Odette's Obsessions

Fibery Projects and Something to Crow About.

2012-02-02T13:50:00.000-05:00

I'd been waffling over what project to weave next. I decided on using some of the basket of Shetland yarn. I've got lots of spinning happening and yarn does start to build up after a while.
It's going to be a shawl. I only had enough of the handspun yarn for one project, so there is a necessary although in my mine somewhat unacceptable amount of loom waste. I was a little concerned that the grey and white would have a lot more contrast, which is not quite what I wanted. I wanted a soft colour combination and a discreet patterning. This is working well. I will have to reset my tie up as one of the shafts is not rising quite as much as the other 3, creating a really iffy shed on treadle 4. I'm alternating between basket weave and straight twill to create a checky pattern.

I couldn't wait for my handspun, indigo dyed, superwash merino sock yarn to dry. I found a skein of sock yarn which I'd purchased in the fall.   It was on sale for such a good price, I couldn't resist the bright, pretty colourway. I'd told myself that I needed more solid colour sock yarn but it was pink and blue and telling me it wanted to come home with me. I'm glad I didn't ignore it as the socks are really pretty. As I normally do, they are fraternal socks. I love the difference that having the cuffs different colours is making. It will be interesting to see if it will hold for the whole second sock. It would be fun to have one which looked to be blue with pink and the other pink with blue.

We've had the oddest winter this year. It's mainly been mild, with a few frosty, cold days in between with bits of snow here and there. A couple of days ago, we had one of those snow falls. We got a few inches of it - nothing compared to normal snowfall amounts. It brought the wild birds to the birdfeeder. One day there were Blue Jays, Cardinals, Juncos, Wrens, Woodpeckers, Chickadees and Mourning Doves. The next day, we had a visit by some Crows.

I don't mind the Crows. They are interesting birds.   They don't eat the food in the feeder, only the ground fall. I'd rather they eat it than rodents. They are very wary and watchful. I can't get to the window of the back room without them noticing and unless I'm really, slow about it, they scatter. If I do get close to the window, you can see them keeping an eye on me and if I lift my camera up, they are gone! Last year the Crows used to strut around the garden, looking oh so funny. This year, they have to compete with the chooks, who still go out and about, so whatever they were hunting for, is likely in shorter supply.

Notice that one of the birds is hanging out on the tree. It always seems that there is at least one, often more birds keeping a watch.   We had 7 regularly last year. Before I took the photo, there were 12 on the ground and 2 in the trees!

Finished Projects and some new project musings...

2012-01-25T12:31:00.000-05:00

The nice thing about having 2 spinning wheels is that I can easily work on more than one project at a time. I set aside the Minstrel, with the Blue Faced Leicester and spent a couple of days spinning up the Indigo dyed, superwash Merino. I skeined it off and soaked it this morning. It's a fairly tightly spun, nicely even skein, with about 280 yards of yarn. I'll sample before I turn it into socks but I'm guessing it will be a 54 stitch sock, rather than 60 stitch sock. There seems to be a tad more loft in this yarn than in a commercial sock yarn. I was considering trying toe up socks with this yarn but think maybe sticking with a tried and true top down, flap heel as I'm not fond of the fit of short row heels. Once it's dry, I'll sample and go from there. I'm also considering doing the toes and heels in a second colour, using a commercial sock yarn for durability, however I may just run a strand of toe/heel yarn along with the blue. The nice thing about the near solid colour is that if I do a fancier pattern, it should show up nicely.

The tea towels are washed. I tossed them in the washer and dryer while still in a full length, right off the loom. When they were dried, I ran a small zig-zag stitch along each side of the marker I'd used between each towel. I used # 10 crochet cotton, as it was handy and shrinks at about the same rate as the 2/8 cotton. They're cut apart. I just need to iron them and hem them. I swear that takes the longest of all the steps in weaving! They'd have looked quite awesome in my previous kitchen!

Next project? Well, I have some sewing to do. But on the loom? I have the project which was supposed to be on this time, a structural plaid, which might just end up being a shawl. I also have a hankering to try my hand at double weave. I'm a little concerned about all the 1/3 and3/1 shaft combos on the counterbalance loom. I wonder if I should set up the old jack loom for the double weave project? Here is where some advice would come in very handy.

Friday Night Results!

2012-01-21T09:36:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I cut out a shirt for my sweetie and realized that where I have my sewing machine set up would be just too cold and too dark to sew. It's in the laundry/mud room and there isn't proper lighting in there for night time work, although many windows make it a wonderful place to sew during the day. It was pretty cold last night and while wood heat is lovely, the farther away from the stove you are, the cooler the house is. Other than the bedrooms, which are pretty much unheated, the sewing machine is set up in the farthest spot away from the stove. Next time I'll plan ahead and set up a table in the living room.

Instead, I worked at the drum carder. All the indigo dyed superwash Merino was dry and I didn't want to pack it into a little bag and forget about it. I carded up 6 lovely batts. It only took 2 passes through the carder to get them nice and smooth. I didn't worry too much about completely blending the fibres as I wanted a little bit of variation in the yarn. It won't be a lot, as the colours were quite even right from the beginning.

I finished up the South African top and plied it. I ended up with about 600 yards of plied yarn. It's lovely and soft, even spun with a short draw for a worsted type yarn. I noticed when I tried to find an empty bobbin to ply the yarn onto, that many of my bobbins had ends of singles from previous projects. So I took the last of the white singles I'd just plied and plied them with some of the dark Dyer's Knotweed blue. Then I used the rest of that dark blue and plied it with some leftover grey to make two small sample skeins. It was rather fun spinning the two little skeins for barber pole results.

Finally, I opened up a bag of the Blue Leicester roving which my son gave me. This breed is one of my very favourites to spin. It is long and soft and very, very yummy. It's white. It looks like much of the other white yarns I've spun. I was able to spin over half a bobbin last night. Considering it's a fairly fine yarn, I'm pretty happy with that! No photo of this because really, it looks so much like the bobbin of South African singles, that you can look here to see it. However if you could feel the two different yarns, you'd find the South African was soft but the Blue Faced Leicester was ooh, so much softer! The fact that it is roving which will make a more lofty yarn to begin with helps a bit with that. That the roving is light, fluffy and practically spins itself, is a bonus!

A Blitz of Summery Colours..

2012-01-18T09:14:00.000-05:00

The winter coloured tea towels are done! I wove each one about 35 inches to allow for hems and shrinkage. They are currently about 19.5 inches wide. The last one was a bit iffy. I'd already realized that I'd likely get only a square from the last of the loom waste. As I approached the square measurements, I still had thread in the shuttles, so I just kept going. I'll admit there was a bit of clearing the shed with my hand before each shot by the time I got to the end of the towel. I almost made it. By 34.5 inches, I'd had enough and left it at that. I had only about 6 or 7 inches of loom waste left behind the heddles. Not my favourite way to weave but at least it was an economical use of the yarn!

Then I started to prep for a guild presentation on natural dyes. I wanted to show that natural dyes could be exciting for the modern weaver and spinner. Two days before the presentation an idea of doing a natural dyed painted warp had my thinking cap on. I knew how to do it, but didn't have the right equipment for steaming it, nor enough suitable white wool yarn with which to experiment. As well, lets face it, it was two days before the presentation and planning a new project and winding the warp would add more time than I thought I had. Instead, I took the last skein of yarn from the Jessie fleece that I spun and two skeins of natural white superwash sock yarn. The Jessie skein was just a normal skein from my niddy noddy. The sock yarn was wound into two separate long skeins, using two chairs placed 6 feet or so apart. (Note to self...more figure 8 ties!) I also grabbed the embroidery thread skeins I'd spun up last fall.

After mordanting everything, I had to decide on colours. The method I tend to use with Madder, requires a long soaking unless I'm using an extract - no extract on hand right now. Logwood is a never exhausting dye bath and I didn't want that. What I wanted was warm and sunny, summer colours. I hunted through my dyes and found a jar of Black Oak bark that I'd purchased last year and not yet tried. This was the perfect time to try something new. So Monday afternoon, I simmered the Black Oak, then not having a strainer fine enough to remove the bark shavings, I started dyeing. Oohhhh a lot of nice yellows which are supposed to be very, stable and fade resistant. I dipped in only part of the Jessie skein. When it came to the sock yarn skeins, I folded them in half and then in half again, to make a manageable skein and dipped only the ends of the skeins in. I would use Indigo as the second colour, making green the secondary shade and certainly, those would be the colours of summer!

Yesterday, a phone call got me off to a bit of a late start, but after lunch, I was waiting for the final reduction of the Indigo vat. All afternoon I was reminded why Indigo dyeing is so much fun. Put the yarn and fibre into a vat which doesn't look like it should dye blue. Pull it out and presto, as the air hits it, it turns from green to blue. It never fails to excite me. I realized after my skeins were dyed that there was still a lot of pigment in the pot. I measured out 100 grams of white superwash Merino and tossed it in the pot. Two dips later, it was a lovely shade of blue. 100 grams should be enough for me to spin up for a pair of socks.

Sock yarn, dyed with Black Oak and Indigo

Superwash Merino dyed with Indigo

It was certainly a colourful day yesterday! I was able to use the dyed yarns as part of my presentation. The guild members were find the humour in my passing around still wet skeins as they hadn't had a chance to dry before I left the house.

It Feels Like Winter Projects...

2012-01-13T11:49:00.000-05:00

Winter is back and today is a cold, snowy , blustery day. It's white out there and I have found myself craving colours of summer. Of course this is what I've been doing lately..

More log cabin... 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 - switch shuttle order.. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, - switch shuttle order. I'm getting a wee might tired of counting to 10! I'm on tea towel number 4 - let the countdown begin. At least that is starting from 10 backwards.
I also think that perhaps using the soft khaki brown/green colour was a bad choice for this time of year. It should have been daffodil yellow or rose pink or geranium red or summer sky blue....

The reincarnation of the cabled hat. It's a plain ribbed hat. It was easy to knit although it took more yarn than I'd anticipated as I tightened up the tension a bit so that it would be warmer. It fits.. yay.. and yes, it's toasty warm. It's also very comfortable to wear, which is a bonus. I'd have to say it's not horribly stylish or even that attractive, but it serves its purpose. Even better is that since today winter came back, it's finished and I can wear it out to feed the chooks! Notice the lovely grey colour though. ugh... goes with everything I own, might get confused with one of my son's hats since it's the same colour although different style and the dull grey blends in with the skies this time of year. Did I mention it's comfortable to wear? That's why it's staying just as it is.

I'm working on the second bobbin of the South African Merino blend top. It's lovely to spin. It's making really nice yarn singles and I am chomping at the bit to ply it up to see a finished product.

I think that maybe the next fibre I spin, should be dyed first. I have noticed though, that I much prefer spinning naturally colour fibres than previously dyed fibres. At least there is a hockey game tomorrow night and that is prime spinning time!

It Shouldn't have been Rocket Science

2012-01-08T15:34:00.000-05:00

Finally, the loom is dressed and I'm weaving. It should have been simple but I turned it into rocket science. It's a simple colour pattern and only tabby weave. Once I sat down at the loom, I had the heddles threaded in record time. Unfortunately, I managed to muddle up the colour order in one block and kept it that way for a few repeats, miraculously changed it back to normal in the middle of another pattern block and went on until the the end when I did the same for 3 more blocks. Thankfully, I allowed enough extra warp for substantial sampling, so I had no worries about weaving out tests. It only took a short time to figure out my errors and fix them, but it's been a while since I've made that big a mistake in threading! The moral of the story is, don't put in a movie which you haven't seen in a long time, or you'll watch it, instead of watching the heddles.
The first tea towel has been woven and there are another 4 or 5 to finish off. It's only a 6.5 yard warp and I'm weaving the towels to about 35 inches to allow 2 inches for hems and 3 inches shrinkage. That's about 5 with loom waste, which usually gives me 6 towels. I don't count on that last one though, it's like a bonus to have it actually work out.

The hat is finished. Enough said about it. I'm looking for a small child who needs a lovely cabled, soft, wool winter toque.

What's wrong with this photo? This was our driveway yesterday. A few days ago, we had snow and pictures of the chooks hanging out in it. They were playing in the puddles of melted snow yesterday and again today. We usually get a January thaw, but it's only a few days. It isn't normally a thaw with only a few days of winter. I'm not complaining mind you. I'm not a huge fan of lots of snow, bitter temperatures and biting winds. It's just different. When winter actually comes, we'll be all taken quite by surprise, I'm sure. This was taken from inside the house, hence the glare.

The seed catalogues are in already. I was amazed that the first few came in November. I was waiting on one and it came a few weeks ago. I normally wait for a snowy, blustery day to hunker down with a huge cup of herbal tea and figure out my seed order. I may have to change my routine this year. I did get a fresh batch of Dyer's Knotweed seeds ordered. They should be arriving in the next week or so. As they are cold sensitive, I'll have to watch the mail box just to make sure they don't get frosty.

Last few projects of December

2011-12-30T15:05:00.000-05:00

I will admit that the last few days have not been as productive as I'd like. Not necessarily because I wasn't doing anything but because of stupid mistakes. I've been knitting or rather, trying to knit myself a hat. I had a design in mind, using cables. I swatched, started knitting and it was huge. I ripped it back, reknit and it was too small. I worked out my pattern for repeats, adjusted the size upward and it was still too small. For some reason, when I redid the pattern, I cast on a size or 3 smaller than I wanted again. I even used fewer stitches than the previous too small hat! Brain stall on that one, for sure.

Winter has finally arrived. The weather got cold and it snowed. My chooks have been out in the snow before but would avoid it if at all possible. I thought they might stay inside when we finally had enough snow to cover the ground. Nope, they are stoic creatures. While obviously not fond of it, they will wade through it. A few of the girls are quite adventurous and I've seen them all over the yard. The rest stick to the back, where there is some shelter and they can wait on deck for me in the afternoon. When I go out to feed them each afternoon, they are flocked right by the backdoor, waiting for their scratch grain treat and any other goodies I might have for them. It does lead to a few chicken "bombs", being left, littering the deck. One does have to be careful where one steps.

My son painted me a picture, using one of my photos as inspiration. Okay, not exactly that photo, but one from the same vantage point, same time, same snowstorm etc.. just one which is on another computer at the moment and I've not transferred them yet. It was a very moving gift, for sure.

I've started dressing the loom. I ended up rejigging the pattern for this project. It was a bit of a last minute, rushed changed, so we'll see if I got it right, when I finally finish threading heddles and do some test weaving. I am dressing the loom front to back, because my arm reach is a bit too short to comfortable do it back to front on this loom. The Minstrel spinning wheel has been back in action, spinning some lovely South African top. It's supposed to be mainly merino, but blended with other wools. It's amazingly soft and easy to work with. It will become something lovely and warm!

Two more projects.........

