2 litres.  Not a lot, but enough for a nice taste now and again.  The partial jar was taste tested for my lunch, and then for a batch of Maple Butter Tarts that I made a few days ago.  It's very good.  Of course we haven't had a year where it was awful, so I'm not sure that the pronouncement of very good means very much.   

On a good weekend we can process up to 9, 23 litre buckets (5 gallons) of sap.  The weather on the weekend was ideal, but the temperatures bounced around.  The sap only flows when the temperatures are above freezing, so those cold days, not a single drop of sap dripped into the buckets.  We only had 5  buckets of sap so this was a fairly good result.   We have 7 buckets of sap this weekend to process, despite having 2 days of freezing weather.   We're hoping for 3 1/2 litres from this  It's a 40:1 ratio of sap to syrup.  It won't be one of our better years, but we missed the first window and the way the trees are budding, it will be a short season.  Once the trees bud, the sap loses it's sweetness and gets bitter.

I made some socks.  I didn't count in any I made for myself, like the one's I finished from the handspun yarn, which were so very soft and warm!   These are for my kids.  I need to do some finishing of the socks, kitchenering up the toes and sewing in the loose ends.   The three folded pairs on the right are ready to go.  I'm happy that I found a compromise for my daughter who has specified that she only wants black, grey or dark blue socks - boring to knit!  I found the grey and black yarn, the solid blue that I added a coloured heel and toe to make the production interesting and the blue/wine coloured yarn was found in the bottom of a bin.  It's a nice yarn and it's too bad that they don't make it anymore.   

The sparkly shawl is off the loom.  It looks striped  in the photo and in person.  However, I separated all the colours out and wove it up as a plaid or checked pattern.   I separated out the purples and the darker blues and wove them in blocks with the reddish stripe in between.   You can't tell that I went to all that work to do so.   It all just blends in seamlessly.   If I were to use a yarn like this again, even without the sparkle, I might just not separate the colours and use it in the manufactured gradient in the original sequence.  They weren't equal, so the variation would be in there.  If I could find that yarn without the sparkle, I'd  maybe try it see see the difference.    The sparkle is one of the plies of the yarn, which runs the whole of the yarn.   You couldn't really tell that from the skein.   The effect was different depending on the light.   A lot of the time it was as though there were rain drops on it or a layer of frost at other times.  Always though, the darned things sparkled!