Busy, Busy May

A Crank-In is a gathering of people with Circular Sock Machines (CSM), both new and antique, who meet up for a day or sometimes a couple of days, for fellowship, instruction, help and fun.  There is a local one, SOC2026, in a nearby town.  For one low price, you get a light morning snack, lunch, several demos, classes, a swag bag of sock making related tools and accessories, and  meeting old, and new friends.  The downside, or maybe upside, is several vendors with yarn, tools and other supplies.   I purchased 3 skeins of yarn, and then won a door prize of another 2 skeins, which happened to be in the same colour ways as two that I'd purchased.  I could have traded them in, but since I liked them, I kept them. So pretty.  I also bought a 400g cone of sock yarn in greens, while not my favourite colour, is one that I almost never purchase unless it's mixed with lots of other colours or very much on the teal side.   I also got a gift certificate for donating the most comfort dolls, some of which were made by friends because they thought it was a great idea to support!

Woad is flowering

The May long weekend SCA Arts and Science event went well.   It was fun, despite a couple of rainy hours in the middle of Saturday.   We had 70 classes, many of them for 2 or more hours, and 202 people came out to play!  My garb is all washed, dried and ready to put away.   I have some lovely new oatmeal linen for a new tunic and some rust for an apron dress.  I taught a class about using fleece processing tools, and still need to finish unpacking things.   I couldn't give away enough fleece though, and had to bring some home.   I'm washing up the second of the gifted fleeces today.

Allium beginning to bloom

The farm next door has been putting drainage tile in the fields this week.  It's a bit of a noisy endeavour so I was happy to go out for tea with my friend E today.  We tend to be able to chat for literally hours.  We go to a local Tim Horton's coffee shop, which kindly lets us sit in a corner with our tea and coffee for 3 hours while we catch up.  You know, because we haven't seen each other in a week or two, lol.

Yesterday I had to get the brakes done on my cute little car.  The front brakes cost next to nothing, but of course the back brakes were brand specific parts so cost almost $2000 to fix.  This came with an estimate for a new tie rod and bushing, at another $1200.  Sigh... they did fix the rattling heat shield while they were at it though, included in the price because they've tried to fix it every time it's up on the hoist but the cute little car has too much stuff in the way to just tighten it up easily.   It's just over 10 years old and has up until now, been a car needing very little work.  It's still fun to drive and most importantly I can see everything out of it.  The repair shop loaned me a Chevy Impala, a huge boat of a vehicle in comparison and ugh, it's definitely not made for short people, and definitely not on my radar should I need to replace my cute little car.

unknown shrub

The weather has gone from cool, to hot, and now back to cool with a slew of tornado and severe storm warnings in between.   This meant that the lilacs, on which I hadn't even seen any flower buds, were in full bloom by the time I got home on Monday and the dandelions, that I've been trying to find time to pick and freeze for an upcoming dye day were just past their prime blooming time.  There are still some out there, just more work to gather.

I don't know what this shrub is.  It's planted by the barn door and must be ancient since it was there when we moved in 17 years ago.   It blooms faithfully every year.  Whatever the weather, it grows reliably and when I ask my son to trim it, he usually hacks it right off near the bottom and in a couple of years it's large enough to trim back again.   Every year though, no matter what the size, it gives a plethora or these small but plentiful, vibrant pink blooms.

Colours of Mother's Day

 

Fern in our garden

It's Mother's Day today.  It has been a sunny but cool day, with a wickedly blustery and cold wind.   There are little leaves on the trees.   More so in town, where I was taken for lunch, where the climate is just slightly warmer I think.   We were supposed to have a picnic in the big park and watch the ducks and geese, but there was a base ball tournement, and most of the ways in were closed off.  We went to go to the other park, which is along the Thames river, but construction blocked off the main route to the park entrance.  Eventually DH wound his way through side streets to find a way into the park.   It turned out to be too cold to eat outside, and there were no ducks or geese, but it was still nice.

Washing a very nice fleece 

I'm teaching a small class about processing fleece using different methods.  I had lots of short fibres for learning to card with.   It's a crap fleece, so students will have lots to practice with and not have to worry about making mistakes. 

 I also have an absolutely brilliant Icelandic fleece.   It's labeled as a black/grey moorit.  However moorits are usually in reference to a shade of brown from pale beige to reddish brown and this is definitely not that.   However the tog is a pale grey and so very soft.  The Thel is black and darker grey.  It's stunning in colour and a very nice Icelandic fleece.   However, I have discovered I'm not really thrilled with spinning Icelandic fleeces, so I'm donating it to the class, so we can practice dealing with double fleeces.

