And Then There Were Two

 Last week on Thursday, hubby asked me if our kitty Phil was okay and I said I thought so but would check. On Friday, I thought that something might be wrong. On Saturday we realized he wasn't eating his kibble, so we gave him extra gushy food.  We even got him some special food just for him. We thought maybe he had a bad tooth or something.   Then on Sunday we noticed one pupil was larger than the other, that there was now a lump on his neck or under his chin and his breathing was odd.   We got him to the vet on Monday, in the only emergency time slot that was available.  Monday afternoon we brought him home to bury him. 

We were totally stunned and hadn't expected to lose Phil at all because a few days ago, he was his normal self.  An xray showed his lungs were full of fluid, so much that there was barely any clear area and it had pushed his esophagus along his spine.  The vet said that the pupil size differences suggested that this was an incurable virus that he'd picked up as a kitten and that there was no cure, at least that is available here.    We had to make the difficult decision right then.   We really weren't prepared for this and had no expectations that we wouldn't be bringing Phil home.

Phil was my lap cat.   He slept on my legs almost every night.  Many days he demanded that I let him nap on top of me in the afternoons, which lead to a lot of novels being read, with a cat snuggled on me. In the winter he would crawl under the covers at night.  He'd figured out that if he wiggled his head up near the pillow, so that his head wasn't under the blankets, he could sleep there for hours or all night. 

He chose us as a home.   One summer we kept seeing an orange cat around the property for a few weeks. 

Supervisor Phil asleep on the job

Then one morning I was outside and he came up to me on the deck, crying and meowing.  I didn't know what to do, but I brought him some food and water, as he was so very skinny.   The next morning he showed up with his brother.  After a couple of scary incidents with predators, the two boys became house cats.  

They were both sweeties and didn't act like feral cats.  We thought they may have been drop offs, which sometimes happens in rural areas.   They were both well socialized and accustomed to people.   They fit into our family perfectly.  Phil was such a character that he was best friend to all of his chosen people and shared his affection freely.   He was a helper kitty, curious and liked to supervise everything.  I will miss him thinking that every skein of yarn was his to play with.  I will miss his cuddles, his charm and his personality.  This loss will be difficult to get over as it just hit us without any notice or time to prepare. 

RIP Phil, and safe trip over the rainbow bridge.

More socks, and odd things happening

We don't have a bush lot, so we buy our wood in logs from a local tree service, in dump truck loads.  What type of wood we get and when we get it, depends a lot on where he is cutting and for whom.   We've been getting a lot of maple this year in smaller sizes, which slices and dices so quickly.    Last week he dropped off a load, but one long, skinny log got caught under the dump truck tailgate.  It unlatched half of it, and while trying to hook it back on, it dropped on the other side, and crashed to the ground.  Unfortunately, he couldn't pick it up until the next afternoon, so it sat in the middle of our driveway looking quite sad.   I got photos but I didn't run outside to do so, as I didn't want to get in the way, or make the driver feel badly.

Sock that wouldn't fit anyone!

I've been making socks, or trying to.   If you don't want to practice and practice some more, this is not the
fibre art you want to try.   The learning curve is huge, but if you practice, watch videos, read and have someone to either help you out or answer your questions, it's not insurmountable.   I'm having successes now.  I went to a "crank in" on the weekend.  That's a gathering of people who haul 50 plus lbs of cast iron and aluminum bits and pieces, plus some yarn, and crank socks together, while socializing.   It makes for a fun day, but very little productivity, because counting and chatting doesn't work for me.  Not having a physical counter on my Legare, I have to count in my head, and as soon as I drift off to a conversation, I lose my count.    At the end of the day, I made one sock which wouldn't fit anyone in my family.  I also forgot to write down the various numbers of rows for each step, so I wouldn't be able to make a second one.   The whole event was very good for me in that I learned a couple of things, but moreso, I realized that even experienced crankers are making the same mistakes that I am making.  Plus I had a lovely compliment from the gal who sat next to me, who hadn't realized that I was a "newbie".