2011-12-21T14:59:00.000-05:00

I thought for certain, that the moment I finished up the new mittens, that the old one's would surface. That didn't happen, so I guess that my first pair of new mittens this year, really did get lost and not just misplaced. I thought that I had better hurry up and finish the new, new mitts. This mild weather isn't going to last forever and one day we're going to wake up and it really will be winter: cold, snowy and icy. They are softer than the Clun Forest mittens but the Clun Forest was a whiter, white - if that makes sense and a much stronger wool. It was also spun woolen for warmth, whereas the Shetland was spun semi-worsted from necessity.

A group of gals from the Oxford Spinners and Weavers got together to do an 8 shaft, block twill scarf project from silk. I wove mine off in the fall. Last week, a call went out for someone to weave off the last scarf before Christmas as the last person on the list was unable to do so. After a few days, I put my hand up since I too, wanted my scarf for a present. I used a different shade of green for the weft of each scarf. It's a fairly simple pattern to weave and it really was only a 2 hour weave per scarf. It was really interesting to see the differences in weaving techniques and weft colour choices, when we cut all the scarves off. There were 3 black wefts, a blue, a yellow and a red weft, besides my 2 greens. I still had to hemstitch, after the fact, since I had forgotten to bring a needle with me, both times I went to weave. Nasty, slippery stuff to hemstitch afterweaving! Plus all that fringe needed twisting. I'd moved where I keep the fringe twister and did panic for a moment when I couldn't find it. I did find it, in a bin labeled FibreTools.. go figure that one! I've most of them twisted and it makes a very fine scarf, indeed. I lust after 8 shafts even more now, after playing with one!

The shirt has been taken off the to do list.. It might have gotten started if the fabric I was going to use, was as I remembered it. It wasn't! It was totally different and not appropriate. Rather than panic or rush, I knocked it back until after the holidays. No use stressing over it.

Tomorrow is the Winter Solstice! Thank goodness!!!!!! These short, dark, dreary days are getting tiresome. I look forward to the increasingly long days.

New mitts and the before Xmas to do list

2011-12-15T17:14:00.000-05:00

So the white Clun Forest mittens have disappeared. I've gone and lost them before I'd even had a chance to wear them! I'd only gotten to try them on for fitting. I'm pretty ticked at this. I may have put them in a safe place or I may have taken them with me and left them behind. I figure that winter really will set in sometime and I'll really, really need mitts, so I started a new pair. I had two skeins left from Jessie's fleece and since the fingerless mitts I'd made with this yarn turned out quite nicely, I decided to use the rest for my own mitts. As I was winding the skeins into yarn cakes, I realized that they were two different grists. I used the skein of slightly fatter yarn for the mitts, hoping there would be enough. There was a little less than I thought there would be. So, next job is to card up some more of Jessie's fleece and spin the rest of the mitten yarn.

I did a bit more sewing - two knitting project bags. I've found these to be incredibly useful. You take all the bits and pieces for whatever project you're working on and stuff them in the pretty sack. I try to put in all the tools I'd need, like tape measure, pattern, darning needle and thread snips. Then when I put the project down for a bit and pick it up weeks later, everything is in one place and finishing up goes so smoothly.

Left on the to do list - a tote bag, a shirt, two embroidered labels, one loom to dress, one project to weave off at the guild, and a partridge in a pear tree.. okay maybe not the last one :). All in all, it should be close to achievable - the shirt is a last minute addition and I'm crossing my fingers on that one.

Friday Night Sew In Success

2011-12-10T09:21:00.000-05:00

I'll have to admit that I did a bit of sewing during the day as well, but in all I marked the quilt borders, quilted the borders, cut and made the binding, and bound the quilt yesterday, finishing up just before 10 pm. Included in that was a repair to the treadle belt as it had stretched. The belt is leather and a new one will stretch a bit after using. In this case it started slipping miserably and I managed to sew my finger while wrangling the quilt through the sewing machine. Thankfully it was minor as the treadler responds very quickly in situations like that!

The two major projects I'd wanted to get done before Christmas, are both done. While I was somewhat singularly focused on the quilting over the past couple of weeks, it is such a huge relief that they are finished. And no, I'm not making quilts for the other two kids this year. I'll plan that a little more carefully and give myself more than a few weeks to accomplish that task!

Only 3 more projects to sew for pressies... I guess the countdown begins

Friday Night update

2011-12-09T19:06:00.000-05:00

Last night I plied the dark blue singles with a slightly lighter blue from the same Dyer's Knotweed dye vat. I am pretty happy with the results. Now I need to spin up a bit more of the lighter blue so that I have enough to finish plying the rest of the dark blue. This skein has about 350 yds. It's unfortunately a tad thinner than I'd like for mittens, or I'd totally be happy with making a new pair for myself with this awesome colour.

The wonky log cabin quilt is ready to bind! Having the distracting hubby away on a business trip for a week sure made for a lot of productive time. I'm hoping to get the binding cut, sewn and applied tonight. Heidi hosts a Friday night sew in. I'm using that as a pretense to spend the whole evening at the sewing machine, in hopes of finishing it up. In a few minutes, I will cut 7 binding strips, sew them together, iron them in half to make a double fold binding. Then it's two rounds of stitching around the outside edges of the quilt. The first to attached the binding to the back of the quilt and the second to fold it over the front and machine stitch it down. Since these are functional quilts, I don't mind the machine stitched bindings. They will be far more durable than handstitched bindings. While I'd prefer the quilts not to be abused, I also don't want my kids to be worried about ruining them if they use them. I'm off to finish up the quilt!

Friday Night Sew In

Bits and Pieces

2011-12-08T14:45:00.000-05:00

It's been an odd week, but a busy one. We've had a lot of rain -thankfully rain and not nearly as much snow - but so much rain that it's just been puddling, with standing water all over the place. It's been quite funny watching the chooks decide whether they thought the puddles or the snow was the lesser evil. Most decided wading was better than the snow - funny birds.

I finally rinsed out the solar dyed fibre experiment . Well, mainly rinsed out. The excess dye just kept coming and I was starting to be concerned about fibre felting. The colours in the photo are just a tad more saturated than in real life. I'll have to do more research into Lac recipes and how to get red instead of purple. I can get those purples with Logwood and Cochineal as well. Good reds are much more difficult to find. The Madder though, yielded a nice red colour with the solar dyeing.

I've started quilting my daughter's quilt. The centre log cabin blocks are stitched in the ditch. The bulk bamboo batting only had washing instructions, (wash after quilting) and no quilting instructions. From doing a bit of web research, it seems that a number of the bamboo battings need to be quilting no further than 2-4 inches apart. I decided to go with the 2 inches, just to be safe. It was easy with the blue quilt as all the stitch lines were 2 inches apart. The wonky log cabin blocks are fine as they are narrower than 2 inches, but the wonky stars in the corners needed a little more fussing with as the odd shapes have somewhat less equal dimensions. It's going to take a little longer to quilt this one up, but it's still a lot faster than hand quilting.

The cat is undicerning about what quilt he sleeps on. He did however choose the quilted blue quilt over the plain log cabin top. Once the layers were together, it no longer mattered to him, which quilt he occupied.    He seems to like sleeping on the treadle sewing machine when it's open. He can survey the room easily and still gets the heat from the woodstove!

I wound off a new warp for some tea towels with 2/8 cotton.   I'd been dithering over 3 different projects. I printed out the specs for 2 of them and decided on project number 3. I proceeded to wind the warp for project number 1.   It's not so bad, but of course my excitement to quickly dress the loom has slightly faded. Mainly though, I realize that getting the quilt finished has to take priority. Once it's done, I have several little project bags to make as presents and then I can dress the loom.at my leisure.

The dark blue fibre which I've been spinning on the Mazurka is almost finished and the bobbin is just about full. I thought I had another lot of the dark blue, but all the other blues I can find are substantially lighter in colour. I may ply this with a lighter blue of a similar weight.    We'll have to see what I can come up with. It's a little to fine to ply back on itself. I find that with the singles are very fine, self plying tends to end up with tangles unless one is very careful.

In other news, I may never get a chance to keep my new white mittens clean. I've put them in a safe spot and cannot find them anywhere! I'm quite sad about that.

Crossed off the To Do List!

2011-12-02T15:36:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was my son's birthday. Instead of a cake, he asked for an apple pie. It was yummy. He also wanted chicken pot pie for dinner so it was a pie sort of day.

I've been itching to put another pair of socks on the needles. However, I decided my foray into multiple sock projects hadn't been horribly successful. While I finally finished up the socks I started while on holidays, I still had the colourwork socks on the needles. So I dug out that project bag and started knitting. Being sidelined with a horrible cold helped enormously. I was at the round and round part of knitting the foot and couldn't believe how much I accomplished while not realizing it. Yesterday the last toe had been grafted and they are now crossed off the to do list.

The double Irish Chain quilt is done! It would have been finished yesterday but my last filled bobbin was empty. I know, I could have filled the bobbin and finished the binding then. I was tired and decided it would be better to wait a day than risk making a mistake. In the end, it took less than half an hour this afternoon to finish it off. I should give it a quick rinse to get the basting spray and chalk lines removed. It will need a good once or twice over with the cat hair removing brush as well! Then it can be wrapped up and ready to become a gift!

Next on the list is a quilt top I made several years ago and set aside for my daughter. I gave it to her when she got married but still haven't gotten it quilted. Hopefully, I'll get this one done before Christmas as well. Of course I had the backing all ready to go years ago, and do you think I could find it? Nope! I've several different bins marked fabric. I'm betting it's in the one one the bottom which I couldn't get to. Today I purchased new backing fabric and will wash it up this weekend. It's prettier that the old backing, which was simply plain black broadcloth. This one is purple clouds and stars. I love this pattern and wish I could remember how I made those wonky Log Cabin squares!

All your quilt are belong to us!

2011-11-28T20:22:00.000-05:00

Over the past several days, I've been working on the quilt. I marked the Double Irish Chain blocks in two stages, so I wouldn't get too confused with the patterns. Quilting on the treadle sewing machine went fairly quickly, but it was a whole new use for those shoulder and arm muscles, so I ended up having to take breaks. Every time I wasn't working on the quilt, and one time when I was, helper kitty was "helping". Each of these photos was taken at a different time and there are more! He really seems to like that quilt. He is the ultimate project manager!

The Great Machine Quilting Adventure (and grey yarn update)

2011-11-26T17:34:00.000-05:00

We pickup this story from when the Double Irish Chain quilt was ready to baste together. I had purchased an obscenely expensive tin of spray basting adhesive.   I lined the diningroom in old newspapers in order to protect the furniture and flooring.   I spent a couple of days trying to research the ventilation requirements and possible health issues with the spray.   I didn't find anything screaming out at me. Finally, I got up the guts to spread out the bamboo batting, spray it and apply the quilt backing.   I was totally amazed. There was no obvious odor, virtually no excessive spraying and the fabric was easy to reposition on the batting and still held tight when patted back down. I flipped the batting, sprayed and put the quilt top on. To my horror.. no really, exasperation, there were a couple of wonky bits on the border which I couldn't smooth out for anything. I let it sit for a day or two while I tried to figure out a suitable solution. In the end, there was only one. I peeled the quilt top off, setting the batting carefully aside as I'd heard that the sprayed bits can stick to themselves quite nicely.   I ripped that quilt top apart, resewed a few blocks, reassembled the top, squared it up properly, remeasured the borders, trimmed them up and sewed them back on.

   In all, it only took a good part of a day to get back to basting.   When I plunked that quilt top on the batting, the original light spray of adhesive still held!   I was impressed, but I wanted to be certain, so I peeled back various corners and gave the batting the lightest of quick sprays anyway. That poor quilt sat on the dining room table for several more days while I tried to figure out what to do with quilting and fiddled with the treadles tension, which seemed to not want to be happy doing free-motion work on my samples.   In the end, although I did get the tension worked out, I decided to do the centre part in diagonal straight machine quilting.

I was ready to mark it and go. Then last night, as I wandered past the quilt, the light hit it in a certain way and I knew exactly how to quilt it.. not plain straight line diagonals, but some of them will be interlaced and some not.    This morning I started marking the quilt out and this afternoon, I started quilting.    I need to reconfigure the work space to give the quilt a little more support but otherwise the treadle is working beautifully for the quilting. There are a few wobbly bits of quilting here and there but it's getting better and I'm sure by the time I've finished machine quilting the next quilt, I'll be loads better.   I'm not sure I like the blue quilting thread on the beige blocks, but I think I'd dislike a lighter thread on the blue blocks more, so not much to do about that.

Grey wool update -   Yep, the 1 lb of grey roving is spun, plied and waiting for a project. I've been spinning stashed roving lately, to get some of it used up.   I think I'm down to almost needing more roving, so mission accomplished there. However, now I have an interesting assortment of skeins to use up!   If I'd thought ahead for this grey, I might have kept the grey as singles. Half way through the last bobbin, I realized I had a nice amount of similar grist singles stashed away, which may very well have worked as weft with the grey as warp. None the less, it is spun and worked up quite nicely.   Next time, I'll have to remind myself to actually write down the yardage after I count it though. Not sure why I bothered to work it out, if I wasn't going to write it down.. sigh..

Some spinning , knitting and a trip to Kingston

2011-11-21T19:57:00.000-05:00

Last week I vistited my friend Suzi, who is also a spinner. I took my Mazurka spinning wheel and we sat around for a fun few hours, spinning and eating warm cinnamon buns, just pulled from the oven. They were made with whole wheat flour, so we deemed them healthy for the morning! I dug up a bit of roving that I dyed last year to play with. It's spinning up beautifully and the deep blue is quite entrancing. Of course I've put the rest of the roving away properly and can't find it for anything right now. Most frustrating because obviously, there is someplace I've hidden miles of gorgeous blue dyed roving!

I finished the mittens on Sunday. I imagine these will be sturdy and strong. I don't find them scratchy or harsh, but they certainly don't feel soft or delicate. The Clun Forest is a down breed, known for it's strong, springy fibre. I'm pretty sure these mitts would be able to take some machine washing without felting. They're that sturdy.

windfarm in the fading light

We went to Kingston for the weekend. We headed out first thing Friday morning and got to the city in time to do a bit of a driving tour and a quick walk by the lake. The wind was pretty ferocious by the shoreline and it was cold. We didn't last very long, but it was so nice to be out of the truck and walking. There is a huge wind farm across the bay, but the light was fading and since my mittens were still not quite finished, my hands were too cold to be fiddling around with the camera for too long.

Murney Martello Tower

.

The sun over the lake was gorgeous though. Actually the city of Kingston is particularly beautiful, with old stone houses everywhere, a restored Fort Henry, Fort Fredrick and Murney Martello Tower. Unfortunately, it was the off season and they were all closed or we may have lingered on Sunday. I was promised however, a trip to the area again in the spring or summer, in order to indulge in historical sight seeing!

I did manage to play around with a few different settings to try to capture the sunset. There have been few enough sunsets at home of late. The heavy, dark grey skies, just haven't been photo worthy back home. These two were my favourites.

Weekend achievements

2011-11-13T17:23:00.000-05:00

I almost ripped out that Clun Forest Mitten. It's not nearly as soft as my usual mitten yarn is. However, I realized that I wanted these to use in the barn. The Clun Forest yarn will be hard wearing and durable. I may dye them because white is really not a barn colour! If I'm feeling energetic, I may knit up a second pair of mitts for myself, just for "pretty". Then I can wear the pretty mittens when I go to town.

