A good start to May

We've had a very slow time easing into spring.  We've had snow storms, ice storms, wind, rain and cool weather.  We're even still loading up the wood stoves because the evenings are cool or uncomfortably damp.  However, that doesn't seem to stop Mother Nature from keeping things from happening.    There is a green haze on most of the trees.  We have baby leaves!   The oak trees and a few other very late  leafing deciduous trees aren't quite there yet, but they never are this early.   Some of the flowering trees are in bloom.   We always have leaves on most of the trees by Mother's Day, and despite people's worries about the trees leafing out late this year, it's happening just like it should.

I got my little tray of watercolour paints out and played around with some new techniques to make non-wintery scenes.   I've played with flowers, winter scenes obviously because I paint my Xmas cards, and have started experimenting with summery scenes.   These 2 worked out well enough that I'm happy with them, but I'll practice some more. While I've seen a few sunsets like this one, with pale colours, many of ours tend to be a bit more dramatic with deep oranges and purples.  Sunrises though, often have pale pinks and lilacs, if you catch the right time.  They are fast and the colours don't last all that long.   I decided to send out a few birthday cards though, so I figured I should practice about bit for summer cards.

I've been spinning up some of the leftover bits and pieces from my "stash" of leftovers from over the years.   This is some green ramie.  I had purchased 1/2 lb of it, and spun up maybe 3/4 of it and left the rest.    I remember it being quite slippery and an effort to spin.   Obviously my skills have developed because instead, it's just effortlessly sliding off my fingers into lovely, fine singles.    I should have divided it into two equalise pieces of roving before I started though, so I could have spun two bobbins for plying.  Instead I'm going to have to much around with either guessing or plying from a centre pull ball.   While that is how I first learned to ply, I've found over the years, that you have to be very careful when plying fine yarns from centre pull balls, so that they don't collapse in on themselves and tangle before you finish plying.  It's been fun to spin though, because I don't seem to have to really think a lot about it while spinning.  It means I can chat or "egads" watch the hockey game at the same time.

This is my friend A's dog Teddy.   While he's getting older and a bit greyer, with thinning fur, he still blends remarkably with the rug.  He's exactly the same colour as the rug and in the right light, and angle, the parts of him that are his original colour really could be the rug.   He's a sweety and a very cuddly dog with his kids.   Today though was funny as he was sleeping when I arrived for spinning day and he didn't notice for about a 1/2 hour.  Then of course, as the good watch dog he is, he made sure to let everyone know that I was visiting.. too funny.

Fall colours, the loss of the same, and run up to Xmas

 Ahhhh Blogger, you've updated several times recently and things are now harder to use and my original settings have been changed, hidden or apparently are no longer applicable. Something to keep me on my toes I guess.

We went for a walk on a local trail.   It's one with a nice boardwalk beside the river.   I suggested we take this one because soon our weather will change.  The cold, wet and snow will make the boardwalk slippery and difficult to traverse.   We no longer take this trail in the winter because it's just not fun.  Winter walks on the trails can be a little bit harder, but not so much fun when you're also dealing with ice patches or long lengths of snow covered rutted ice, which is what that boardwalk becomes.

However, in the nice weather, this trail is interesting.  All the Ash trees have been cut and left lying around, so that it looks in places like something out of a bad Sci-Fi movie.   The trail runs right beside a train track and an industrial area, so there is sometimes a non-nature like soundtrack to accompany the walk.   Today though, it was the light creating interesting reflections on the river which caught my attention.   They were very clear, as the water was oddly still.

The trail was pretty despite the many downed logs.  I noticed that there were some new ones which weren't Ash trees, and there were some still standing which should be cut down as they were obviously going to be a falling risk soon.   Mostly the woods have young trees.   There isn't a lot of undergrowth in places, so the visuals of looking through the forest is interesting.  The undergrowth usually obscures this.  

It was lovely tromping through the fallen leaves.   This was just before the windstorm which meant the landscape went from lovely fall colours, to stark, empty trees in one afternoon.  Waking up the next morning to virtually no leaves left on the trees was interesting.  It was like we had an autumn colour season which went from green, to full colour, to bare trees in just over a week.   I didn't even get a lot of photos of the fall foliage just because the timing was so quick.

There is always an exception though.   This maple always colours last, and always holds its leaves.  It's just starting to drop its leaves and the colour is still turning.   It's really lovely this year as it's changed from the usually all yellow leaves, to yellow, orange and red.    I have a loom looking out the window at it, and it's always lovely to weave in the autumn with that view in sight.