I went with a friend who is the mentor who is answering my many, many questions.  I'd asked her about cast on bonnets with metal rings.  She gave me some rings, plus teeny tiny stitch markers  to try.  I made a cast on bonnet with the rings yesterday.   It's different, and when it works, it was really easy to use.  A bit faster than a traditional one, in that I didn't need to fish out the little bit of yarn and manually hook it on a needle.  However, it was pretty easy to get a ring hooked on a needle without yarn, which causes a jam.  I'll try it a few more times before I make a judgement.   I've realized though that having a few extra cast on bonnets is a good thing.

I tried out the new cast on bonnet last night, making a tube at various tensions to test gauge of this yarn.   Today I did the math and made this mock rib sock.   It should actually fit someone!   Once I make it's mate (yes, I did write down the pattern this time), I'll have to learn how to graft the toes together.   It's a bit different from doing it on hand knit socks.    That being said, I've also been told that I start to knit my socks from the wrong side, probably because of that hand knitting.   I don't think it really matters in the end, as long as I can translate any written patterns I might use.

chipmunk for cuteness factor

CSM practice

This is the first pair of matching socks I've managed to knit.   It was with a fairly thick sock yarn, with only 150 yards per 50 g.  It was only $3 per 50g, and there was no choice in colour, and as you can see, the patterns don't actually match.  I first thought it was a tension issue, but I redid the one sock and it was the same.   This sock yarn though, is insanely soft. I've never wanted to just fondle a skein of yarn as much as I'd have liked to do this stuff.   They are too small for me but they'll fit my daughter, except that I think they may be too wide.   They are just sitting there waiting for me to decide whether to rip them out and redo them or finish them up for her.  Except of course that I changed to a different cylinder with more needles, so one way or the other, they'll have to wait.

I've started knitting several socks a day over the past week.   I've learned to remind myself to rehang the weight before cranking after starting to hang the hem.  I can't believe how many times I did this, only to have stitches drop and tangled yarn, leading to taking it off the machine, ripping it out and starting again.

Then I got the hem hung and the leg of the sock knitting and halfway through the heel, some stitches would drop, usually on the left side.   It turns out that sometimes the brake doesn't quite tighten the yarn up all the way, leaving a loop which is too large to make a stitch.   If I'm slow and watching carefully, it's avoidable.   

Then I realized that I was using cheap sock yarn and it had little recovery or stretch, which made for difficulties in itself.  I don't know if it was because I was reusing the same skein over and over, or if it's all the yarn from that company.  It was $5 /100g, so it's super cheap, but maybe not the best to practice with.   I bought a bunch to make practice socks for my kids, but I'm not so sure if it isn't yarn that I might need to wait a bit to use, until I have more experience.

socks are different heights - but otherwise good!

Today, after a false start, I made a whole sock.  I'd done the math to hopefully get it to fit.   When I got to the toe, I was a  little leary, because yesterday I also made a sock which made it to the end, and them my waste yarn didn't catch and I'd ended up casting off the whole sock.  No waste yarn means that stitches drop and you can't graft the toe together.   But the waste yarn was fine.  Then I put some crochet yarn in for a separator and knit the second sock.  Somewhere in there, hubby started talking to me and my brain, which was counting rows went AWOL.  The results is 2 socks which are almost the same.   Sock 2 is just a tad too long for my foot but it's also 1.5 inches longer than the first sock!

This yarn was mid priced, and I'd tried to hand knit a sock from it, but it wasn't my favourite because it's a bit splitty.  However, it knit up on the machine quite nicely.

There aren't quite enough hours in the day for all the things I'd like to accomplish sadly.   

This weekend we're doing a cooking class about hearth cooking.  I set the menu as Vegetable soup with forcemeat balls, waffles, carrot pie and lemonade.   Forcemeat is sausage, and little balls were made and either cooked separately or just popped into the soup to cook, to enrich it.   Waffles because I got a cast Iron waffle maker and haven't had a chance to use it yet, and carrot pie to show how to bake in a dutch oven.  Carrot pie is like a pumpkin pie, but using carrots instead.  It's surprisingly good.