I also finished up the quilt top. It's just shy of a twin size, which should be a good size to practice machine quilting with and still be useful. Lots of resources recommend not using a large quilt to learn machine quilting. I'm not sure if using the treadle to quilt with, will change the learning curve at all. Technology is sometimes quite cool and there is now a quilt basting spray: a temporary, water soluble adhesive which glues the 3 layers together so that no pins or basting stitches are needed. While in the past, I'd have been dead set against this sort of short cut, I've purchased a tin of the spray because I just can't figure out where I'd actually be able to stretch out the quilt in order to hand baste. I used to either tape the backing to the floor, then layer and baste or just set up a huge quilt frame, stitching the backing down first and then layering and basting. I no longer have the quilt frame and taping to the floor just no longer seems feasible with our small rooms and carpeting. Admittedly, crawling around on the floor to baste a quilt no longer really sounds like fun, so I'm giving the basting spray a shot.

Yep, more grey fibre spinning. Grey like today's sky. I think I need to spin something sunny, just as an interlude.

Knitting and piecing and knitting and sewing and.........

2011-11-09T14:16:00.000-05:00

The mittens are done! The fleece was a variety of fawn colours from cream to the almost brown, with hints of grey. Very pretty and the mitts knitted up easily. The colour varigation is quite pronounced, although not as much as in the photo. The recipient didn't mind. It really didn't take that long to knit either. The ribbing felt like it took the longest time to knit, although I doubt it really did. I loved knitting with that particular skein because it just worked so well. It was soft, well spun, wasn't splitty or anything else hard to work with. It just felt right.

Then I started on these. Yes, I swatched.. I knit my first ribbing based on the swatch and it was too large.   I took away just a couple of stitches and now it's too small. Obviously I changed my tension in there a couple of times.   I'm going to rip this out and start again, being more careful of my tension or adding a few stitches and keeping the tension at a bit of a tighter gauge. As well, it's the Clun Forest fleece which I spun with a long draw. It's very springy. I've noticed when I'm knitting it that it takes much more tension that most of the yarns I use. I'll have to take that into consideration as well.

Finally I realized that if I didn't get off my duff, iron the quilt fabrics, start cutting and sewing, I'd not have the Xmas pressie quilt finished in time.   I still may not as I've no idea how long it will take to machine quilt it when I've finished piecing it.   I had to run out and purchase a new quilting ruler, suitable for rotary cutting. My old one is 15 or so years old and not only was too narrow but getting rather weary and worn. I was astounded by the cost...$45 for one 8.5 in x 24 in ruler!   Luckily, it was on sale for 1/2 price..   I'm using one of the speed cutting techniques, cutting long strips,sewing them together in the required order, slicing off pieces and stitching them together to make the correct block.   It's saving a lot of time.   I decided upon a Double Irish Chain, which interestingly, one source commented that it's called an American Chain in Ireland. I wonder if that's true?

I actually wanted to use white instead of the beige, but the white I had was too stark. While I think this beige is too pinky, it looks okay.   I'm piecing it on the treadle. I know it would be faster going on one of the electric machines, but I'm finding the treadling very relaxing and still getting a kick out of powering the machine myself and not running up the electric bill.

More spinning - More grey - Looks exactly like this on the wheel.   While I've loved the end result, a whole pound is a lot of wool to spin. We've had a lot of grey days and I'm just not appreciating the grey wool right now.

A week dedicated to warm hands and nice surpises

2011-11-05T10:02:00.000-04:00

This week, the rural mail delivery folks, actually came into the drive way to deliver a package.   I'm not sure why I wasn't expecting it, because I knew it was on it's way.   However, it was a lovely surprise to receive this beautiful, handmade, Walnut cone thread stand in the mail. It will look so nice beside the 15-30 treadle, however I know it will also get used by Lady Pfaff, my electric embroiderer. The skilled turner offered it as a prize for a quiz on the TreadleOn email group. Treadle On is a an amazing community of people who use people powered, both treadles and handcranked sewing machines. They trouble shoot, diagnose, give repair information, identification information, where to find parts and support others who use treadle machines.   It's quite amazing really, to have a group which so easily shares and gives freely, their knowledge and information.

I did some more spinning and then realized that if I didn't start on mittens, friends and family would have cold hands.   First off was a pair of fingerless mitts from the Jessie's fleece . My friend had donated the fleece and asked for a pair of fingerless mitts in return.   I wasn't sure how they'd turn out because there are a lot of inconsistencies in the yarn.   It was a bit on the hard to spin side.   It took a while to figure out the right gauge because although I did swatch, that information didn't actually prove useful when I started knitting. In the end, it was a bit of trial end error. I ripped back twice, trying new needles each time until I found a formula that worked. They were supposed to be fancy with cables, but they didn't look right. That was another start.   When I wet finished them, they took on a lovely halo effect, which was very unexpected. Pretty though :)

Next on the list was mitts for the hubby.   While I've bunches of yarn waiting for a project, most are in amounts large enough for something more than mitts.   The Clun Forest would have been perfect, but it was white and not really a man mitten colour. I know he's going to be using the snow blower, carrying in wood and doing other chose in them.   I found this rather nicely spun single skein of Shetland, which is working perfectly.

Finally, I popped out to the fabric store and the sewing machine shop and picked up a few things, including a dozen new bobbins for the treadle, a quarter inch foot for the treadle and these fabrics.    The project should have been started yesterday but I managed to drag my feet about pressing when I had the time.   I haven't pieced a quilt in a good few years.   I'd started making a comforter for each of my kids, which half-way through the project, changed to making them quilts instead. So some have quilts and the others wore their comforters out as children. Now I think it's time to start finishing that project, especially since I have the perfect machines to do the quilting with.

Finally, remember those pretty yellow berries. I was walking by to collect eggs as a couple of the girls lay just under those particular vines and this is what I saw. I think they are gorgeous. I ran in to grab the camera. It's a good thing too, because the next day, I saw one of the chooks balancing on the lattice, eating those little red berries.

Colours of Late Autumn in the Garden

2011-10-30T16:48:00.000-04:00

I'd been outside doing some yard work when I realized that it's been a while since I've taken a photo tour of the garden. We've had a couple of nights with hard frost and some very cool days. Still there were a few hardy plants with bursts of colour.

I've not yet identified this plant. It's a rather leggy, climbing vine, with small, uninspiring flowers. During one dinner eaten outside, a small breeze kept one long branch reaching out toward my son as if it wanted to say hi. This time of year though, the yellow berries are beautiful. I don't remember other years having such a brilliant show.

The purple Zebra Mallow starts growing mid summer and once it starts to bloom, it doesn't stop. I've had common Mallows growing and they are an invasive weed. While this one self seeds, it isn't quite as overwhelming as Common Mallow.   Since it blooms well into the fall, regardless of the first frosts, I leave it growing.   It is such a nice show of colour when almost nothing else is blooming.

This is the Rudbekia Goldsturm I planted this summer.   I looked in every garden centre to find some, but it turns out they are out of fashion. There were Rudbekia of all sorts of other varieties, but only the one garden centre had the variety I was looking for.   While it isn't an off the wall brilliantly coloured hybrid, it's one of my favourite garden plants.   Once established, it blooms long and hard through the late summer and fall.   I hadn't expected this one to bloom this year. It's pretty late to start and the blooms are struggling.   I am hoping it is established enough to survive the winter. It's near the deck and will be heavily covered in snow fairly early in the season, I'm sure.

This is the last rose I could find in the garden.   The previous owner planted a number of these miniature roses.   I like roses, mainly the larger ones.. and in pink.. no surprise there. One does have to admire the strength and vigour of such a beautiful flower, to keep blooming well in to the fall.

Mainly the yard and gardens are full of these. With the first heavy frost, it started raining down leaves.   The Birches, Pears, Maples and other trees are almost barren now. The bush lot across the road had a bit of colour yesterday, but today is just shades of browns. We've gathered most of our leaves to use as compost in the gardens.   It's an easy way to dispose of them and with the addition of green matter earlier in the fall and first few cuts of the spring and the compression of the snow, they break down quickly.   Enjoy the splashes of colour while you can, 'cause before we know it, we'll be blanketed in white.

Phew!

2011-10-25T12:56:00.000-04:00

What a week it was! Last week I had to do the shopping and final prep for the Crown Tourney feast on Saturday. I baked on Sunday and Wednesday. I shopped on Thursday, which took trips to two grocery stores and a trip into a nearby city to pick up items stored in a friends freezer and a whole slew of crockpots, roasting pans etc. Friday I cooked all day.. bread, meringue cookies and 9 pies. Saturday there were 5 of us in the kitchen and we produced a good meal, with some cool plating effects... and I forgot my camera, sigh. A friend sent me this rather fuzzy photo of the sausage cattails. I was happy they worked out so well.

In my spare time, I've done a bit of spinning.   Generic domestic grey sheep sliver. Pretty enough unspun, but gorgeous when spun up. It is fairly easy to spin as well.   I'm not sure what I am gong to do with it, so I'm spinning and plying it in a suitable weight for weaving or knitting.

It's going to be suitable for woven scarves, shawls or knitted hats and mitts. There is only a pound of sliver, so while I'd contemplated leaving the singles for weaving, there wouldn't be enough of it for a useful amount of yardage. Plied there won't be enough for a useful sweater either, not that I've actually knit a sweater in a very long time.    Next time I order, I'll make sure I get enough for a larger project because I'm so happy with the quality.

I had the sewing machine going as well. I made this cute little project bag with some leftover fabric.   It has a nice big pocket inside. It still needs a drawstring cord though. I've nothing suitable on hand.   Crappy lighting and no way to show the size without more work than I'm willing to do right now.   It's big enough to hold several skeins of yarn, needles and a pattern, or other small to medium size project. While I love the size and shape, I'll likely make this a gift bag as it's not quite my favourite fall in love with fabric.

Filling in the spare time...

2011-10-14T15:23:00.000-04:00

The past few days have been busy...

On the treadle sewing machine - 7 tablecloths, pieced and hemmed.   The fabric came from long, narrow tablecloths.   The owner gave them to me to change over to sizes correct for the tables at our Canton's next SCA event.   There was enough of the blue for 6 and I'm turning the brown into another 2, each slightly larger tablecloths. Because they are rectangular, they'll work for both round and rectangular tables and 8 should be plenty for any contingency.

100 grams of Clun Forest rovings, spun semi-woolen. I put them on the rug to photograph them and the cat decided he had to investigate.   He then took a nap on the skeins!

I've almost finished the wide purple stripey socks.   I've had enough of ribbed socks for a while and will do a different pattern for the next pair.   I still need to graft the toe together.   I'm not fond of that process, although it doesn't take long. It's fussy to do neatly.   I'm happy these are done.   They've been the least enjoyable socks I've made. Not only did I not enjoy the colourway, but the yarn wasn't my favourite to work with.    Interestingly, the large purple stripe managed to fall in almost the same spot by totally accident.   I had a partial skein left from the first sock, so use it to start the second sock, rather than switching to a new ball.   Despite the second ball being wound opposite to the first, so the stripe order was reversed, and randomly starting the new ball in the middle of the 2nd sock, the purple stripe in almost the exact same place on the foot, off only by a row or two. Bizarre.... At least the socks are comfortable, if that's any consolation for having ugly socks! I do love the blues and greens though.. so it's not all bad.

Nope, the garlic isn't planted yet... it's been raining here the past few days.   Instead of doing yard work, I'm off to make cookies..

A Thanksgiving Hike

2011-10-10T20:46:00.000-04:00

Our weather this Thanksgiving weekend has been spectacular.   It was unseasonably warm and sunny. We had our family dinner yesterday and ate it outside on the deck. While we often eat outside in the summer, we've never, ever eaten Thanksgiving dinner outside before.   It was warm enough, even for an evening meal.

Knowing that there will be scant few days left like this, we took advantage of the lovely weather by going for a hike at a nearby conservation area. It's definitely autumn here. Even with the weather this nice, you can tell by the leaves. Some are changing colours and others have already fallen. Even at midday, the sun is starting to be low enough in the sky to cast interesting shadows and lighting conditions.   The contrast between the light sparkling off the leaves and the dark of the start of the wooded areas was pretty stunning.

There was a small pond running into a stream which flowed along one side of the conservation area.   We got turned around a few times because there are a number of dead end trails.   One did lead to a lovely patch of Teasels, dried and prickly.

The Milkweed was drying and opening up.   I love Milkweed in the fall. As kids, we used to chase the little fluffy bits, catch them, make a wish and set them on their way again. I don't think any of the wishes were even remembered at the time, but it was enjoyable and probably kept us out of trouble.

The trail map showed several different trails. Not only were there a number of dead end trails, but most of the trails had few markings.   Good thing it was such a nice day and we didn't mind it at all.   The trails were fairly well groomed as well, so it was easy walking.

The trail we finally found ourselves on wandered by the stream.     The skies had whitened with high cloud cover. Eventually we came to the little bridge. The bridge was supposed to lead to a second trail, but we missed it and ended up winding our way back to the beginning of the trail, via another route.   We'll head back sometime to check out that second trail.

It was a lovely interlude and a gorgeous, holiday weekend.   With colder weather looming, one definitely has to take advantage of wonderful weather like this.   Just one more little thing to be thankful for this year.   Thanksgiving weekend is also the traditional time to plant the garlic.   Hopefully, I'll get to that tomorrow.

Squee

2011-10-07T19:02:00.000-04:00

I inherited my grandmother's Singer 27 a few years ago. Before that I'd sort of looked for a treadle sewing machine of my own and when I got my grandmother's, really put the search on the back burner. 3 or 4 years ago, I rescued a Singer 99 from a thrift store. They hadn't been able to sell it, were thinking that it's only use would be to toss the sewing machine and use the cabinet for something. I picked it up for $45, including a green case of feet and attachments. I'd meant to restore it but it's a bit scary, taking apart a sewing machine, changing out the wiring and cleaning it up without ruining the gold decals, so I put it off.

My girlfriend gave me a super nice Singer 201 (a beautiful, wonderful machine..sigh) and it got me thinking about restoring my two other Singers. However, a glance through Kijiji last week reminded me about my desire to have a treadle sewing machine that I was comfortable using. I'd checked out the Singer 127 last week and really wanted either a vertical or drop in bobbin sewing machine. My first choice would have been a Singer 66, with some sort of pretty decals, maybe a red eye. However, what I found the other day thrilled me.

Singer 15-30 treadle in a 3 drawer cabinet, circa 1919

There was a Singer 15-30 for sale. The Memphis or Sphinx decals looked to be in decent condition. You couldn't see the cabinet and it wasn't clear whether it still had a bobbin winder. I called about it and the nice gentleman said his friend said it needed a bobbin thingy that went on the end and it would likely work. I figured that meant the bobbin winder.. silly me..

