An Interesting Evening

Yesterday was busy.   In the morning we had a Weavers guild dye day.  We used acid dyes to paint warps and skeins.   It was fun and busy.   I'd thought more people had signed up, so made a bit too much dye.  Luckily it will last several months made up, so hopefully it won't go to waste.   

, in the evening we had tickets to see Romeo and Juliet at Stratford Festival.   I hadn't realised it was a 3 hour production though, so we had a very late night.  The show was fine.  It's early in the season so maybe a little rough on the edges yet.   It was enjoyable with excellent performances by Juliet, Romeo, the Friar and Nurse.   I'm pretty much done for tragedies for a while though.

The best part that we went early so we could find a parking spot along the river.   Parking was $25, but riverside parking was only a few meters away farther and was free!  Who doesn't like free!  There is a nice paved walkway beside the river and took advantage of that.

We had a lovely wander along the river because we had time to kill.  We'd thought we'd see the swans, but instead there were geese, a few ducks and a lone blue heron.  Weirdly, the heron was quite accustomed to people and  let me get quite close for photos in a couple of different places.   The final shot, when he took off in flight, was because someone decided to see what I was doing and tromped noisily down towards the shore, startling the bird.  Still it was an experience that I don't imagine I'll get to experience again.

A much needed update

 Along with crazy busy for the SCA event FOOL, Fruits of our Labours, that I've helped run for 16 years, my old computer decided to get crankier than normal.  After trying to work out its issues, I got it back up and running a bit.  Now though, thanks to a son who handed me a new computer for Mother's Day, I'm moving all my files over, and having to learn a new suite of apps, which work differently on this one.

The lilacs had just started blooming before the Victoria Day weekend and sadly, due to a huge amount of rain and then some ridiculously warm days, when I got home on Monday, they had turned brown and sad.  I missed them completely.    I was drinking my tea outside on Tuesday though, and I got to watch two baby birds fledging.  The parent birds were nearby and kept showing them what to do.  The one chick tried to go back into the nest, but the parent stopped them from entering.  Then suddenly they both took off.  I've been watching them on and off all week and they keep practicing short runs.   It took them the better part of the week.  I didn't see them yesterday so maybe they've moved on.

We spent a morning last weekend cleaning and seasoning cast iron at Westfield.   A lot of the cookware

was in desperate need of cleaning.  It had been sitting all winter and had been in use all last summer.   We scrubbed the inside and outside with steel wool.   Then we rinsed it well and set it on the huge gas stove to dry over the burner pilot lights.   Then we applied a thin layer of oil or shortening and they were baked in the oven to season.  That took over an hour, so while that was happening we went to 3 of the houses with cookstoves and learning how to apply blacking.  The blacking is a liquid with metal particles suspended, which when rubbed on and then heated, hardens on the stove top.  This protects the metal and makes it look less worn.  

It's raining again.  There are 16 bags of triple mix, 3 bags of manure and a bale of straw waiting for me to finish up the third raised bed.  We've put a thick layer of sticks, small limbs and other wood stuff from our scrap pile in the bottom.  Then a layer of composting straw was put on top of that and it was mixed with some older manure from the chicken pen.   We didn't have any green stuff, grass clippings etc, so this will have to do.   Now I need to layer on the triple mix to top it off.   The straw will go to mulch the tops of the beds once they are planted. I need to also top up the planters because they need a bit of new soil or compost each year and as well, the chooks have been having fun digging through them and they aren't very neat.

My garden is going in late this year.   Usually it's mainly in by now, but with the weather and the new bed, it's delayed, not only because of the new bed, but because instead of getting some of my seeds locally, I had my daughter pick up some specialty seeds from a seed nursery closer to her.  I'm trying the self pollinating zucchini and cucumbers this year, as well as a new variety of green beens which is supposed to have a longer season.  My son in law has grown some extra grape tomato plants and a couple of unique slicing styles.  I'm only planting Roma tomatoes.  I couldn't find Amish plum tomatoes, so I ended up with a generic Roma tomato with a short season.  Hopefully these will ripen up earlier than last year's tomatoes.

While I missed the lilacs, the poppies are strong this year and looking lovely.

Nothing on the loom except some mug rugs from a warping demo.   A couple of pairs of summer socks knitted on the CSM, and a shawl, almost finished from hand spun yarn.   Photos to come!

Crazy busy times post

I've been trying to sit down at the computer and post an update. Between other computer things taking up my time, some weird updates at the most inopportune times,  crazy amount of meetings and events, it didn't happen.  I had it all figured out. It was some sort of poetic drivel about the early spring greening up, with the trees showing a green haze.   It's actually amazing to see, with the green just showing on the trees, especially in the neighbour's bush lot.   The colours are so bright and fresh!  However, we have baby leaves now, and it doesn't seem quite so appropriate.   Instead....

This is a Mock Angel Food cake from a cookery book dated 1914.   It looks great!   It tasted exactly like an Angel Food cake but only used 2 eggs.  I deemed it a failure in the end though, despite the taste and the look.   The texture was off.  It was almost sticky and wet.  I tasted it and couldn't eat it.  My men folk didn't like it.  In the end I tried to feed it to the chooks, but they weren't impressed either and left half my offering untouched.    I'm not posting the recipe since I don't think it would be worth really trying.

There's been some rumour of the Trilliums being out early this year.  We went for a walk looking for them.  I found a single red trillium in bloom and only 2 very tiny clumps of trillium leaves with no blooms.  Still, it was a nice walk. The weather was fresh and cool, but there was some sunshine which made a difference.  The folks who look after that trail had been in and took down most of the dead ash trees, so it was looking a bit apocalyptic in places.  The trail was clean and easy to walk though and with the early spring, it was very pretty.

 The hyacinths are looking a little bedraggled this year.   We've had a wild mixture of weather this spring with so much rain, wind, frosts, snow and even a few days of sunshine.   The hyacinths came up looking  a little worse for wear.  It's not been a still enough day to enjoy their scent but I've been able to sit out with my tea, and a book or my banjo and soak in the good weather.   The nice thing about having no neighbours is that I can practice the banjo outside and nobody complains at all!

I made a thing!  It's a Circular Sock Machine novelty item which has been going around the csm community the past couple of weeks.  It's a Yip Yip, like the Muppet aliens from so long ago.  It was definitely fun to make, although a bit fussy.  I wish I had some solid coloured yarn for the inside of the mouth and lining, which would give a bit more contrast and a better look, but this was from scraps.