 

Legare 400-

 It's here!   "It", is a Legare sock knitting machine my husband purchased for my birthday.   It's a newer model, but I don't really have a date for it, just that it was one of the later models.   It's mostly complete.  It doesn't have the box and is missing a couple of tools, but otherwise, it's functional.   It's heavy!  I knew it was heavy, since it's cast iron, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so heavy.

Unpacking it was fun.   It was packed into this tiny box, with lots of paper, bubble wrap and tons of packing tape was securing everything.  I know what most of the pieces do and where they go, but one is still unknown.  It's a tiny little key thing.   The manual is in french, and my francais isn't good enough to understand it.  My French  is good enough to say that "My French isn't good enough to understand the manual in French" though.   

Legare - was a company from Quebec, although the Creelman company in Ontario actually made the machines.    It's a closed cam machine, which means it's pretty quiet.   While I'd have liked a new machine, because they are really state of the art and lovely, the cost is just too much right now.   This one works though and I've assembled it, learned to make a tube, hang a hem, make a picot, make a heel, and right now working on the toe.  It's a bit confusing to me, that since the toe is the same as the heel, that I should be having issues with the toe.  I also learned to cast on 3 different ways: with a web, using the cast on basket, and then with a cast on bonnet, which was the first project I made.

The first day I assembled it, and worked on trying to knit a tube.   I managed to get the yarn stand assembled backwards.   I found a video which showed the proper way to assemble it which was nice, since while it did work backwards, it was confusing to me because I couldn't figure out how the heel brake worked.   It's all good now though.

I've been running through all my little partial balls of leftover sock yarn in playing with it.   Then I used some yarn which I had a full 100g of, but it got crunchy after a short while, so it's been sitting, waiting for a project.  It was lovely stuff when I purchased it, but I've no idea why it changed.  It's never happened before, but it's now harsh and icky.  This is what I made the cast on bonnet with.  It's never going to touch a foot, so it doesn't matter that it's a bit harsh.

I took the rest of the crunchy yarn, after I'd made the bonnet and practiced some heels.  I actually made a tube with 7 heels on it.   I was having issues, and then I managed to look at a diagram of the cylinder from another company's manual ( maybe Creelman?) and saw where I should put the heel hooks.  I am currently using just the one V hook which was original to the machine.   Once I figured out where to place it when making the heel, it was a game changer.     It's supposed to be the same for the toe, and since the toe is exactly the same as the heel, I'm not sure why I keep dropping stitches.   

How do I know I'm having problems with the toes?  I found a formula for making socks to size.   I knit a tube to check the tension of this yarn, and then followed a formula to work out how many rows I'd need for the foot.  Everything is good until I get to the toe.   I'm guessing that I just need to figure out where the weights should go for the toe to make it perfect.

Yesterday my V hook fell apart and one of the very sharp hooks fell out of the brass tubing.   Hubby re-crimped it into place and it's working just fine now.

This sock yarn is a bit thicker than most,  It's lovely and soft though.    I will rip this one back and try again tomorrow.  Everyone has told me of the really huge learning curve to making socks.  I've only had my machine for a week, so I'm pretty happy with what I've accomplished so far.  I'm even keeping notes!   I've a book in which I'm writing down my steps/patterns, so I can make a matching second sock, and then duplicate them if I like the yarn and can get more of it.    I'm also keeping a running list of tension settings and stitches per inch/gauge, so that I can also have a starting point.

I've been reading blogs, forums, articles, books etc, and it seems some people use only specific yarn brands, which would definitely make it easier to keep your tension and gauge even.  However, I do enjoy a good sale, so some of the yarn I have is off brand yarn, and sometimes name brand stuff,  that I got at bargain price.   I recently got some yarns to practice with that were $4.99 for 100 g.   That's a very good price for sock yarn.  This will make practice socks and I'll save the good stuff for when I know what I"m doing.   I've gotten all my kids shoe sizes, so I will use their feet to practice getting different sizes.  :)   Now to find a 60 needle cylinder, a buckle and some heel forks.   And.. yarn, lots more sock yarn.

