Of Dinosaurs and freshly spun yarn

I can post this now.  It's a dinosaur made of handspun and dyed yarn.   It was a wedding shower gift for my soon to be daughter in law, who when asked what the dress code was for the wedding was to "wear whatever makes you feel awesome, even if it's a dinosaur costume".  Then she said she kind of hopes someone wears a dinosaur costume.   Since I couldn't do the dinosaur costume,  I figured I could make her a stuffy to keep the fun going.   It's a free pattern on Ravelry and was actually for a dragon.  I left the wings off.  I was going to put a little tulle veil on it, but it didn't quite work with the spines on the back.  It didn't look finished without the spines, so I left off the wedding veil.

I'll have to admit, I do like the partners my kids have chosen.  

I just finished spinning and plying up 450g of Blue Faced Leicester top.   It went pretty quickly and I need to figure out what I'm going to do with it.   It still needs to be wet finished and dyed.   It's a light Worsted/DK grist before wet finishing.   I'm guessing it will bloom a bit and be a worsted yarn when I'm done.

I have some more of the Dorset fleece which still needs to be washed.   It's supposed to be a Dorset /Friesian cross, which actually works with the Dorset, making it a bit softer and nicer to work with, although Dorset is a fairly nice mid-grade fleece to begin with.   I also have some Icelandic that I need to wash up before the May long weekend.   It's an absolutely lovely fleece. It has a great colour, a defined Tog and Thel.  And I rather dislike actually spinning Icelandic fleece.   I'm using it for a class to get rid of it.

I attended a wedding shower this weekend.  It was lovely.  It was held in an old building, now a distillery, with old stone walls, wooded floor and a few antiques scattered around.  The atmosphere was great.  There were treats, a few activities but no actual games.  One activity was making bouquets (the wedding theme is wild flowers).  There were bunches of flowers and greenery, and little bags with tiny vases in them.   Most people made lovely bouquets, trimming the flowers to fit.   However, because there was no water for those vases to make transporting easier, I made a scraggly bouquet and just sort of put the flowers willy nilly in the vase.   When I got home, I trimmed them up nicely and popped them into the now water filled vase.  They are pretty now and now looking wildly over grown.    

The garlic is coming up in the garden nicely.   Some of it is about 8 inches tall already.   Garlic is an early sprouting plant to begin with.  Having been planted in a raised bed may help because the soil often seems to warm up a bit earlier.  As well we've had crazy amounts of rain so maybe all the conditions have aligned.   It did snow yesterday, crazy heavy flurries on and off.  I had to scrape ice off my car this morning too!  Which I find an unhappy task at any time during the winter, but more so in April!

 

How Does Your Garden Grow?

We've had a run of some unseasonably mild temperatures.  We've had some rain, but as we've been on the edge of the weather systems, we've gotten a reasonable amount rather than the heavy rains just to the north of us.  We've had some sunshine.  I can't tell you how nice it is to see a blue sky, rather than a grey sky.  We've had so many grey skies this winter.

I checked the garden beds the other day.   Because we let the chooks out one day, some of the pots have been dug up from them looking for bugs.  They tend to scatter the soil about.  On the ground it isn't an issue, but in the large planters, they can make a lot of mess, and half empty pots.  I'll just have to get more triple mix and manure to make up the difference.

Last spring I bought a couple of bales of straw.   I had some that I'd used to mulch the large raised beds, but I was hoping that if I left these two out over the summer, they'd start to compost and be a nice addition to dress the raised beds in the fall.   They'd started composting nicely and I dressed the empty bed fairly heavily, with 4in - 6 in of straw.   I'd planted garlic in just under half of the other raised bed, so I only put 2 or 3 inches of straw over the garlic.  I wanted it to have an easier time of sprouting in the spring.  I've had some struggle and start off a little curled up one year when I had a bit too much heavy mulch on my garlic.   Today I checked and we have garlic already sprouting!  Of the 45 cloves I'd planted last fall, 8 are already starting to grow.   It never starts out all at once, so I'm pretty happy.   It's hard neck garlic, and mostly the Music variety.  We're supposed to have rain all week, but the temperatures will be summer like.  I'll pop out to the feed store and pick up some compost to top dress the garlic, over the straw. in hopes of getting slightly bigger bulbs.  There are enough for us to use for a while and to use some as gifts.  I've already had family members suggest that they could be the recipients of our excess!  

I planted some chives in a planter last summer.  Not even one of the large planters, but a medium-ish sized pot on the deck, so that it was easily reached to use over the summer.   It sort of languished and never really got useably large, and I forgot about it as I didn't think it would over winter in that particular pot.  It did though and is growing really, really well!  I'll have chives to use this summer for certain.

The Blue Squill is blooming in full force.   We should have two patches, but one is struggling this year.  I think it may have gotten a bit compacted by the snow, weird winter weather and its proximity to the fire pit and maple syrup production. It's hardy though and the bulbs spread quite readily.

We also have the daffodils, tulips and alliums starting.  The leaves are growing.  We won't have tulip or alliums for a while yet, but a few of the daffs are starting to bud up.   With the warm weather expected this week, they should bud up and maybe start flowering really quickly.