I drove to look at it today and it followed me home. It has a bobbin winder and it is only the bobbin and a treadle belt which it needs. It's awfully pretty though. It needs a good clean up. The plated parts are pretty grungy and a bit pitted but the black metal sewing machine is in really good shape. The back access plate screw doesn't want to move and I'm not sure if the bobbin winder is complete, though it moves and looks like it should work.

Singer 15-30 back

The 15-30 was in production from 1895 to the 1960's, in various forms. This one is the first incarnation, with the first modern oscillating hook bobbin mechanism. They still make sewing machines using that mechanism!

The cabinet needs a bit of veneer either re-glued or replaced, but it's not all that bad.

I asked if he knew any of the history of the machine. Since he didn't know anything about how it worked, he obviously didn't use it. It was his mother's sewing machine although he didn't know if she bought it or got it from someone else.

Why am I thrilled about this old gal? She cost me $50. I was so happy to find her, I didn't even try to haggle down the price. Yes, she will require a bit of elbow grease but well, I've got a bit of that..

Puzzle Box

2011-10-02T09:03:00.000-04:00

I was out looking at a vintage Singer sewing machine on Saturday. It was a 127 with sphynx decals, which wasn't quite what I was after, but if it was in good condition I'd have taken. However, the cabinet top needed all new veneer due to a fish tank explosion, the decals were quite worn and the machine head had a fair bit of rust. Despite the good price I didn't bring it home with me. I'll wait for a 66 to turn up...

I did however, bring home this cool little gem. I paid a fair price for it and it doesn't have all it's original pieces, but there are many extras with it. I think it may have sparked an interest in vintage sewing machine accessories. The box itself is wooden with a branded stamp proclaiming that it was patented in 1889. It's lined with red velvet. I'd not seen one in person before, but it's the accessories which would have been contemporary with my grandmother's Singer 27. (The seller did say that they hadn't come with the 127, but she'd been given them after by someone else).

Now to figure out what the feet are for and get a machine that can use them up and running, so that I can test them out and learn how to use them.

So Far This Week

2011-09-29T15:52:00.000-04:00

I've finished spinning up the superwash Merino, Sari Silk, Icicle blend. I'm quite happy with it. The large skein has 220 yds, while the small one has another 60 yds. That's the yardage based on the niddy noddy count. I've no idea what to do with this pretty yarn though.

I cut and sewed up 2 tote bags. They are a little fussy because they are fully lined and have pockets. I will say though, that these are the 3rd and 4th bags I've made, and they have gotten a fair bit faster to make than the first one. It's nice that they are completely machine sewn. I make them out of sturdy material, although the one with hearts is just a plain quilting cotton, interlined with Pellon interfacing to give it the needed umph to make a good tote bag. It's a nice size bag, so having an extra one around is useful. One is for me and the second is for a gift.

The first dye vat for the embroidery wools was Coreopsis Tinctoria. With only an alum mordant, in the pot at that, not pre-mordanting like I would normally do, yielded this lovely soft orange. How pretty is that? I'm thrilled with the colour and will definitely plant this variety of Coreopsis again.

Spinning, carding and the dreaded laundry drama

2011-09-26T12:24:00.000-04:00

It's autumn. The weather has cooled off and it's been rainy. The washer went on the fritz in the middle of a load of clothes, on a wet, miserable day and I had to wring out each piece of clothing by hand. Of course I do cold water washes (brrrr) and I was washing heavy, linen camp clothes, so it was a more than miserable job. I spent two days finding it's replacement, convincing the salesperson that if I couldn't take it home with me, I'd go elsewhere ( no, I did not want to wait a week to get the washer) and getting it home. The evening of day three was allotted for hooking it up since it was raining anyway and not suitable for hanging clothes outside. I'm finally caught up with the laundry.. yay..

20m skeins of plied embroidery wools

In between laundry dramas, I was spinning. I started off spinning East Friesian Milk Sheep fleece and ended up with some generic fibre blend sliver. I'm supposedly making embroidery wools and the East Friesian just wasn't spinning up fine enough, although the bit of luster was really nice. It's not bad, just not quite what I wanted. The generic sliver was finer and as a result, I have a couple of skeins of really nice yarn. Most of this will be naturally dyed sometime this week.

We were out and about on Saturday, mainly to Ealdormere's Coronation, an SCA event which was held in St. Catherine's. It was a lovely event but to get there, we have to drive by a small town called Jordan which is the location of The Fibre Garden, an awesome spinner's supply store. As we drove by, I chose not to stop in on our way there as we were running late as it was. However after the main festivities, my sweet husband whispered in my ear, that if I didn't mind leaving early, we'd stop in on our way home. How could I pass up that offer? They had mill ends on sale, which card up beautifully and Sari Silk - which I've been wanting to play with and Icicle top -which is a sparkly nylon you can add to fibre to give it a bit of sparkle/shine! This is what came out of my drum carder.. please note, it's black, not grey but I was only going to fuss with the light for so long. I've used about 10-15% Sari Silk and 1% Icicle sliver. It's spinning up so nicely. And I have to give kudos to the boys at The Fibre Garden, who make shopping there so much fun, are so accommodating and don't think anything of it, when you show up in weird medieval costumes because you left without changing in your hurry to get there before they closed.... and selection... phew, they have so much fibre there, it's amazing.

A Fun and Fabulous Weekend - Icelandic Althing

2011-09-19T08:52:00.000-04:00

Spit with clay, copper, rivet pots and fry pan.

This weekend we were reenactment camping. The weather was on the cool side, which meant lots of blankets and a good reason to wear the wool tunics we make. It was an early Norse themed event and the second reenactment group I play with, camped together to do some awesome period playing.

We had two cooking fires going. One spit held pots with peppered apples, hot cider, veggies, water, stew and sausages. The other started off with a dye pot and a pan for flat breads but ended up with a huge roast beef, which was our dinner.

Cooking flatbreads, while watching the beef.

The owners of the property had hoped to get a permanent outdoor cob oven built (which we were going to get to play with), but real life intervened and they weren't able to get it built. What they did do, was cobble together some wonderful supplies for us to make a temporary oven to try out. We piled up cinder blocks, put on two kiln shelves and made a little enclosure of soft fire brick. We were pretty certain that it would hold enough heat to bake bread, despite a couple of people who were sure it wouldn't work. My small pottery kiln uses fire brick to insulate the kiln, keeping the heat fairly well contained and allows it to cool down slowly.

Experimental temporary bread oven

We built a fire in it and kept it going for a little over 4 hours, until the fire brick was quite warm to the touch. We scraped out the fire, did a quick clean out of the ash and promptly popped in a loaf of bread dough, totally forgetting that we needed to let the oven soak, or sit closed for a few minutes to allow the temperature to even out. Our first loaf, was burnt on the outside, but cooked on the inside. It was pretty amazing how quickly people decided to check it out and ripping off the burnt edges, devoured the yummy insides. We were able to cook 3 more loaves of bread after that, with each loaf taking a few minutes longer than the previous loaf simply because of heat loss due to opening the door and of course because there wasn't enough extra insulation to hold in the heat for a long time.

Bread from the oven and the charred remains of the first loaf

We were thrilled with the results and thankful that the event organizers had gone to the extra effort of getting us the materials to play with. We were over the top with excitement after getting the first useable loaf from the oven. That we got 3 delicious loaves was beyond expectations. How cool was it that the event organizers facilitated such a fantastic experience for us on a great day? Our group was collectively overwhelmed and over the top with excitement.

Road Trip

2011-09-12T19:23:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, my sweetie and I headed out for a short road trip. It was a dreary, grey, drizzly day at home but we took the chance of rain was slim elsewhere, so I packed up the camera and we left for our first destination, an antique and flea market. There were some beautiful pieces of furniture which I would have loved to bring home, but they were way out of our budget. There was one spinning wheel for $65, old and in great shape, except it was missing it's flyer assembly :(. No spinning tools or weaving tools and one butter mould which was falling apart. I did find the cutest little matchbox holder though, which was in pristine shape and I talked the man down to $10. My grandmother had one in her kitchen, which was cream with red trim and red and yellow flowers on the front. This one is turquoise with black trim, and design. Since we heat with wood, I think we'll actually use this little delight.

We went to Elora for lunch and some sight seeing. It's a very beautiful, old town. My daughter's wedding reception was held at the Elora Mill Inn. We spent the night there, in a room with ancient windows and walls which were approx. 30 cm thick. It was at the back of the Inn, so you could hear the water from the river rushing down the rapids and what was the mill race. Unfortunately, the Inn is closed for renovations.

We parked in an area near the Horse and Buggy parking. It's designated with a sign stating Horse and Buggies only! It's Mennonite country!

We walked down a steep hill toward the Elora Mill Inn. We walked along the street filled with cafes and boutiques, around the corner to the bridge. Our goal was the walking trail on the other side of the river. We mused that if one had to live in an apartment, being above the shops, with a balcony backing onto the river, would be rather nice.

The back part of the old mill. Those black spots are actually rods which run through to the front, holding the building together! You can see that the weather we had there was certainly not grey and drizzly. It made us happy that we'd headed out despite our weather at home.

Along the walking path were several other ruins. Some were the remaining foundations of a building or a pile of stones. This one was pretty big and you could tell something about it. Trees were growing inside of it and the path up to it was quite steep. I wonder what that building was, all that many years ago? Was it someone's home, or a factory, or something else? It was quite secluded, although it could all be recent growth. It was pretty and must have been an impressive building in it's prime.

On the way back, one last view of the Elora Mill Inn. It looks so majestic and beautiful from the walking trail. Considering the number of cracks in the stonework, the condition of the roof , and thinking there must be a few other repairs needed, I hope the cost of renovating this old majestic dame, is affordable. It is certainly a site worth preserving.

We headed home using a winding, unknown road for a most scenic drive. Of course, we got here and it was still grey and dreary, but such is life. It was still a lovely day out.

Jessie's Fleece

2011-09-10T11:17:00.000-04:00

Jessie is an older Shetland ewe owned by a friend. She got preggers by mistake and was darned near greeted by the reaper when giving birth. She survived but unfortunately her lamb did not. Shortly after giving birth, she blew half her fleece. My friend hand gathered it and when she was sheared a few weeks later, bundled it all together. She couldn't sell it so she donated it to our Regia group to use for dyeing in a demo we're doing this month.

I've washed it, twice as the lanolin and icky bits didn't totally wash out the first time. It's soft enough, but because of the stress, there is a definite break in some of it. It's also tippy and most of them are breaking off either by hand before I process or later when it's being carded. It's a shorter fleece to begin with, so far the longest fleece I've found is about 4 inches long but most of it is much less than that. Flicking only worked with the longer bits and still, it was hard enough with the breaks and tips. I've had to resort to hand carding, slowly and carefully, to get it to be useable. There are still some neps, a bit of staw and chaff that I just haven't been able to remove and a growing pile of bits I can't use. I'm thinking it's almost 50% loss so far :(

If I'd purchased this fleece, I'd be unhappy. However, as a donated fleece for a specific purpose, it's not bad. At least it's a soft fibre and a nice shade of white. It will dye up nicely and the two skeins I've gotten done so far, although having taken way longer than I'd like, will work up into something nice, at a later date. I thought I'd left plenty of time to get a number of skeins spun up, but nope, so far only two and it will be all I can do to get a 3rd spun up this week. I'd expected to have several more skeins to take with me to the demo, as I much prefer dyeing yarn to loose fibre.

Cookies

2011-09-05T11:19:00.000-04:00

After many years of admiring both reproduction and modern cookie moulds, I finally broke down and bought 2. They are generally used for Springerle and Gingerbread cookies. I purchased a reproduction 16th century mould of a spinner, spinning flax on a drop spindle and one which might be dated a bit earlier of two musicians, one with a lute and the other with a harp. They are beautiful carvings, with many details.

I'd ordered the moulds about two weeks ago and they finally arrived on Friday. I'd hoped there would be time to bake off a batch in time to use at a small dinner party I hosted on Sunday evening. Unfortunately our coolish, dry weather turned unseasonably hot and very muggy, with rain. Since the cookies need to partially dry before baking, it meant that it was a 48 hour drying time. I had the hartshorn which is ammonium carbonate, for the rising agent but didn't have an anise oil, which is the traditional flavouring. I used lemon extract as I had some on hand. I don't think I added enough as there is little to no lemon flavour. The recipe says the cookies need to age several weeks before using, and it will make a dense, cake-like cookie. They weren't bad fresh from the oven, although they do seem to be made to drink with a cup of tea or cocoa! I shall be experimenting more in the following weeks. The one thing I know for sure is that I'd love to have a few more cookie moulds!

No photo of the baked cookie as the pure white cookie cookie just didn't photography well in the dismal grey light of today, and I've just not got time to rig up some sort of light box/diffuser thingy and play around with it. They are pretty though! I'm also on the lookout for large size cookie/biscuit cutters to keep the edges from looking so ragged. My knife skills are obviously not quite so adept when put to cutting out large circles.

Spinner cookie before baking

Sunporch Roof

2011-09-02T14:15:00.000-04:00

The sun porch was another of those not yet projects. It was down the to do list a fair ways, with several what we thought were more important projects ahead of it.    Eventually, the idea is to insulate the sunporch and turn it into my studio. For the moment, it was mainly storage.   It has a northern exposure, a full wall of windows and 3 skylights. Unfortunately, the skylights looked to be another handmade, makeshift project. They had these odd frames of 2x4's, which seemed to funnel water inside! As well, last spring, when we had the first real thaw, water streamed into the laundry room/sunporch wall, where two differently sloped roofs met.

This spring, I had to keep buckets, well my dye pots actually, in various places to catch the dripping, every time it rained. We planned and when we finally had all the materials together, plus a weather forecast of 5 days in a row of sunshine, the work commenced.   Now my boys have done all of our own roofing in the past. After hours of hacking away at a few shingles, I was asked to go pull nails. It turns out that they'd cleared the shingles off of whole roofs in less time than it took to remove 3 rows of shingles on the sunporch roof! They were stuck on, breaking into soggy little pieces and none of the nails were coming out. So yes, I climbed the ladder and started pulling out nails.
The shingles were all a sodden mess. They'd been layered in places above and below with some sort of flat roofing materials and then tar had been dripped on edges, I'm guessing in hopes of sealing out the water which was coming in around the "skylights".    This was instead of just putting proper flashing around the skylights and the several different roof angles.

Instead we've had to take it right back.   The skylights came out, the roof decking has been replaced, wood replaced and all new drip edge, all new facia, loads of flashing. They are laying down the membrane right now and then the shingling will commence.

Of course the 5 days of sunshine in the forecast was changed the moment they got the first row of shingles off. We've had two major rains since then. One of which was kept at bay by judicious tarping. The other rain storm was accompanied by wind and tornado warnings.   The rain came sheeting in the one wall, requiring lots of towels, a large plastic bin and a handy dye pot. Luckily the plastic bin was in the laundry room, full of clean medieval camping clothes, which hadn't yet been put away.   I upturned the clean, folded clothing and used the bucket, which worked beautifully.

