More Day Tripping

We spent a day at Upper Canada Village.  Even so, we didn't get to see all of it.  It's huge and the costumed staff is knowledgeable and willing to discuss the history of the various buildings and depictions of the homes, businesses and trades.  

The Wool Mill was situated right near the entrance to the park.  The front part of the downstairs had a huge fibre washing facility.

 After washing, the fibre was spread outside on these racks to dry.   A storm had rolled through the night before so the fibre was really quite wet.  It was very clean and enticing.

Upstairs housed the carding and spinning machinery.   The fibre is  starts in the first carder and automatically is fed to the second carder.  It's pretty messy as large piles of vm and short cuts fall out the bottom of the carders.   

There is spinning machinery as well as bobbin winders.   It wasn't running when we were there but all the spinning equipment is functional.  I don't remember the all the details about the commercial spinning machines,  the speed was quite impressive.

After seeing the carding and spinning facility, the tour leads to the weaving room.  Here you can see the huge belts which connect the machinery to the water driven gears.   There were looms, a warping mill, brushing and fulling machines.  It was all fascinating but I was particularly taken with the brushing machine.  It uses Teasels!    The sample showed that the Teasels do a really good job of raising the nap.

The weaving and spinning house has a large number of wheels, including production wheels, one with an original distaff, and an absolutely lovely walking wheel.  It did invoke a small amount of lust, seeing that wheel in the corner.   It is a beauty for sure!   They have a 4 shaft barn loom in really good shape as well.  They were weaving a blanket with a cotton warp and handspun weft which was really nicely done.

 This very old castle wheel was in a roped off bedroom.   After asking a few questions about it, they brought it out into the main room so I could photograph it properly.  It's from the late 1700's.  it's in amazing shape.  The 3 legged design is so it will fit easily into a corner and be out of the way in a small cabin.    I was thrilled that they took the time to bring it out and show it off.  You don't see a wheel like this too often, at least in our area.

Day Tripping

One of the day trips we took was a cruise to Heart Island, to visit Boldt Castle.  This was built as a hunting lodge, or rather I'm guessing as holiday home, for the Boldt family.  The Castle has 120 rooms,  in 6 stories, fancy gardens, it's own power generation building, a dove-cote and even a playhouse.  In 1904, the lady of the household died unexpectedly and all building was stopped, leaving it unfinished and never used.   It's being restored to what would have been it's former glory if it had been finished.   I didn't take photos of the inside as there were just too many people around.  Only a portion of the castle has been restored, but much of the rest was open to the public.  You could see many of the original materials.  As well, there were copies of the original plans, so they know what it was supposed to look like.

This lovely building was the power house.  It originally held generators to supply the castle with electricity.   We were able to go through the lower level which houses an interesting photo display of the Boldt family and other historical events of the buildings on Heart, including fire and the ravages of time.

The Alster Tower was the playhouse.  It was supposed to house a billiard room, a dance hall, library, bedrooms, kitchen and even a bowling alley.   It's currently undergoing extensive renovations so we weren't able to visit it.

The official entry location of Heart Island was this archway.   It was to allow yachts to anchor outside and people would be brought in through the archway.  It was supposed to have a drawbridge and covered walkways on either side.  Plans had it leading to a swan pond.

The yacht house is on Wellesley Island.  It's been restored as well.  However with only a 2 hour stopover, we chose not to take the shuttle boat over to visit it.  There was enough to see as it was.

It took about an hour and a half to get there and the same amount of time back, following different routes, so there was a lot of changing and new scenery each way.    There are a lot of raised nests with imposing Osprey sitting on them, survey their domains.   On smaller rocks and islands, there were many Cormorants in small groups.  They seemed a much more playful bird than the Osprey.

There was so much to see and so many renovations still happening that we'd love to go back in a couple of years to see how it's progressed.

Some spinning , knitting and a trip to Kingston

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

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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.

Old Fort Erie

This year we had to miss our normal holiday at Pennsic War. We were both pretty sad about that as we camp with a great group of people who are lots of fun and the camp is full of pretty awesome music. While stuck here at home, we managed to sneak off to visit Old Fort Erie. This is the 4th incarnation of the fort. The first was built in 1764, of wood, on the Niagara River. The ice breaking up in the winter was hard on the fort and sometime later a second was built in the same place. In 1803, work started on the third fort built a bit up from the river and this time of stone. It lasted only a few years as during the war of 1812, it came under siege and in 1814, the flintstone fort was destroyed by the American army. It was occupied by the British army until 1823. In the 1930's, it was rebuilt as a make work project and is now an interesting attraction. The interpreters are knowledgeable and available for tours and questions.

One of the cannons looking out on to the Niagara River. This one had a range of 1-2 miles!
Looking down the stone building which housed the officers barracks, the officers mess and the regular barracks. They sure weren't very big considering the number of soldiers which were housed here.This is the officers barracks. The interpreter said there would have been 4 or 5 beds in total as there was one commanding officer for every 100 soldiers. This bed is an original travelling bed which belonged to Captain Kingsley, supposedly from the 1700's. It is said his ghost haunts the room who likes to ruffle ladies hair and sometimes shows up in photos. We didn't see him nor did he grace our photos!

I did like the kitchen! It has a wonderful stone floor and a great fireplace. It is a good thing there were decent sized windows or this would have been a very gloomy room. While it isn't in the photo, just to the left of the fireplace is a second brick installation with a large iron bowl mounted over a firebox, which was used to heat water. Interestingly, there isn't a bread oven here. The kitchen was solely for the officers food. The 400-500 soldiers had to make do with cooking their meals over a firepit. This was for safety reasons, to keep them from burning down the barracks. I'd love a kitchen that was like this, if of course it had a more modern bit of design hidden away, including a dishwasher. Lemonade and shortbread cookies made in the fireplace that morning were served here.


Of course there were arms displays. We saw them shoot off their muskets after a lovely explanation of how inaccurate they were and how the amount of smoke meant that the red coats didn't really cause a problem since nobody could see anything anyway. Later in the day, they shot a small, portable mortar. It is small enough to be moved by 2 people and fits in a canoe.