Finally, I had nothing long enough to comb.   I asked a shepherd friend if I could purchase a fleece suitable for teaching combing, and she gave me 5 fleeces.  One was given with the caveat that it was for me and not for teaching.  It's almost solid black, with some weathered brown tips which will give the yarn character when processed.

What did I really do all Mother's Day?   Except for the lunch break, and a trip to the dollar store on the way home to pick up lingerie bags, for washing fleece, I washed fleece.   I did half of a fleece suitable for combing, and half of the Icelandic fleece.  The other half of the Icelandic fleece is soaking as I write this.   It has been a very fun day and having my guys cater to my need to wash fleece (the class is next weekend) has been very nice.

Yesterday I was at a crank in.   That a gathering of circular sock machine knitters.   We drag out all our heavy metal machines, tables, accessories and sock yarn, to socialise, watch demos and of course purchase supplies, all in a situation unconduisive to actually being productive.   There is usually some sort of charity donation.  The past few years it was Izzy dolls, donated to the local police department for use in kids trauma situations.   I had 26 dolls hand knitted by friends and 6 I'd made myself.  In the past couple of years I've made more, but they are a lot of work to finish up and I 've been spinning, knitting up that yarn, and weaving more, leaving little time for the fussy handwork of the machine knit comfort dolls. Still between my friends and I , we had the most donations!   I also won a door prize, and the donated yarn wasn't taken yet, so I snagged it.  It's really pretty.   Despite the winning of a door prize, I think most crank-ins are really good learning situations.   Crankers are very generous with their knowledge and help others.   I met some really nice people and had a lot of fun.  

A slow and interesting start to Spring

 

The farm next door to us was sold recently.  It had an old bank barn which looked to be in really good condition, all the barn board siding was there and everything. .  I think this was true because they started pulling it down and you could see that it was structurally in good shape.  They then hacked away at fencing, pulling it down.  They had a little bob cat thing with a pincer end which pulled down any branches over hanging the fields.   They put all this debris right behind the old barn.  

Today someone put a controlled burn sign on our property.  They almost knocked our mailbox down in the process :(.  For most of the morning, it was fine.  The wind was blowing away from us and there wasn't a huge amount of smoke.  Then, just after lunch the sirens started.  In the end, the "controlled" burn had 6 fire trucks respond.   I'm thinking all the old hay in the barn and that dry barn wood and fencing probably just went up in a flash.   We have a couple of factory farms in the area.  They rent and buy up fields to feed their cattle.   Sometimes I think change in agriculture is not necessarily a good thing.  A small family farm is gone to a large corporation or a developer looking ahead to sell it off as housing lots in the future.

New on the loom. I took a gradient yarn and divided it up into its various colours.  They were dyed in uneven amounts, so I  warped the loom accordingly.   I think perhaps I should have threaded  the left and right sides oppositely, but once it was on the loom, I wasn't changing it.   I'm using the leftover greys and dark blues as the weft.   

The yarn is an acrylic blend from an English company.   A nearby yarn and craft shop has a huge tent sale in the summer and they have some really good deals on yarns we don't normally find stocked in shops here.    It's a lovely yarn and was something like $5 a 550 yd cake, so you can't go wrong with that.

This afternoon, while I was outside gawking at the fire, I started picking dandelion flowers.   The Weavers guild is having a dye day and we're going to do some nature dyes as well as acid dyes in between, so there is no waiting around.  Because we're planning it early enough, I've set people to collecting dandelions.  Dandelions make a lovely yellow, which is quite bright and cheery.  It does fade, but it takes a while and it's stays a decent yellow, although not quite as bright. 

I only got 167 g of them because most of they had lady bugs feeding?  on them.  Some of the flower heads had multiple bugs.  I'll go out tomorrow at a different time to see if I can get more.   While people seem to think dandelions grow all year, they generally have a fairly short time period when they are available in quantity.  Because there is no shortage of them, or risk of them being at risk of extinction, you can pick lots of them with no issues.  Nobody seems to care if you take them from in front of their farms either! 

The guild is participating in a small sale.  We've done this one before and only sell small items.  Generally though, we don't do this to sell things, we do it for community exposure.  Having small items  brings people into our booth for interesting conversations.   I made a bunch of these little yarn horse ornaments to sell.  I used some thrums and leftover yarn, and possibly an old warp I cut off from so long ago I don't remember it.   I almost forgot to put ears on the horses, and wondered why they looked a little off.   Tiny felt ears though, made them look perfect.   

The weather has been quite cool.  The other day we had to have both wood stoves going and that is very odd in May.   My son did put up the sunshade roof though, which he usually does for Mother's Day, if the weather is nice.  Despite it being a bit cool and wildly windy the other day, I took my lunch outside to enjoy the gazebo and some fresh air.  It was lovely.