Hopefully this sunporch roof will last a while.   The removal of the skylights has definitely changed the light levels in there. I've been told though, that when it gets turned into a studio, if I need the light, we will put in new skylights, properly installed :)

Fibre and Food

2011-08-27T16:13:00.000-04:00

I totally understand why some weavers like to work with thick threads. I've been waffling for weeks about what project to put on the loom. There are a number of projects which I've got planned, but I hadn't queued them up. This meant that the couple of rather emotional things which happened this summer, got in the way of me actually choosing a first project. Finally I grabbed the easiest project of the lot. I had picked up some Bamboo Silk blends from the Spinrite outlet a while ago.. maybe last fall? Yeah, it's been a while. There were only a couple of packages of it, 6 balls in each package, but they only had a beige colour. I grabbed a package anyway, despite my rather unispired view of the colour. (They had 6 balls of Angora/Bamboo blend too which I snagged). I thought I might get around to dyeing it, but didn't. The yarn is much thicker than I normally use. I like weaving with finer yarns and worried about the thickness.

When I just ignored my worries and worked out the details, I realized that I had about enough for 3 scarves, if I managed my sett properly. The Fanny loom has a nice shed and I find that it tends to be far easier to do more picks per inch than I want. My ancient Artisat is perpetually less picks per inch no matter what tension I have the warp or how hard I beat that darned thing.

Broken Twill -Bamboo Silk Blend

In the end, I'm happy that I didn't dye the yarn. The very neutral scarves mean they will go with anything and therefore suitable as gifts. The bamboo silk blend is so soft that it's like weaving a hug. Of course I've no idea how it will stand up to the wear of everyday use, not if it will even wet finish to something I'll like.   I really didn't have enough yarn to sample much. I figured that at least I'm back weaving..
And the part about understanding why some weavers like to weave with thick yarns? It took me a few minutes to wind the warp and a couple of hours more to thread the heddles, reed, wind on, balance the tension, wind the bobbins and start weaving.   My normal routine for tea towels, shawls and yardage often takes several days.

This afternoon I made a batch of Raspberry jam... the recipe was supposed to yield 8 cups. I got only 5.5, but it's pretty awesome tasting raspberry jam.   I've more berries so will whip some more up later.   The jam really is that deep, dark ruby red colour! It's beautiful.

I was out grabbing a few forgotten groceries and found myself staring at a bag of whole wheat bread flour.    After all, with fresh raspberry jam, one really does need fresh bread!   I peeked at it while rising. It's got a little bit more to go before I punch it down and shape it into loaves.

The Best of Intentions

2011-08-22T12:12:00.000-04:00

Mine that is! I had intended that this weekend should be a fibre weekend. I was going to do a sample rinsing of the solar dye vats. I was going to wind a warp and at least start dressing the loom.   I was going to ply all the partial bobbins left over from the Stanley Cup spinning project.   I also wanted to redraft my husbands doublet pattern and get it started and had been musing about a new late period kirtle for myself.

Instead, on Saturday, we picked up a half bushel of green beans, a half bushel of peaches and a half bushel of plum tomatoes. The beans went into the freezer that night. Sunday morning I made peach jam. I was pretty disappointed that most of the peaches were rotting from the inside out. I got one batch of jam from the 1/2 bushel and that was only because I had 3 peaches ripe on the counter to add!   Then we popped out to do a bit of antiquing. At one antique mall, lots of small booths housed in a large building, I found a beautiful butter mould.   I rather like butter moulds. It was a good price but I neither brought it with me while I looked nor remembered which booth I saw it in, so it didn't come home with me.   I usually look for antique weaving and spinning tools but there were none to be had that day.

On the way home, we stopped for canning jars and a jar lifter.   Normally I just freeze the tomatoes, either with or without their skins. However, with the chooks in the freezer, the freezer is starting to fill. Add to that the time it takes for frozen tomatoes to thaw, even in the saucepan, I decided to drag out the water bath canner.   Luckily I bought mainly 500 ml jars, since I'd forgotten how small the canner actually is. The 1 lt. jars are too tall for it.   There was a pressure canner on sale, which I almost indulged in, but it's not really necessary for tomatoes, nor did I budget for it.   The half bushel of tomatoes gave me 20, 500 ml jars plus about 1.5 - 2 jars left, which I decided was not enough to bother keeping the canner boiling for another 45 minutes. We'll eat them for dinner instead.

The one sunflower in my garden, planted by birds I'm sure, has a huge sagging head. These two little extras brightened up the morning today! Even better is that I saw a honey bee on it. They've been far and few between this year, so if they are making a comeback, it's an awesome development.

Fibre activities are definitely in the works for this week though!

Socks and Breaking The Rules!

2011-08-16T19:48:00.000-04:00

Since I started knitting socks, I've had a rule of only one pair on the needles at a time. It's worked and I've finished my socks, totally avoiding second sock syndrome.. when you only ever knit the first sock of a pair and then start on another.

This holiday trip, I broke my rule.   I took yarn and an extra set of needles and started a new pair. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Camping, in a group, with friends. Busy running around to classes, visiting, shopping and camp chores, I figured a mindless knitted sock - in this case a 3/1 ribbed sock, would be perfect.   Now the colourwork socks were on the needles and I'd finished the finickity counting the chart part, so the rest of plain knitting. Why didn't I bring it along?
My gauge was off. I knit the second sock in a totally different gauge.   There was a noticeable difference between the patterns on the first and second sock. The bottom stripey bit on the second sock, started where the first one ended! I was discontented to say the least.   At that point, I was ready to rip the thing out and start again, working to tighten up my knitting.   I'd be able to do what I had first intended as well, which was to knit the second sock as the reverse of the first.. so black pattern on a red sock. I had totally forgotten to do so and was halfway through the pattern before I noticed it. sigh..

When I got back home, the patterns had relaxed somewhat and are closer in size now. The big question is, do I try to live with the difference or do I rip it out and start again?    (Not only that, but I just realized that I've knitted both socks with the pattern bottom to top, so it's upside down! How in the world did I manage that one?)

Anyway, I left the sock at home, so I wouldn't rip it out rashly. It was a lot of work! I grabbed two balls of sock yarn in jewel tones to use as a camping project. The sock worked up quickly, although I need to rip it back a couple of rows and insert a few extra rows before I restart the toe. I will have to say that while I love the colours, I'm not fond of the mismatched stripes of the colourway. That huge purple blotch in between the thinner stripes just feels so totally wrong. It would have been quite perfect if the purple stripe was the same size as the other colours.. just sayin... I don't think I've another pair of socks that I consider quite so ugly, and this one isn't even a whole pair yet!

It's good to be home

2011-08-14T15:31:00.000-04:00

I'm back from holidays. No matter how much fun I have when I'm away, it always feels good to come home. I've got a ton of laundry to do. I should have done it today, but they were calling for rain. I'm sure it rained someplace, but not actually here. There are bins of camping gear to tidy up and put away. I can't believe that I took my camera, but didn't drag it out, even once. It seemed out of place to haul a camera bag and a dslr around at a medieval reenactment! I brought my spinning wheel and even got to spend an afternoon spinning. I'm not sure I spun enough though, to actually warrant the space it took in the truck. I'll rethink bringing it along next year.

All in all, it was a good holiday though. I had fun, spent time with friends, learned some new things, and learned a few things about myself in the process.

I came home to find that the boys were fine, the chooks were happy and the Rhode Island Red crosses had bright red combs, which they didn't have before I left. This means that we should be getting more eggs in a few weeks.

Garden Update ...
The garden is rather overgrown with weeds. I don't think there is enough time this year left to put it back to rights though. The Kolrabi is ready to harvest, but something has eaten all the leaves. The bulbs are tender and delicious though. The lush patch of beets I had before I went away, is almost gone. Nobody here has eaten them, so some animal has had a good meal or two.

The volunteer sunflower, is very pretty. It's growing in the middle of the peppers, so looks totally out of place. The peppers are giving the best harvest we've ever had.
The first tomatoes have been harvested. We'll not get enough to freeze or can, but there should be eating tomatoes.

There won't be any pumpkins to harvest this year. The plants have finally started growing, but there are only male flowers. On the other hand, there are a few Kabocha squash, a new variety for me and of all things, there are watermelons growing. There are two which are the size of large grapefruits and several more smaller ones! I shall be watching them grow with great anticipation. I've tried to grow watermelons several times before but never before actually had anything to harvest!

There are garden Phlox growing. In the totally wrong place, they'll need to be moved next year, if I remember.

This plant has small flowers which look similar to Foxglove, with both the colour and the spots inside the flower cones. They aren't nearly as large though. I've no idea what it is, but it's pretty enough. There are a few other flowers blooming as well. One black hollyhock, which decided to bloom the first year. It's a bit of a sad looking plant as well, which may need staking next year. Not enough to dye with though, with only a few blossoms on it.

Chooks and the Big Wide World, and stuff

2011-07-30T21:57:00.000-04:00

First day outside. Only one brave chook standing on the grass.

Well, not all that bit, but out of the coop at any rate. We put up a small, portable fence outside the coop door to let the young girls out sometimes. Their first foray into the new space was so much fun to watch. All but the bravest few spent the first few minutes just peeking out the door. The brave ones stood on the little cement pad in front. They'd step off the cement onto the grass, jump in surprise and hop back on the cement. Soon they were a few feet into the grass, hopping up with every step. So much constant movement that I couldn't get a clear photo of them. Every photo was blurry as they were non-stop moving and if one was in focus, the others weren't.

They've settled down now. Each morning, they wait at the door for me to open it and let them out. The silly girls follow me around, getting underfoot and in the way. I've taken to tossing a little bit of scratch out in their chicken yard, so I can do the inside coop chores without tripping on the silly creatures. It's so much easier when they are occupied. I gave them a wayward cob of corn yesterday and they devoured it like the little raptors they are. Too funny to watch!

They have found a good spot in which to dust bathe and don't seem too fond of the midday sun, although a couple of them can be seen sunning themselves a little later in the afternoon. Sometimes they are all huddled in the small, shady spot, waiting for the shade to cover their area, about 5 pm this time of year.

One of the girls is a flyer. She wings her way over the fence and lands on the other side, trying desperately to figure out how to get back in with her cronies. She walks back and forth along the fence until she sees me. She then makes some sort of ruckus to catch my attention and waits for me to lift the portable fence, so she can get back inside. Every single morning we go through the same thing.

A couple of weeks ago, two of my boys went on a hike with me. It was at a local , well groomed trail. It was a very short hike because the mosquitoes were huge and hungry!

On the way out of the trail, there was this small fern, growing out of a crack in some cut rock stairs. It never ceases to amaze me how resilient Mother Nature is, despite human needs to tame and make comfortable, some of our non-urban areas.

The Rudbekia are blooming. There are a couple of small plants.. more I think the wild Black Eyed Susan than the gloriosa daisy varieties. They are still pretty, though not as prolific as something like Rudbekia Goldsturm.

Off for holidays. It was supposed to be one week, but my sweetie made a rather magnanimous suggestion that he spend his holiday weekend packing the truck, driving down and dropping me off, driving home and coming back next weekend when we were supposed to go. I took him up on the offer, despite there being tons to do. I've left instructions on how to freeze green beans, zucchini and tomatoes, how to harvest and freeze the Dyer's Coreopsis and the chook duties for my boys. We shall see what happens.

Coreopsis

2011-07-27T10:29:00.000-04:00

Coreopsis Tinctoria plants

Some years ago, in the spring, I travelled around to both main stream and more specialized garden centres looking to establish a dye garden. I had in my hand a list of suitable plants with both their common and Latin names, so as to be able to easily find exactly what I was looking for. It was a somewhat difficult task. Many mainstream garden centres had front of store staff with little knowledge. The more specialized garden centres just didn't carry many of the plants I was looking for, although they had a few of them. Several referred me to Richter's Seeds, as the best place for me to find what I was looking for. They were right.

Coreopsis Tinctoria

I've had great luck with many dye plants over the years, but the one that has eluded me is Coreopsis Tinctoria. I've found a great number of varieties of Coreopsis out there but never actual Coreopsis Tinctoria. Tinctoria usually means that the plant will have very good dye properties. I'm thinking that the current trend to low maintenance, highly hardy perennial gardens may discourage plants like Coreopsis Tinctoria, since it's an annual. The only place I'd been able to find them was Richter's, which indeed does have a more than amazing selection of wild flowers, herbs etc. I would highly recommend them as I've had spectacular service from them over the years. I've had problems in the past with getting Coreopsis Tinctoria seeds to actually germinate and if they do, staying alive long enough to get them in the ground.

Coreopsis Tinctoria all red mutant flowers

This year, my Coreopsis seeds germinated beautifully. Not so in the past, but research suggests that they actually germinate in the fall and overwinter as rosettes, before flowering in the summer. I'll plant next year's crop this fall to see if it works. However, I got seedings this spring. They survived and I stuck them in the ground. They loved our nasty, cold, wet spring and they flourished. They are a bit leggy, with delicate leaves and pretty bi-coloured flowers. Each morning, I pop out and pick all the flowers which are fully opened, tossing them in the freezer for future use. I will leave a few flowers to go to seed, for next year. ~~Several~~ Two of the flowers have virtually no yellow on them. The petals are the deep red/burgandy colour of the centres. I'm also letting these go to seed and planting them separately. If they carry on the burgandy colour to their offspring, it would be interesting to see if there is a colour difference in the dye.

Some variety of perennial Coreopsis

I've some perennial Coreopsis in the garden as well, both a double and a single flowered type. I'm also collecting these flowers to use as a comparison with the Coreopsis Tinctoria to see if it is worth the extra effort. Regular Coreopsis give yellows with alum and oranges with iron mordants. Coreopsis Tinctoria is supposed to give deep, rich oranges with only alum. I guess we shall see later this summer when the plants stop flowering and I have enough stored flowers with which to dye.

I treat my dye plants as I would any other crop plant I grow. When the fruit or in this case the flowers are are ripe, I harvest them for the purpose. I won't wait until the flowers dye back in case it lessens the pigment. Instead, I have flowerless dye plants. I was once told, that this was a little odd. However that is the purpose that I grew the flowers for, so I use them that way. Anything else would feel odd to me :)

Solar Dyeing Addendum

2011-07-24T10:56:00.000-04:00

I was thinking about Helen's comment about how she uses glass jars and sometimes leaves them as long as a year. I realized that perhaps climate has something to do with the methods we choose when using similar techniques such as solar dyeing. Our winters are on the harsh side. They are cold and can be long. Our first frosts come in September. We can have snow, which stays as early as November. I have a high/low thermometer in the greenhouse and during the winter, there is little advantage even there. If it is -15C outside, it is -15C in the greenhouse. I've only vaguely thought about using glass jars. Large ones are hard to find these days and I would have to bring them inside during the winter. If I were to leave a full glass jar outside, it would likely crack from the frozen liquid expanding, unless I was certain to leave enough space in the jar. Even then I'd worry about it just from the freezing and thawing that might take place at various times, from temperature fluctuations.