I've been working on this year's Xmas cards. I've found if I don't start by the beginning of November, they become a bit rushed and stressed.  I'd trialed several ideas.  I watched a bunch of online tutorials for new techniques and ended up just painting something simple.  I like them well enough, although my brain tells me that they still need something.   I'm not sure it does though.   Only had 2 mishaps, one where the tape stuck and ripped a bit of the painting and the other when I was mucking around with the sky ideas and I ended up with one which was too dark for my liking. 

  I tried the remove background feature and it did, relatively well, although it did dump some black spots on the one card, which aren't there in real life.  Also, I haven't figured out how to not have the original save as the edit.  On my old computer, I could just save the edited photo as a different name, but this one applies everything to the original.  This works really well for when I'm writing things up as but I'll still need to figure out the photograph part of things.   

I did figure it out but I like the photo with the messy background better.  I painted 15 landscapes for Xmas cards, all similar but not quite the same, just to keep things interesting for me.

November Wrap Up

 November has been a busy month.  It's passed by in a whirl of activities and waiting.  It seemed to both speed by in a blink and be interminably long at the same time.  The waiting is almost over though and tomorrow we'll see if it was worth it.   The activities though have been pretty successful.  The weather has been weird to say the least.  We've had snow.  We've had more snow.  We've had rain.  We've had almost record breaking warmth and sunshine.  I hung laundry out the other day because it was so nice.  Yup, totally weird weather.

This year's Christmas cards are finished.   I made 10 of them.   Sadly the tape I used to hold the cards to
the workspace, ripped a bit of the paint off one of them, so only 9 survived.     I was going to make a few more, but these turned out to be fairly time consuming.  In the past, I taped up 3 at a time to paint in stages.  The process for these made it easier to do only 2 at a time.  It was 4 steps, with complete drying time in between the steps, so they weren't really able to be done assembly line fashion.  I liked them enough to inital them this year.  I did enjoy the process though and have already had some thoughts about next year's cards.

I warped up the rigid heddle loom with some kid mohair /silk yarn.   It was $3 tiny ball, of less than 50g and with 219 yards.     It's very fine and I struggled to figure out what reed to use.   I found a single article with actual details on weaving mohair on a rigid heddle loom.   There were lots of  "hey look what I did" articles, but not so much on the "here's how I did it" articles.    So I ran with the single article information and tried it at a sett of 7.5.  It wasn't perfect, but it worked nicely enough.

Mohair is fuzzy and has quite a halo.  If you don't take that into account when you dress the loom, those fuzzy bits catch on each other and are difficult to weave.   Then also can start stick up instead of laying flat, which makes for a scratchier fabric.   The idea is to use a sett which takes into account the extra width created by the mohair halo, and then this allows it to lay flatter and lock together, creating a stable, but light, gauzy fabric.  

The silk core made this a bit slippery but the sett allowed me to weave it easily.  I had to place each weft

shot into place, rather than push the reed to the fell line, or it became to thick and stiff.  The resulting fabric is not quite as stable as I'd hoped, but I only lightly wet finished it, due to days of wet weather.  I will redo it before it becomes a gift.  It's very pretty though, light and the colour is fun.  It's also fairly soft and very drapey. 

It took just under 2 balls of yarn for this scarf - 9 in x 76 in, plus 7 inch fringes.  I have 3 more in this colourway and 5 more in a second colourway.  Lots of yarn to experiment with!

After the Pumpkin Festival at Westfield, which was crazy busy and so much fun, I came home with 2 lovely pie pumpkins.  I recently processed them and ended up with 6 packets of pumpkin for the freezer.  There are 5 with 2 cups in them, perfect for pies and 1 with just over a cup of pumpkin, which works for a pumpkin loaf recipe.  

It was really nice pumpkin, better than I found around here.  The flesh was thick and dry, so it didn't need a lot of draining.  I do like having these ready to go packets in the freezer.   There is little waste when the quantity fits a single recipe, unlike commercial tins, which leave me making either double what I want, having to freeze the leftovers, which for some reason, doesn't work quite as well, or some of it ends up as waste.

Just playing around with colour

I found a ziplock baggie with 89g of white merino stashed away.   It wasn't in a place where I expected it to be.   I pulled out the slow cooker which never got hot enough to actually finish cooking whatever food was in it, and put in a couple of inches of water, and a few glugs of white vinegar.  I put the merino roving in to the slow cooker to soak for a bit, then turned it on and added some red and yellow dye.