My son in law is generously starting some tomato seedlings for me.   He starts all sorts of interesting plants, but as we have somewhat limited our growing space these days, I'm less adventurous in what I plant.  I mainly just grow the basics that we really like to eat, and some plants to put up for use over the winter.  Sometimes it works out better than others.  One summer we at zucchini almost every other day for several months.   Another, I managed to get enough

tomatoes to can for use over the whole winter.  I haven't been able to find that particular variety - Amish Paste Tomato- since.  Too bad because it produced a lot of fruit, but it didn't all ripen at once, so canning it was super easy.  The tomatoes were really tasty too.

I'm so happy that the garden season is starting.   If I pick up some arugula, spinach and leaf lettuce seeds, hopefully we'll have  salads soon too!   Let's hope that we don't get the fruit trees flowering this early and then having more frosty weather afterwards, which damages the new buds and hurts the fruit harvests.

Maple Syrup Recipe

What to do with the extra syrup this year.  We had a couple of jars of maple syrup that didn't seal.   I tried twice, the second time by adding it to the new batch, reheating and putting in clean jars.   Everything but 2 jars sealed.  That left about 3 cups of syrup to sit in the fridge until we got around to using it.   

I've used maple syrup for butter tarts - oh so good, and for pecan pie - oh so expensive.  Also there is tarte au sucre, a very old recipe thought to have come with or invented by the  early French settlers in Quebec.  It is often made with sugar, or maple sugar, but maple syrup is also a possibility.  I've never made one before and researched a lot of recipes and history to come up with the simplest tarte au sirop d'erable that I could.  My thoughts on this were that in the late winter or early spring,  a lot of ingredients would not be available to early settlers, and flour, cream, eggs and syrup were likely available.   Hens start laying again as the days get longer.  I always notice the older girls starting to lay again in early January.   Cows can be bred to calve early too, or late so that they are giving milk all year.

My recipe turned out to be super rich but very delicious- 

You need -

Short Crust 

2 eggs (large)

3/4 cup cream.  

1 1/2 cups pure maple syrup - but you can use 1 cup syrup and 1/2 cup brown sugar to be a little more economical if you want.

Short crust is just regular pastry.  Store bought is fine if you won't want to make the pastry yourself.

Cream -  I used heavy cream (double or whipping cream) but I imagine any type of cream will do, even just evaporated milk from a tin. I've no idea if milk substitutes would work  as I haven't tried them.

Method-  

pre-heat oven to 400° F

Pour maple syrup into a bowl, add eggs, cream and sugar if using.   Beat until everything is well blended and completely incorporated.  

Pour filling into the pie crust and bake for 15 minutes at 400°F.

Turn oven down to 350° F and bake for another 25-35 minutes, until the outside edges of the filling are set and the centre just jiggles a little.

Cool completely before eating

 

Scarves and signs of spring

I put a new scarf on the loom.   I wasn't sure about this yarn and am still not quite sure I like it, but it's pretty enough I guess. The shop where I purchased it has industrial lights and the colour of things sometimes shift a bit once you get it outside.   It's a little less dramatic, and the lavender more greyish  in real life than it was in the shop.  It's working up fairly quickly.  As long as I don't get distracted it shouldn't take long to weave.  The yarn is a bit thicker than I prefer, but the trade off is a scarf that is really quick to warp up and weave off.  I think it took me 45  minutes to get the loom dressed, including winding the direct warp in front of the fire, so having to deal with an awful lot of static.

It was fairly mild outside and I was pulling some of the ever invading Virginia creeper vines from places it shouldn't be, like taking over the Weigela bush and the back deck.   I had a fairly good sized pile of it, so I grabbed some of the larger vines and twisted them into similar sized hoops.  I wired them together and then wrapped them at the joints.  I ended up using natural raffia because none of the vines were thin enough for me to use in that small an area.   I was planning on making a rather rustic melon basket.  I got the hoops tied together with the raffia, which was interesting because the raffia was in short pieces.  I sort of managed to cut some of the side stakes and get them into place.   I left the rest of the vines out to dry a bit over night, while warning my husband not to burn them or toss them into the junk wood pile, so he knew that my pile of vines was intentionally left littering the deck!

 The next day I took a bucket with a bit of warm water outside, trimmed many of the vines, curled them into manageable coils and started soaking them.  As they became more pliable, I started using them as weavers.  I learned a lot, like thinner ones work much better, and they take a bit more soaking than I'd anticipated.  Also, it takes a lot of vines.   Many more vines than my fairly large pile that I had accumulated.   It's hard work winding those vines in and out of the spokes.  

 After a while my hands were aching and I'd run out of weavers!  My huge pile of vines was down to a few scraggly bits that I'd trimmed off.  I left it out to dry a bit, but neglected to check the weather forecast.   It rained and rained, then got cold so it's still sitting outside, unfinished.  When it warms up, I'll trim a few more vines and weave that remaining bit.  Then I can trim off the scraggly bits.  It will never be beautiful, but it will be functional.

In the sheltered part of the garden, a few undersized and definitely needing to be fertilised crocuses bloomed.   Such a needed burst of colour and reminder that spring is on it's way.