Even our summer weather can be erratic. We're having extreme and unusually hot weather, but often we get very warm days and cool nights. I was doing some Indigo fermentation one year, starting early in June to take advantage of a few really early, warm days. I had 2 white buckets and one which was blue and white. After the 2 warm days, I noticed that the water in the buckets had cooled down noticeably. The outside of the buckets were almost cool. In thinking about this, I sat down on some plastic bags of top soil and compost and found that it was hot, very hot in places, which were the black writing. I immediately spray painted my buckets black and a few hours later, the water was steamy warm. I'll have to do some checking on water temps.

Bettina - my regular old water is well water. Our water is fairly heavy in iron, so we filter it somewhat. Not sure about the hardness factor. I don't think it's super hard, but at least is free from chlorine.

Solar Dyeing Experiments

2011-07-21T09:26:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I had this urge to do some dyeing. It's been so hot though, that there is no way I want to do it inside and sitting by a fire, in the blazing sun, when it's this hot out, just didn't seem like a lot of fun. I checked the cupboard and sure enough, my tin of black spray paint was there. I grabbed a couple of empty, kitty litter pails and spray painted them black. I added water from the garden hose. The hose is long and the sun heated the water in the hose to about 130F., which filled the first bucket completely with a bit left for the second bucket. After they were filled, I checked the temperatures. The second bucket was at about 90F, after cooler water started running in the hose.

I decided to use extracts because I had some which I don't really use and they were probably at that needing to get used stage. I added some Madder extract and Alum to the one bucket and some Cochineal extract and Alum to the second bucket. I left the buckets sit in the sun for a bit while the extracts dissolved. A bit later, I tossed in some pre-wetted Shetland fleece. I've gently stirred it twice a day. It certainly isn't instant gratification, but it's been an interesting experiment. My previous solar dyeing experiments have all been Indigo fermentation vats.

I'm not fond of Cochineal extracts because I've only ever gotten purples and pinks with them. I'd have added some cream of tarter in hopes of pushing the colour to the red spectrum, if I had any. I didn't feel like taking a trip to town just for cream of tarter. The Madder started of a dull orangy brown but the reds are starting to show through. So far in my experience, Madder goes toward the orange end with slightly acidic conditions. I wonder if it is too late to toss in something to push it a bit alkaline?

I'll keep stirring and checking the colour twice a day until I get something I am happy with and then rinse, rinse, rinse.

Slowly but surely

2011-07-19T11:54:00.000-04:00

It is hot for this area. We've had day after day of very warm weather, with no rain for relief. If this were our normal weather, we'd probably want A/C, but right now, we've got a trusty fan, which blows the hot air around.   The ground is rock hard and weeding has been next to impossible.

While it's been a bit on the warm side for spinning and working with wool, I did get most of two bobbins plied early one morning.   Now to just finishing winding it off on to the niddy noddy.   This is half of what is on the jumbo bobbin and I'll finish it up ~~when~~ if it cools down this evening.

I dug up part of the garlic this morning.   It's out drying. I decided to wait a bit to dig up the other half of the garlic bed. While the first row of garlic was mainly comprised of large, full heads, the second row was a bit smaller. I'll wait another week or so to dig up the rest.

The colourwork sock is coming along. I'm almost ready to do the toe. The yarn is Scheepjes Invicta Sock and it has been a joy to knit with. It has a fair bit of sproing factor to it, which really helps with the fitting. It is easy to knit, wasn't very splitty (when the yarn seems to split and get caught on the needles when taking a stitch) and is relatively inexpensive. It doesn't come in pink though :( I've learned and relearned a bit about stranded knitting too. The difference between a sweater and a sock is a bit more than I anticipated, simply because of the size I think. If I'd kntted it any tighter and the yarn didn't have a bit of sproing to it, I don't think that this oen would have fit. However it does, nicely, so I'm happy with the results - upside down pattern and all.

Garden update...

2011-07-14T10:30:00.000-04:00

The hot weather has set the garden to growing. Last year our tomato plants were huge, green vines with little fruit which then got attacked by blight. Apparently blight is an issue in this area. I had planted the tomatoes in the new garden, which was heavily mulched and probably nitrogen heavy due to the loads of composting leaves and grass clippings.   This would have resulted in the massive amount of green growth with little fruit.   I moved the tomatoes to the old garden this year.   I lightly composed it before I planted the seedlings and have heavily mulched it with straw.   I worried that the plants were hardly growing, but most of them have started to catch up. Next year I'll remember to provide early protection; planting them under plastic or insulated in some way.    There are 4 different varieties of tomatoes - a small fruiting hybrid which has mega disease tolerance, including some blight resistance. It's fruits are bigger than cherry or grape tomatoes, but smaller than regular tomatoes. There are plum tomatoes for freezing and canning, orange and sweet 100's cherry type tomatoes for general salads and out of hand eating.   We'll see what happens this year. They are well spaced for air circulation in order to combat disease and I'm hoping the straw mulch will have a 2 fold benefit. First of course is helping keep the weeds down. The second is that disease like blight are supposed to be soil borne, and splashing of the dirt on the leaves helps cause it. By putting a heavy layer of straw down, I'm hoping that the soil won't splash on the leaves, thereby helping the plant avoid soil borne diseases.

In previous gardens, the only peppers I've had do well, were some hot peppers which were purchased by accident.   I'd tried them covered with a makeshift plastic dome and they did fantastically.   This year, I planted 2 types of peppers - sweet yellow banana peppers and a shorter season sweet pepper, which unfortunately happened to be yellow as well.   I'd forgotten that when I purchased the banana pepper seedlings. I was going to put them all under plastic, but just after I'd planted, there were a couple of days of hot, hot, dry weather, which stalled my doing so.   The weeks of cool, wet weather right after slowed things down, but I think the plants are catching up.   The banana peppers are loaded with fruits and the other peppers have just started flowering!

The peas are almost done fruiting.   I've had a tasty snack every day for a week and a half. Yesterday there were enough ready to harvest to add to a tasty bulgar salad for dinner.   I shelled over a cup of fresh peas, which were so yummy.

The Scarlet Runner beans are flowering.   The yellow pole beans are about to flower and the regular green pole beans are slightly behind that.   There are only a few yellow beans because the wild beasties seemed to enjoy feasting on the seedlings as soon as they were sprouting.

The first zucchini should be ready to harvest soon. I hand pollinated it just to be certain. :) The cucumbers have started producing as well. These are regular old Straight Eight's, a reliable standard. The fruit will take a bit more time to mature though, since it's a regular old slicing cucumber and nothing fancy or special.

The rest of the garden is doing just as nicely. The beets are growing well. We might have some carrots too. The potatoes should be ready to harvest in a few weeks and the garlic is almost ready to dig up and dry. The early lettuce I planted has been delicious. We've eaten salad almost every day. I'm amazed that it still isn't bitter or going to seed although the second crop is growing. We've harvested more arugula from that and the lettuce may be ready to start harvesting next week. We've eaten radishes (daikon yum), fresh onions and will harvest some Swiss chard for dinner tonight. Since I didn't have any Swiss Chard seeds and there were none available when I looked for them, I've no idea how it got there. However I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth - we'll eat it anyway, despite my not planting it and it being in not quite the spot that I'd have chosen.

2011-07-08T13:16:00.000-04:00

Last weekend I started a new pair of socks, using a colourwork stranded technique. The last pair of socks I tried with this method, stymied me. I know now, it was because the chart needed to be redrawn. On July 1st I tried again, with a different design. I pulled out the design I really wanted to do and decided that perhaps it was a tad too ambitious for a first project, or at least first stranded colourwork in 25 years or so. I found a slightly simpler pattern to start with. I pulled out the yarn and started knitting in a bit of down time. I got the cuff and first border done before camping with a ton of friends became distracting. When I got home, I decided that it was enough practice and ripped it out, going back to the the first choice design. Half-way through the pattern, I found an error that I couldn't correct since I'd managed to do a half pattern for one of the repeats on the wrong row. With no lifeline to rip back to and save the stitches or a gazillion miles of tinking (reverse knitting, stitch by stitch), I ripped it back and returned to my original pattern. I won't tell you how many hours and restarts it has taken to get this much done though, because I don't want to know. However it is the only project I've worked on this week :( At least it has been fun. I'm fairly happy with the outcome although I think I want to do a few more colourwork/stranded knitting projects just to finesse my technique a ~~little~~ lot more.

The orange lilies are out. We always called them Tiger lilies as kids. They've naturalized everywhere and there are huge swaths of them along the roadsides. This patch is just at the front edge of the property and while not as large as many of them, it's still pretty impressive. Being day lilies, they won't bloom for all that long. I noticed that not only are they blooming but the beautiful clear blue flowers of the Chicory have just started as well as the Queen Anne's Lace. Summer is definitely in full swing. All these flowers are just screaming out for a dyeing session.

Off the Needles and playing in the dirt.

2011-06-27T11:18:00.000-04:00

The sockettes are done! Of course footie socks are only half socks, so didn't take as long as a full pair. It took one skein of yarn and an extra metre or two. These are from Paton's Kroy, so are shorter skeins, but a skein with a few extra metres would mean I'd get both from one skein. That is handy. Luckily, I had the leftover bits from a previous pair of socks from this colourway. I'd bought a bag of 6 skeins from the outlet store. While you get a bit of a deal on price, it does mean that you either have lots of socks in the same colour or you need to trade them off with someone else.

Potato flowers are so delicate and pretty.   I've got two varieties planted this year, Kenebec and another variety, either Chieftan or Russet.. Normally I plant Yukon Golds but decided to get wild this year and try something different! The little mesh bags holding the seed potatoes weren't labelled, so once you grab a couple of bags and set them on the counter, there is no telling which was which.   I planted this row early and while I worried that the wet, cold spring, would rot the potatoes before they had a chance to grow, they are doing really well. The other two rows were planted later and are definitely playing catch up. It will be interesting to see whether they do indeed catch up the the earlier planted potatoes.   I wonder if there will be a difference in amounts of potatoes harvested or if we just get to enjoy an extended harvest of fresh potatoes?

Weeding seems to be an endless task this year.   It was a great year for the Maples to produce keys and those keys have decided that conditions are perfect for growing. I'm plucking out hundreds of Maple seedlings from my gardens this year.   I swear that I pull them out for hours and by the next day, there are more growing in their place.   It feels like I am weeding the same patch over and over again. ( It kind of looks that way too and is probably fairly accurate) The only good thing is that the spots that have a heavy straw cover have few to no weeds. It's only where I haven't mulched yet or where it's thinner, that there are problems.    Of course you can't use the straw mulch on seeds until they've grown substantially but on planting seedlings, it's been a huge help.

The Petunias are doing well. I plant Petunias in memory of my mother, who loved them. These are in half barrel planters. There are regular and Wave Petunias. I'm hoping the Wave Petunias will drape down the sides of the barrel dramatically. I've never tried them before, so it could be interesting. Usually I just toss some Marigolds in with the Petunias as it makes a pretty colour combo, with the added bonus that I can snip off the Marigolds for dye plants. Yep, it is a year for shaking things up in the garden!   Different varieties of potatoes and Wave Petunias? What next? hehehe

Who'd 'ave thunk?

2011-06-22T16:52:00.000-04:00

Who would have thought that this silly little sockette would be able to create such a fuss? First I cast on a couple of extra stitches than I normally would for a stockinette sock. It was okay, because I was going to knit the foot as a ribbed sock, but I didn't. I used the wrong ribbing pattern and everything... so rip.. I had to rip it right back and cast on a second time.   This time I got it right, knew I was going to do plain stockinette. I got to the heel flap and even marked down my rows so I could make sure it was right.   I turned the heel, picked up the gusset stitches and started the decreases. Something looked wrong though and ended up ripping it back to the gusset stitches and starting them all over again... I was wrong though. After about an inch of knitting, I realized that the sock still looked wrong. It was too small.   I counted the rows on the heel flap and sure enough, I'd marked down that I'd knitted more rows there than I had. That's a new mistake for me, 'cause I've never done that one before!    Rip.... back to the heel flap.   It's all good now though. I've added the extra few rows, turned the heel and finished the gusset.   It should be plain knitting until I get to the toe!

Today in the garden, I ripped out the Arugula, Spinach and Radishes which were going to seed. We've had lots of salads with the first two, but nary a radish this year.   Imagine my surprise when I dug them up and sure enough, there were finally radishes.. a few only, but enough to make a nice salad for dinner tonight.   I've still got lettuces growing, leaf lettuce mixture and romaine, which has actually headed up this year. I've replanted Arugula and summer heat tolerant lettuces.

Then I noticed that the first waterlily of the season has blossomed. It's not quite fully open yet, but it's pretty.

Two winters ago, I tried winter sowing for the first time.   Of the two containers I planted, one seed germinated. It was an Elecampane.   I grew this plant only because it is mentioned in medieval cookery books and in a few places about dyeing.   I'd never seen an Elecampane plant before and had only seen a photo of the flowers.   I planted the one lone seedling and it just sort of survived the summer. I half expected it not to come back this spring. It did, first with one small leaf, then two.   Today there are a number of leaves coming up as well and I have hope that I might actually get a flower head.   However, I was totally unprepared for the size of the foliage. The leaves are huge, massive things which make me wonder if I've planted this poor plant in the wrong place. None of the photos I've seen since show any of the elephantine leaves of this plant!

The little pink flowers are Goutweed.. I've been trying to get rid of the nasty thing for two years now.   I swear the darned stuff in invincible!

Starting projects, pretty flowers and secret desires...

2011-06-20T17:14:00.000-04:00


Yellow Day Lilies

I'd love to say I've finished lots of projects this week, but in reality I just started lot of projects. I started fitting a pattern for an everyday shirt.. not done. I started knitting a pair of footie sockettes for me, not done. I started sewing up the new pilgrim bag, not done. I just kept starting things with nothing being close to finished.

I also played in the dirt. I weeded the garden and then weeded some more. I replanted a few seeds. I mulched parts of the garden. I'm using straw this year. Ruth Stout's method uses any sort of compostable matter, leaves, spoiled hay etc. I use leaves in the fall, but they pretty much decompose over the winter, under the heavy blanket of snow. Straw is cheap enough to purchase, so I'm using it. Her suggestion is 8 inches thickness to begin with, but I've been using 4-6 inches and even at 4 inches, it seems enough to keep the weeds down. I'm shaking out the flakes of straw, so it strews randomly. I think the criss crossing of all the little stems of straw helps deter the weeds, once it settles down. Straw is the stems of harvested grain like oats or wheat. There should be little to no seed heads left, which is helpful when trying not to germinate more unwanted weeds and plants. I'd have expected the straw to start breaking down and composting faster than it does. Perhaps that's because it lacks the green part of compost. I'll add lots of grass clippings later in the summer. Right now it's doing it's job at keeping the weeds down and helping hold in soil moisture.


Perennial Coreopsis

I found a few perennials on sale. I didn't really need any more, but 2 more Icelandic Poppies made their way home with me, a perennial Coreopsis and some Yellow Yarrow. I really wanted Red Yarrow, but couldn't find any this year. Really cheap Yellow Yarrow is an acceptable substitute! I also came home with 2 more Blueberry bushes. We currently have 4 planted. One of the Blueberries was a replacement for one which is looking rather poorly. The other was to replace a second sickly looking plant, but it seems to be doing okay now. I'll plant it someplace to wait and see if this one keeps doing well. I've heard you need several varieties to germinate Blueberries and have lucked out with finding at least 2, possibly 3 different ones.