I'm happy to say that while I never actually was able to finish cooking a meal in this slow cooker as it never seemed to get hot enough, it did an admirable job with dyeing.   I did keep a check on it now and again, but I was pretty much worry free.   After a few hours in the pot and the dye was exhausted, I turned off the crock pot and let it cool down overnight.   The next morning I pulled out this lovely flame coloured roving.    Yay for colour!

Then in the same box, of odds and ends, I found a bag of purple and pink mill ends which I'd dyed a while ago.  I didn't feel like dragging out the drum carder, so I just pre-drafted the bits that I could and hand carded the rest.  

Once I'd finished spinning the second bobbin of cotton, and plying the two for 318 yards of white 2 ply  cotton,  I started spinning the purple/pink.   I'm on the second bobbin so will hopefully get to start plying soon.   There isn't a lot of it but it's pretty and after spinning all sorts of white fibres over the past few months, it has been a joy to play with colour.

Playing with colour and paints.   The top row is trying out a new set of watercolours in pans.  The bottom row of cards is using the old gouache paints I've had for ages.  So much fun!

Finally, time to update!

I just cut this part scarf off the loom.   I found some Paton's Lace yarn on sale and picked some up to weave a shawl and a couple of scarves.   It's lovely in the skein, not so much in the woven fabric.   A master weaver friend told me once that if you think there is something off with your fabric, or you don't like it and don't know why, it's probably your sett.

  I definitely had the sett just a tad tight.  The fabric was too dense and felt a bit stiff.  Not only that, but the outside threads started shredding.   I've woven with this commercial knitting yarn before without issues, and know a friend who did so with lovely results, so I'm not sure what was going on with the shredding.  However, I cut off the bit that I was weaving and re-sleyed it in a crammed thread/loose thread pattern, trying to get a bit of life and whimsy into the pattern.   This has worked really well, except the outside threads are still shredding and I've not decided what to do about it.  I will either put some floating selvedges on it, or sacrifice the yarn and cut it off.   I just noticed this morning that it's awfully close to Christmas and I haven't even thought about the tea towels my kids requested.   I've not thought about the pattern, colours, any design.  The warp isn't wound and eeek.. I'm running out of time.

My Christmas cards are done.   This year instead of carving a design for block printing, I tried my hand at water colours.   I have some ancient gouache paints from previous experiments and although they are opaque, rather than transparent, like true water colours, they can be used in a similar way.   I'd like to try some real water colours and see how they differ.  However that will be for another time.  My son, who is a talented artist, declared that they were okay, and the people who received them would appreciate them.  I got a giggle out of his effort to be supportive.

We got one last hike in before it snowed again.  It was brisk out, hovering just above freezing.  It was however sunny and there was almost no wind, so it was a great day to be out.  This is a trail we haven't taken in a while.  It was a nice change to be walking on soil, leaves and grass instead of the gravel that most of the well groomed walking trails have in this area.

I've been spinning in the evenings.   I've been mainly using up bits and pieces of stash. The blue merino superwash was a bit compacted and I probably should have run it through the carder or hand carded it before I spun it.  It was a fast spin and I didn't really worry too much about it.  I was just happy to have it spun and out of the way.   

On the last nice day, we got yard work done.   I got all the leaves off the deck, the hose put away, which is a bigger job than you'd expect since there is about 100 feet of hose, maybe more, and it was frozen stiff.    The part of the roof we had redone is finished, with new eavestrough and because it's the very high part of the house, we had that eavestrough leaf guard installed - yay!  

The bad things are that the mowing deck on the lawn tractor just rotted away.  The paint started bubbling  and this spring my sweetie had to get a friend to weld part of it back together.  Now it has rusted through in multiple places, so it needs to be replaced.   However, the part has been on backorder forever,  and we aren't holding out any hope that it might available anytime soon.  Luckily it's winter and we won't need to mow the lawn for a while.   The second thing is that t is just a nuisance.  The wood guy stopped by and commented on how quickly the last load of wood was cut up and split.   My sweetie laughed and said it was a perfect load and he'd take another like that any day.   Well of course two days later, we had another load of wood, not quite as perfect though, dumped beside the driveway.  The weather hasn't been conducive to getting it processed though, so it's just sitting there, almost in my parking spot.  I can't imagine that there will be time to get it processed and stacked for drying anytime soon, at least with just himself doing it.   I could be a winter driveway decoration!