Wild Flower Bounty

 On a short hike today, there were lots of wild flowers.   This particular trail looks different in every season, and different with whatever trail or paths you follow. The terrain goes from field, to woodland, to wetlands to lake side, with softwoods, cedar, pines and some deciduous areas as well.   The fields on both sides of the trail were full of wild poppies.  They were so pretty and the little dots of red, with the white clover and purple alfalfa.   There were pops of bright green spurge as well.

Canada Anemone was blooming all along one of the riverside trails.  It was so very pretty.

The Fleabane has started flowering there, well before anywhere else that I've seen this year.  I don't think that fleabane actually deters fleas.  It sometimes takes over a bit in places in my garden, but it's pretty, so I don't mind too much.

I think this is some sort of Coreopsis, but I don't think it's a wild flower.  However there used to be a pollinator garden plant display, so I wonder if some of these flowers have been seeded from that garden.  There are a couple that seem more like garden plants that wild flowers.

Like this Dianthus, or Sweet William, which I think must have been seeded from the old pollinator garden, or someone sprinkled some wild flower seeds, or other flower seeds in some areas last fall.   

Ox eye daisies were blooming on some of the sides of the trails in sunny areas.   I remember making daisy chains as a kid and braiding them into my horses mane and forelock.  He was a very patient pony! The walk today was so much fun with all the flowers.  I'm sure hubby was a bit frustrated at times because I stopped an awful lot to take photos.  It was so lovely to see the pops of colour along the trails.

This is one tiny part of one of the fields of wild poppies.  The spurge is a bright green, in behind the poppies.   It seems like something I should try to paint, with all the greens and pops of reds.   

Fleece Prep Steps

I've been working with the Dorset/Friesian fleece that I was given. It's not a super long staple length,  or super soft, but it is long enough mostly just over 3 inches  and soft enough to make it fun to work with and really nice to spin.   The first step to processing a fleece is washing.   I've taken to doing a cold water soak to remove and loosen the dirt before washing with soap, degreaser and hot water to remove the remaining dirt and the lanolin.   It's worked beautifully in getting the fleece very clean, using fewer hot water washes and rinses. This is the cold water soak I started earlier today.   It's amazing how quickly the dirt starts to soak off.  The water is really, dirty now.   I'll drain it and wash it tomorrow.  After an overnight soak, it should be good to go.  I don't want to leave it too long or it will start fermenting.   This is good, if it's not in your laundry tub, in the back room of your house

I set up my laundry rack on the deck.   I have a roll of fibre glass window screening that I spread over the top bars and spread the fleece out to dry on top of it.   If it's breezy, I put another piece of screening over top of it and peg it down with some clothes pegs to keep the fleece from blowing away.   A bit of breeze will help it dry quickly, as does using a salad spinner, laundry spinner or even just putting the fleece in a mesh bag and whizzing it around quickly in a circle to extract the extra moisture.   It was nice enough out that this dried in a few hours.  I did check it part way through and pulled the few damp spots left, to expose them to sunshine and air.   It was all dried well before supper time.  This was good as I needed to have it for the spinning gathering the next day.  

  

The fleece does have a bit of vegetable matter, mostly bits of hay that are fairly easy to remove.   The worst VM that I've experienced was either in some Shetland fleeces, from barn kept sheep which was overwhelming to pick out, or the Jacob fleece I was given that had huge bugs in it,  Keds I think, and they were dead but oh, that was so unexpected and awful to deal with.  I gave the fleece back!

Anyway, much of the VM falls out while carding or pulling the locks apart before carding.  The rest mainly falls out or can be picked out while spinning.  The few bits that remain, are just part of the process.    

I've been mainly hand carding the fleece.  Although it's a little hard on the hands due to repetition and arthritis, it is still a lovely preparation.   I've put a bit through a drum carder too, which is faster, but a bit different to spin.   The skein is my sample and the bobbin is my next try at a slightly thicker yarn.

Short forward draw, not counting really, but 1 treadle per about a 1 1/2 inch draft.

This is my second sample.  I did two full bobbins and plied them together.  It's a slightly thicker grist that my first sample and will work for a sweater.   I'd planned on dyeing it after spinning as I don't know what colour I want yet.  Then today I started second guessing myself, thinking that I should have dyed it in the fleece and carded it together for a more even colour.  I'm almost finished another bobbin though, and have the remains of the second one as well,  so do I knit a patterned sweater?  Maybe a simple fair isle type design?   Or do I keep going as I've started.  

  Regardless, it's fun doing. a big project like this with a fleece this nice.   I got a bit distracted and a bit burnt out from the Master Spinner class, spending 6 years spinning to class requirement.  I've heard this is an issue with a lot of people who do that course.   However, having people to spin with again has re-ignited my passion for spinning, which I'm so happy for.    Now to find a knitting pattern for my new sweater.

A Crazy few weeks, but still things get done.

 What odd and icky weather we've had.   Sunday we had frost warnings and apparently there was a frost delay on the local golf courses.   It's been cool, so cool that we've had to run the wood stove until the very end of May, which has never happened before.   Today though, was lovely and I got to hang laundry, dry fleece and spend a lot of time outside, without a toque, mitts and sweater.

The garden is half planted.  The beds aren't warm enough yet to plant the beans and I'll need to get a few more onion sets as a raccoon got a few the first night I planted them.  I've now got towers of tomato cages protecting freshly planted seeds and seedlings.   I've a couple of pots left to clean out and have a few more bags of composted manure to spread.  The cool weather though, means that everything else I'd like to plant is delayed anyway, so I'm not really behind.

Today I saw this pretty butterfly that I identified as an Eastern Swallowtail. It was gathering nectar from a late flowering lilac bush, a Persian Lilac.   Its scent is different from a true lilac, but it always flowers.  Since it flowers after the true lilacs, it nicely extends the season, which is good for extra colour in the garden.

I've started washing Dorset/Friesian cross fleece that A gave me.  The first batch was done my usual way, which was 3 washes and 3 rinses.  It works well and the dirt and lanolin was all gone.  Today, I soaked the fleece in water for a couple of hours before washing it.  I was going to  soak it 24 hours, but then A called up asking if I was available for a spinning day tomorrow.  To make sure I had enough fleece to spin, I drained it, washed it twice and rinsed twice.   Instead of using my salad spinner to spin out the water, I whizzed the laundry bag of fleece around outside.  I was amazed at how quick and effective this was.   I laid the fleece out on the deck,  between sheets of screening on a laundry rack.  It dried in just a few hours.  I've now run a few bats through a drum carder to use tomorrow!

It's really dark black, not grey.

I made a hat for a Christmas present for my daughter.   It's black.  I was going to make black mittens to go with it, but have decided that I really don't like knitting with black yarn that much.  It was commercial dyed black and the stitches were so difficult to see.  I think I started it 8 times before I bought a new, very short needle to make it work.  I'm very happy with how it turned out though.  I over exposed the photo so that the pattern could be seen, because it looked solid black otherwise.

The grey and black sock yarn scarf is off the loom and needs to have the fringes twisted and to be wet finished.   I'm not going to pass judgment on it yet, as I think wet finishing will remove the spinning oils and could end up with a different feeling project.

The SCA A&S event on the May long weekend was a success despite a bit of rain and some very cool weather.   It took me almost a week to unwind from it, which is mainly because I picked up a couple of good novels,  an Ann Cleeves mystery and a hilarious sort of romance by R.J. Blain.   I do enjoy a few days just to read.