The birds are eating all the Red Currents and Gooseberries again this year. They're not even ripe yet and are disappearing. Next year I will invest in some bird netting covers for the berries! I'm hoping the blackberries and the blueberries will start to bear fruit next year and want to preserve those for our own use, rather than the wildlife, for sure!

I've been playing with my camera. This was the only close to pretty sunset I've seen in a very long while. I tried to capture it but it seemed like the colours kept changing, minute by minute. It was going from purple to orange then fading out completely and back again. Most bizarre and beautiful.

Today, this was the view out my front picture window. The sky was moody greys and lavenders, laying heavy upon the horizon. The neighbour was haying, trying to get it in before it rained. It was such a serene picture. It is also one of the few sights that sets my heart to longing. I've always wanted enough land to hay, and a tractor, mower, baler etc. It's one of my secret passions...

Projects from the last couple of days

2011-06-14T20:18:00.000-04:00

I've tried very hard to finish up the bag of Shetland roving. I'm almost at the end and I'm starting to dislike it. The last little bit is just ever so slightly compacted. Stretching it out should help, but it doesn't really do much for it. It seems to be all the shorter fibres. I'd like to say it's a bit neppy, but there aren't really any bits and bumps in it, it just spins a bit lumpier than I'd like. So during the last Stanley Cup playoff game (1 more to go), I spun as much as I could bear and then switched to the pink socks. I'd set them down and realized that if I didn't just pick them up and finish them, they'd not get done by the time they are needed, later this summer. I thought it would take another week to finish them, but it was only 3 or 4 days. I finished up the toe today and will graft it tomorrow when I'm not tired. I had to knit the toe 3 times to get it close to matching the first sock - though it really didn't. I'd left it too long to remember exactly what I did and forgot to write it down!

I finished dressing the loom yesterday. I found one crossed thread, so fixed that and today, I started weaving. I'll have enough weft for one of the bags but I'm not sure about the other. I should hunt down something else to use just in case I don't have enough. It's prettier than I anticipated and I rather like it. The two different browns blend together nicely and the blue stands out enough but isn't glaringly so. Of course, tomorrow in the sunshine, I may get entirely different results. It's a simple tabby. I'm going to full it a fair bit, so I figured it wasn't worth putting a lot of effort into a pattern. I didn't want to obscure the stripes too much either, nor did I have enough warp for a twill. It's definitely a yarn leftovers project!

We went for a short hike at a local conservation area on Sunday. It was supposed to be sunny, but instead was cool and cloudy until we got to the end of the trail. At one point, I'd wished I had mitts on! It's June for goodness sake. One shouldn't need mitts in June! We've had a few huge wind storms lately and there were a number of places where trees had been uprooted or broken, in dangerous areas. There were a few places where they had to take chainsaws in to make it safer. This was the only moment of brightness in the whole 1 hour hike.

The buttercups were pretty. There was a small patch of them near the end of the trail. Other than that, there was one faded Columbine and some Dame's Rocket in a distant field. Not much else blooming there right now.

Chook update

2011-06-11T20:09:00.001-04:00

The wee chicks have grown. This photo was taken last week. The white ones are meaties and almost ready to ship here. The pretty ones are layer replacements; Plymouth Barred Rocks (dark speckled ones) and Rhode Island Red x Columbia crosses (red). We knew the White Rock meat birds would grow quickly, but I really don't think we were prepared for how quickly they would grow in actuality. They are huge here and by this week they were even larger. The White Rocks are fairly slow, due to their size and I will admit that a chicken that size, which still peeps like a little one, is a tad weird.

The little girls though are feisty beasts. Last year's females were much more docile. One of the red ones, probably the one who is posing for the photo, has decided for the past couple of weeks to try flying. She's topped the short walls which were all that was needed for the White Rocks. Tonight, when I went to shut up the coop, she was sitting on one of the walls, roosting! Guess what my sweetie needs to build tomorrow.. yep, a new roost for the baby girls.

There are few commercial poultry processors who still do custom killing. The one we used last year only does commercial batches now. At one point we were looking at at least a 2 hour drive each way, or doing it ourselves.   Most places which do custom processing, fill up quickly. Luckily we found one less than an hour drive away, which still had space.

Yesterday morning at 6 am, we were up catching chickens. Well, my sweetie caught them. I manned the crates and helped load the crates into the truck.   I was going to ship 3 of my hens, 2 which are a bit aggressive to other hens and one more. However, we made a few mistakes there. First, we should have gone in before bed and caught them while they were roosting. At the very least, we should have caught them first in the morning. However we didn't think it would be an issue, so we caught all the meaties first. By then of course, the girls were wide awake and aware that something was up.   After spending more than a few minutes chasing them around their pen, we decided that they had a reprieve 'cause we new we weren't going to catch them. My aim was to keep the flock at a reasonable size, while having some young girls to lay over the winter while the older one's will be moulting and not really laying much at all! Now I'm going to have a flock of 16 .. I sure hope we like eggs.

We dropped off the chooks.. no, it wasn't the nicest job to do, but they place was really clean and it was obvious that the people there knew what they were doing and how to do it efficiently.
We came home, did some errands and I had a nap! On Wed. I did a medieval textile demo for 400 kids and about 60 adults.   It lasted most of the day, in an auditorium, with cement floors, no A/C and not even the ceiling fans were turned on. I was still tired from that!
My sweetie decided to make dinner for me. It was spit roasted beef and fire roasted potatoes. We had a salad with greens from our garden to go with it. Yummy!

Today, we picked up the birds, freezer ready. I wish I wasn't charging my camera battery or I could show you what, as my son calls it, "the wall of chicken" looks like. A freezer full of chicken and right now, no place for much else! By the way, the processor did an amazing job and so did we I think. The smallest weighed in at 2 kilos and the 3 largest at 3.1 kilos. The rest were nicely in between.

Dyeing with Cutch

2011-06-06T14:13:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, I dyed yarn for the warp which had me stymied. I found some yellow which had previously been dyed with Yellow Bedstraw. It was for a sampling project and is leftover. It's pretty close in size to the Harrisville Shetland I'd wound off and I had enough of it to finish the warp and probably do the weft of at least one of the projects. I didn't want it yellow though. In my stash of supplies there isn't a lot which will produce brown. I have a few Oak galls, but not enough for this quantity and they'd require crushing and soaking. Walnuts I normally just harvest in the autumn. There were two little bags of Cutch though and I'd never tried it before. It was interesting researching this dye because depending on where you check, it is suggested you use a 20% - 400% dye to fibre ratio. That is a huge range! I ended up using 50% Cutch by weight to the yarn and then added a second skein in for an exhaust dip. Interestingly, they are both very close in colour. The exhaust vat dyed yarn will be weft.

First, I weighed out the yarn and had 2 skeins, weighing 100 grams each. I then weighed out 50 grams of Cutch resin. It was actually 53 grams but I wasn't worried about precision with this experiment. It seemed better to err on the side of a bit more dye than less I filled a dye pot with water. I used the outdoor hose and it was well water.

Both skeins of Yellow Bedstraw went into the pot to soak while the fire was started.

I decided to dye outside for several reasons. Cutch is supposed to time to dissolve and then the colours are reputed to be be stronger, with more undertones with long soaks. It was hot outside and I didn't want to have the stove on all day. We have lots of scrap firewood kicking around so keeping a fire going all day, wasn't going to be an issue.

The soaked skeins came out of the pot, the water was topped up and the Cutch added. The pot was set over the fire and cooked until the crystals dissolved. Then the first skein - wound warp was popped in and cooked for a few hours. Then I added the second skein and cooked the two together. The water did get warm, but never boiled. It simmered over the fire from just after breakfast until supper time, when the pot was removed from the fire and set to cool.

I left the pot outside all night. After much rinsing, this is what the final colour is. I'm quite pleased as it will look very nice with the other two colours of the warp.

Lots of little projects

2011-06-01T15:28:00.000-04:00

The vegetable garden is planted! There are still a few things that I've planned to do multiple sowings, like salad greens and the such, but all in all, it's done!   Well, except that pumpkins and squash, which were supposed to go into new raised beds, which haven't happened yet. Somehow painting the deck trumped making new raised beds and I've no idea how that happened.

In between I've been waiting for the next Stanley Cup Playoff - tonight so spinning wasn't a priority. Instead I've been embroidering - it's taking forever. When I first started this sort of embroidery, my friend assured me it would get faster, but I don't think it has.   I'm going to extend this piece just a bit and turn it into another cuff. I may use the same pattern for the second one, or go with different birds. I'm not sure yet.

I've also started winding a warp. I'm going to weave a bag or a purse, specifically a pilgrim type satchel for camping with this summer.   I thought I had enough leftover Harrisville Shetland kicking around and might actually have had enough, if I'd not decided to make an extra bit of yardage for either a second bag, or a hat or something else. For some reason, I also thought I had a whole whack of white in a bin, but I've not yet figure out where that might be, if indeed I have any left at all. I found a bit of blue and a bit of brown, small partial cones; one of each.   Now I either have to scramble and ask friends if they've any leftovers I can scrounge, order some or spin something similar.. Why didn't I think this one through before I started it?

The Poppy to be is now flowering. The big heavy flower drooped to the ground. My sweetie mowed down most of the patch, in his good intentioned efforts to keep the Creeping Charlie at bay.

The Bachelor's Buttons are blooming a tad early. I love the shades of blue in the garden. So very pretty...

Bleeding Hearts are finally blooming as well. It seems like so many plants are blooming in a weird order this year. Even the pear trees - so late in blooming this year but because there was no risk of frost and a myriad of pollinators out and about, there are way too many fruits on both trees. If I decide to dare the ladder, I should be up there plucking off a lot of the small fruits before they sap most of the energy from the tree and we get a huge harvest of tiny pears. Less fruits to grow on the tree, the larger the fruit!

Gah! More Stanley Cup Spinning

2011-05-27T11:26:00.000-04:00

I'm officially getting tired of this project. I realize what the problem is though. It's just mindless spinning. The past few years, I've become more specifically project oriented and just spinning for the sake of spinning is fine sometimes, but it seems like I've been spinning miles and miles of yarn forever, with no destination! Well, the Stanley Cup Playoffs do seem to run forever, but still. So, only one more game in the semi-finals and the finals start next week. So in all, there are only 5 - 8 more games left. With any luck, I'll be able to see it through and finish up what is turning out to be the nearly endless bag of roving! The bag of white shetland that I'm spinning right now, while is getting smaller, doesn't seem to be doing so with any appreciable speed! I think I've been at half a bag now for a week!

My original basket was overflowing with skeins. I had to find a second basket. It was much more impressive with the smaller basket overflowing with skeins, but honestly, it wasn't horribly practical. It was spilling out all over the place. I'd totally forgotten about the lighter grey, which was hiding at the bottom of the basket! This is mainly grey, white and black Shetland. The few skeins of white are tucked in the back. I'm leaving them there because they are from a different fleece. They are not quite the same texture or colour as the fleece that I'm spinning now. The darker grey is Romney. I've been spinning it all about the same grist, in hopes that if I want to combine colours for one project, I can do so.

This is the moorit and the white Shetland. The white is being plied using the jumbo plyer in order to get huge skeins. With any luck, it will help me identify them as I go to use them. There probably close to 1200 yards (plied) of the white. I'm thinking that is getting close to a usable amount for something other than scarves or mitts. I'd love to make a blanket from all this, maybe in a checky. It would be a good bedcovering for camping and Regia reenactment events. But I'd have to sit down and do the math first.. recount the yardage on the skeins... work out the total yardage for the project and then the separate amounts for the checky pattern. It probably seems like more work than it is. I've been stalling on getting a project back up on the loom and not sure why. I think I've got too many projects in the planning stages, which always slows me down. I think I just need to queue them up and do them one at a time.

I started this bird design last weekend, while teaching a friend how to do the embroidery stitches from the Bayeux Tapestry - stem stitch and laid couchwork. I brought it out once I'd unpacked but then set it in a work basket and covered it with a cloth. What was I thinking, because I had to actually hunt it down this morning, having no idea where I'd hidden it. I'm using stupid skinny yarn for this - Jaggerspun super lamb, so it's taking longer than I'd first planned. However the first stitches I did in a thicker yarn, looked much too chunky for my liking.

Gratuitous cat photo 'cause he's just so darned cute when he sleeps with his eyes covered like that :)

FOOL and Flowers

2011-05-24T17:58:00.000-04:00

We had our local SCA event FOOL - Fruits Of Our Labours, a weekend of hands on classes and activities. I brought my camera, because people do lots of uber cool things, but neglected to take the darned thing out! I'm home again and still exhausted. What is it about running an event like this that you have a great time, nothing goes drastically wrong and you're still tired? The only glitch, was that the site is having it's 30th Anniversary Open House next weekend and the low spot to the camping area turned out to be mushy and leaving tracks, so we ended up closing it to vehicular traffic. There were carts and wagons to haul gear in. People grumbled a bit, but I don't think anyone wanted to leave the site with big tire tracks just before an open house. We want to go back

I came home to find our chickens had doubled in size. I swear they had and a few of the meatie boys are starting to act a bit roosterish. Nothing that an apron skirt or feed scoop won't stop though.

Chitted Potato - fancy name for sprouted

Today I got a good start on the garden. I planted the rest of the potatoes. They were all pretty much chitted, which I don't normally bother with. However, it's been cold and damp, so they sat around sprouting, regardless. I planted the tomatoes but due to the blight we had last year, I not only moved them to the secondary garden, but spread them out a lot. That used up a bit more space than I'd planned on, but I think we'll be more likely to get a good tomato harvest. I've got 3 zucchini seedlings planted as well. I'll put the peppers in tomorrow when I can get some help to make a plastic hoop cover to protect them as I've found that peppers and cucumbers seem to do a lot better started under mini greenhouse conditions.

Then, after all that digging and planting, I took a wander around the garden to see what else was happening...

Soon to be Red Currants

Pink Geraniums

I'll have to admit that I love Pink Geraniums - no other colour though, just the pink ones. They seem to glow in the sunlight.


Chinese Woad - Isatis Indigotica

Last year I planted the first Isatis Indigotica seeds and only had 3 germinate. This year I tried again and only got a couple to germinate again. However, these flowers will give me a huge amount of fresh seed to try next year, so hopefully I'll have a good amount of leaves to try out then.

Pear blossoms against the blue sky. I thought I might miss them this year as they just started to bloom before I left for the weekend. The Bartlett Pear tree has only a few blooms left, but the other one of some miscellaneous variety, is still blooming.

A poppy to be. These are all standard orange /red poppies. They are overgrowing the flower beds. I'll have to dig them up shortly. I have some new ones to plant with them, pink of course :)

More Stanley Cup spinning and Other stuff...

2011-05-15T10:49:00.000-04:00

White Shetland, jumbo skein

I'm fast becoming tired of spinning white yarn. The white Shetland is spinning up nicely using a long draw, so it's going fairly quickly. I've two huge skeins of this so far, leftover bits on a bobbin and half the roving left in the bag. The huge skeins are the result of using the jumbo plying head and plying two whole skeins together. I figured this way I could keep the white Shetlands, from different fleeces separated. I supposed labelling them would work as well and I'll do that when the whole Stanley Cup spinning project is done. The Stanley Cup spinning is easing off now, that it's round 3 - Conference championships/ semi-finals and there are thusly fewer games with which to use as designated spinning time.

Minstrel set up with double drive

Worrying about white wool fatigue setting in, I starting thinking about natural dyeing. That makes spinning white a lot more fun. Then I decided to shake things up a bit. I slipped off the old drive band, put a new one on the Minstrel making it double drive, instead of Scotch tension. I don't know that I've ever tried the Minstrel in double drive. I know the little Ashford was a double drive, but I wasn't fond of using it that way. Not only did it slow down the ratios a bit but it was really fiddly. What's the worst that could happen? I'd hate it and switch back. However, it turns out that the Minstrel runs smooth as silk on double drive. I almost think I like it better in double drive than single drive/scotch tension. That's saying a lot since before, it was smooth and lovely as well.

black Shetland on the Mazurka

I'd been dragging out the Minstrel to the deck on lovely days to spin. Then in dawned on me that I'd been lugging the Minstrel through the house and outside and the poor little Mazurka was sitting there, ignored in a corner. That is exactly what I got it for, a portable wheel. I can easily lift it with one hand and as I sat down to spin, I remembered that it's just as much a joy to spin on as the Minstrel. Different of course, since it's a single treadle, but still lovely to spin on. This is black Shetland lamb; the stuff which is full of vm and gunk, even after processing. It will never be spectacular yarn, but it's very soft and yummy, so I can live with the vm.

This morning, I made this for my son's birthday. It's been ages since I dragged out the decorating equipment and iced a cake. I messed up a bit on icing textures and had to remember by messing a few things up. I'm totally not happy with the roses, but I had a horrible time with the getting the icing stiff enough. The fact that it's raining, high humidity and we don't have the house heat on probably didn't help. However, it's filled with a huge layer of lemon curd and will likely taste yummy despite it's wonky appearance.

I did another little Bayeux Tapestry border animal embroidery. When I first tried my hand at this, each little animal seemed to take forever to embroider. Part of that was inexperience and the rest was using Jaggerspun SuperLamb 2/24 at just under 6000 yds per lb. It's pretty skinny yarn so takes a lot of extra work for coverage. I used 3 strand Persian Tapestry yarn for this guy, as I'd done for the pouch I'd made earlier. It works up a little more quickly. This guy took only a couple of evenings and a bit of time one morning, embroidering while catching up on computer stuff.

The rest of the time, I was digging in the garden. I was mainly weeding and pulling out innumerable bits of leftover plants from the previous owner's that I've been trying to get rid of. One flower bed is ready to go and now I can start on a large flowerbed which runs along the back of the property. This year it's overgrown with softneck garlic gone wild, orange poppies and who knows what else. I know that there is almost nothing that blooms after June, and that has got to change. It will need vast influxes of Rudbekia Goldsturm - which I've not seen this year in any nurseries and some assorted Cone Flowers, Bee Balms and Gaillardia!

Colours of Spring

2011-05-10T19:37:00.000-04:00

I love Forget-Me-Nots. They are such delicate flowers. I love how they slowly spread around the yard and flower beds for unexpected bursts of colour in the spring. The ones I had in a previous garden were a deep dark blue. These are the more common, slightly paler blue but they are still wonderful.

The first early tulips burst forth with colour on Sunday, which happened to be Mother's Day here. I'm going to have to add a few more bulbs this fall. Some of the Tulips were either eaten by our squirrel, washed out by the massive rains and torrents of water running through our garden this year or weren't strong enough to survive the late snows and frosts. Maybe some lovely pink and purple ones!

We went for a short hike the other day. It was a fairly easy hike in an area with fairly well groomed trails around a river. Lots of marshy areas. I'd been hoping to see Trilliums but there wasn't a single one there. They are apparently blooming elsewhere but that will be a hike for another day.

I was outside planting onion seedlings and I heard this loud raucous bird obviously calling attention to himself. He stuck around long enough for me to wash up, grab my camera and come back outside. I've seen him a few times since. I'm guessing that Mr. Baltimore Oriole must have a Mrs. nearby.

Projects here and there.

2011-05-07T18:05:00.000-04:00

The new fencing doublet has been started. I marked out and cut, a gazillion yards of continuous bias with which to make decorative piping. I was lucky that I found some piping cord hidden away because none of the local stores carry piping cord suitable for clothing. They only have jumbo, thick, massive cord for upholstery. The gals working at the stores had no idea you could make your own piping and one of them thought it was a rather crazy, weird idea!

Lots of spinning happening as well. I finished up the tan and white Shetland roving. It was a joy to spin as it drafted beautifully. It's lovely and soft as well. It is interesting how the lighting and camera settings affected this photo as the skeins are close to the same colour.

Now I'm spinning white Shetland. I am pretty sure it's Gwennie's fleece. The fleece was incredibly greasy. It lost over 2 lbs weight in processing. It's lovely and crimpy and reasonably soft, though not as soft as I'd expected. I learned in my master spinner course that often fibre beasts with a little bit of stress, outside a bit in the winter, etc, have finer fleeces than those which are not stressed at all. This flock of sheep is the more about being pets than farm animals and it might show a bit in the fleeces.

I started some new socks. I found this very pink sock yarn on sale. It's soft and yummy sock yarn and was a very good price. It's very pink. It's like knitting up Valentine's Day into socks! I normally run the pattern down the foot but I decided to keep it just on the leg. I'm not keeping these ones though. They're a gift that I'm quite thrilled to be starting with plenty of time to actually finish them.

Back in the real world

2011-05-05T13:50:00.000-04:00

The wild storms we had last week, knocked out the local Internet Relay thingies in our county. The one servicing our area, was down for nearly a week. I really hadn't realized how much our connection intertwines with our lives, for little things like "what's the weather tomorrow, honey?".   Oh well, we're back. I found myself reading, just for fun, which was, well, fun!   Gotta love a trashy novel once in a while.

While we couldn't stream the Stanley Cup games, I still kept up with my Stanley Cup spinning. I really wasn't sure if it should count, since there wasn't actually a game on in the house. However, I've been figuring game coverage is normally 2 - 2.5 hours, so I tried to get that in on game days.   I missed one, but the two bags of rovings are finished. I went looking for some fleece to card and found, hidden away, a bag with 1.9 lbs of lovely white Shetland rovings. That is my next effort to spin up during games. I do hope Vancouver makes it to the next round though. I was a tad disappointed when the Habs didn't make it through.

Spring is trying so hard to make an appearance.. It mainly feels springlike. The ground has finally dried enough to not feel like one is walking on sponges. The garden has been turned and ready to plant, when the time is right of course.

Winter Sown Experiments: Success!

The Winter Sown bottles have been a success. I planted Golden Marguerite, Icelandic Poppies, Red Yarrow, Rudbekia Goldsturm, Black Hollyhocks, Single Hollyhocks, Lupins, Gaillardia and something else I think. Only the Red Yarrow and Rudbekia have not germinated. It's last year's seed and they didn't germinate last year. I am wondering if the seed was old or bad. I'll be looking for actual plants this year! Otherwise, I'm thrilled with the results.

Last year's pot hyacinths, planted in the fall.

I had bought several pots of forced Hyacinth bulbs last spring. I kept the plants growing until the foliage died back and let the bulbs dry out. I planted them in the fall. Although not all of them survived, enough did to make a pretty little patch of colour. I'll do the same with the ones I bought this spring as well!

The Lilac trees have tiny leaves and little flower buds. It's so reassuring to see them. Despite the fact that they are white, they are still one of the sure signs of spring that I remember from my childhood. I'd rather that they were purple, dark purple or even pink, but they are mature, so the blooms are lovely. If the breeze is right and the day warm enough, the scent of the Lilacs is intoxicating.

Peas!

The peas have finally started to show. So much for the cool weather issue. We've had so much rain that I feared they had washed away. Nope, still there, just a tad delayed. The onion sets are up, the garlic seems to be hale and hardy. It's about a foot tall now. The tomato plants are looking fine and should be able to go in the ground in a couple of weeks, along with the cucumbers, squashes, zucchini and peppers, etc.

The Green Haze of the First Young Leaves

The Willow trees are among the first to leaf out. The soft green haze glowing amongst the brown of the rest of the trees is one of those heart pitty-patty making signs of spring. I do find the first sight of emerging leaves so exciting.

Remember, it's almost Dandelion season. Pick off the flower heads and use them in a dye pot. They produce a beautiful shade of yellow. Dandelion flowers also freeze well. Toss them in a freezer bag and you can use them at your leisure!

Rambling Projects and Garden excitment..

2011-04-27T13:09:00.000-04:00

It took one Stanley Cup playoff game to finish up the pink tunic. It's been waiting around for an awfully long time to get hemmed. The neckline needed a small modification and the Bayeux stitch animal cuffs were added. It turned out quite nicely I think.   I wore it to a school demo and was quite pleased with the fit.

More Stanley Cup spinning took place as well. The black skeins are Shetland and it's lovely, soft and clean fibre. I really wanted to use a long draw but it just refused to cooperate, unless I reprocessed the rovings by hand, which wasn't happening. Instead, spun it with a short draw. It took much longer to spin but I'm very happy with the results. I still have a few yards of black roving to to spin. It may be the end of the prepared roving for Stanley Cup spinning and I may also have to card as well..   Hmm I guess that is what intermissions are for?

Garden excitement is also happening. The tomato plants are looking quite nice. The peppers are slowly growing.   Actually almost all of the seeds I started are in reasonable shape considering there is almost a month yet before they should be planted. Except the parsley. It's old seed. It's also slow to germinate. I may have to buy a plant this spring.. egads! I don't think my sage plants made it through the winter either, so that's two plants on the needed list.

Tiny Indigo Tinctoria Seedlings

The indigo seeds I'd planted earlier have done nothing. After doing a bit more research, it turns out that Indigo Tinctoria likes warmth as in 24C constant temperatures to germinate. One suggestion is to put the pots on a heat mat. It also helps to soak the seeds overnight. We keep our house cool and I don't own a heat mat, so I soaked a paper towel, sprinkled a few Indigo seeds on it, folded it up and slipped it in a plastic sandwich bag. I put the bag on the rack over the grow lights, so it would get some heat for at least part of the day. A couple of days ago, there were a few spots in the paper towel. I opened it up to reveal some sprouted seeds. I planted these in soil. I really wasn't sure that any would survive, but so far of 8 seeds germinated, all 8 are still looking alive. That spurred me on to plant some Madder, Dyer's Knotweed and some Chinese Woad as well. All the seeds are last year's so we'll have to see how well they germinate.

The first full sized daffodil of the season. It's growing in the middle of the lawn, presumably planted their by our feisty grey squirrel. You'd hardly know that we had a squirrel nearby at all except for an occasional rustle of branches. I did see him at the bird feeder a few times this winter. He was no skinny little runt of a squirrel! However I'd have never thought to plant a daffodil in the middle of the yard. It turns out to be a lovely place for it, so he can stay and eat the leftover bird seed. After all, I'd see up to 20 crows there at once, so what difference could 1 squirrel make?

Oh yes, and somebody, please make it stop raining!

Wildlife in the yard

2011-04-22T14:13:00.000-04:00

Yesterday coming home from a quick trip to a nearby town for a forgotten item, as my sweetie was pulling in the driveway, he noticed something in the ditch and said "that's not a raccoon is it"? Yep it was, a very confused but determined juvenile animal. He wasn't very large at all and still very cute. I'm betting that his/her mama was ready to have babies and chased him out of his den. The only problems for him in our area would be dogs. The neighbour's two dogs pretty much roam free thoughout the area and do a daily sweep of their territory. They're friendly dogs and sometimes at night you'll hear them make a huge racket, when something that shouldn't comes too near. We have a dog, who doesn't go outside a lone, but he doesn't like the wandering feral cat or the bunnies coming too near the house. I don't imagine he'd be any happier with a raccoon nearby. Beside us is a Standardbred Horse breeder who has a dog as well.

So this poor baby raccoon is trying to find a place to go. He's coming from the direction of the farm with 2 dogs. He's terrified of the vehicles on the road. He's trying to cross our place, but my sweetie is yelling at him and trying to get him to move on. It doesn't matter where he goes, unless he crosses the road and finds a home in the bush lot there, which may very well be where he came from, there are dogs on our side of the road and it's not very welcoming for small animals.

He was curled up by a large pine tree, hiding when I left for a meeting after supper. When I got home, my sweetie said the neighbour dogs were wandering by our place when the big one caught the scent of something and tore off. A few minutes later, she came by on the way home, with something in her mouth. He did assure me it wasn't furry, but it was a good size. I'm hoping it wasn't the young raccoon; that he found a safe haven someplace before the dogs found him. While we didn't want him living in our yard, we had hoped he'd be able to find a safe place to call home. However, there have been a lot of young raccoons on the roads lately, so perhaps this is one way of keeping the population down.

It's really not fair that such a potentially nuisance animal is so awfully cute when young.

Chooks and Stanley Cup Spinning

2011-04-20T14:16:00.000-04:00

I woke up in a panic last Saturday morning as I'd suddenly remembered that the new chicks were due soon. We'd started getting the little barn cleared out for them ages ago but people got distracted. Like the rest of everything we've found here, it was far worse than expected. The amount of junk stored in there was amazing. We've been having bonfires every evening and we've hardly put a dent in just the old wood bits we've found. There was a huge shelf piled with heavy pieces of wood. We can't figure out how it stayed up since there wasn't a single nail holding it together, no pegs, screws, nothing but balance and a bit of luck I suspect. The one side of the barn has a cement floor in relatively decent shape. One would expect, from the way it was that the rest of the floor would be cement as well. Nope, they hacked out most of the cement floor on the other side of the barn, but not all. They left parts of it and rough edges. They put old skids on top of the remaining dirt and allowed small and larger rodents to make their homes there. This means there is lots of icky stuff to shovel out. However, after days of work, my sweetie had a space to put the brooder together. I ran around finding all the bits and pieces. Today, I picked up the new babies - 45 of them, 35 for the freezer and 10 layers. It's still pretty cold here and so windy today that even with 2 lamps on full strength it isn't warm enough, so I'll be hunting down things to cover the brooder with until either the weather warms up a bit or they start to feather out.

In other news, it is the hockey playoffs. We don't actually get enough t.v reception to get the stations which show the games, but we seem to be able to stream it this year. So my computer gets commandeered for the games, which seem to be every single night right now. I had forgotten how productive hockey games were for spinning sessions. This is so far my play off yarn. If I do this every single game, I might have a mountain of yarn to deal with by the finals!