Summery projects

 I'm waiting for a parcel.   It's my birthday present and is supposed to arrive next week.   I just got the tracking number so the estimated delivery date is probably correct.   However, once in a while when I order things, they come early.  My fingers are crossed that this is one of those times.  We're also taking a family trip to Dundurn Castle.  I've been before but it was a number of years ago.  This time we'll be taking my daughter and her husband, so it will be fun.  I bought the tickets online.   I got a barcode for a ticket.   I used to be able to save my ticket stubs as memorabilia.   Barcodes just don't evoke the same memories.

I used an old sheet to fit the bodice pattern of Sew Liberty's Hinterland dress.   Then I found this piece of fabric which was enough to cut out the dress for a wearable mockup.  I've no idea why I purchased this, except that I remember it being crazy cheap on sale.  It's nice enough but not normally my style.  I do however, have a similar fabric but in blue stripes which I do like.   Once I know of any other changes need to be made to the pattern, I'll use the fabric I really like to make a second dress.

The Hinterland has been pretty easy to fit and assemble.  One of the hints was to use masking tape to mark the right side of the fabric.  Usually I use tailor's chalk, but it hasn't stopped the occasional  mistake.  But with the masking tape, I've had no issues at all.  It's now my new go to for making sure I have the right sides of the fabric marked.  Because it's green low tack painters tape, it hasn't left any residue yet.

My old but really nice Pfaff sewing machine is being cranky.  I haven't been able to get the tension set properly.   It probably needs a tune up, but since I have several old black Singers and an old Kenmore which all work well right now, I'm just using one of those instead.  This is mainly because I need some new socks, so that means a trip to the yarn store.

I found a skein and a half of this Paton's Lace yarn.  It's acrylic and a little fuzzy, so it acts a bit like mohair, getting caught up on itself.   I made a scarf on the floor loom a while ago, and had no problems.  This one though, I put on the rigid heddle loom and had to fuss about a bit to figure out how to weave it without having to unstick the shed every throw of the shuttle.   I found it needed a lot of tension and very easy beating, just gently placing the weft rather than pushing it down.   It's much faster now and I'm enjoying weaving it.

The rippenkopper cotton/hemp tea towels are still on the table loom.  I'm still not enjoying the 3/1 twill and having to use a stick shuttle..  But if I can weave them off, I have a fun tea towel project to do next.  I'm not sure I have allowed enough loom waste to do them on the floor loom, but that would be even easier.

The weather has been either hot and dry, or cool and wet.   Our pond almost dried up because we had no rain for so long.   Then it rained, and rained and rained.  The pond almost overflowed!   When conditions get hot and dry during the summer, our grass goes dormant.  It may look like it's dying, but it's just turned off until it rains.   And rain it has.   We even had a whole day of steady rain.  We couldn't remember when we last had a rain like this.  So after days of rain on and off,  the grass is green and the garden has gone wild with growth.

These are slicing tomato plants that my son in law started for me.  I don't think we've ever had fruit starting so early in the season.  The cherry tomatoes or maybe grape tomatoes are also fruiting already.   I've been harvesting zucchini already.  I staggered planting the green beans to hopefully have a continuous harvest.  However with the rain and heat, the second planting has almost caught up with the first.   I have space for a 3rd row of beans.   The potatoes I forgot to dig up last fall, have survived the winter and are growing like crazy too.   So yay for that! 

We found a fly strip that works.  It's a sticky paper, but it's not gloppy, doesn't drip and actually catches the flies.  Since we live in a rural area, there are flies.  There are so many fewer in the house this summer because of this new fly strip.   That makes me happy.

 

On gardens, and spinning and some bits and pieces

DH has been in his happy place lately.   Finally his wood supplier, dropped off 2 small dump truck loads of logs.   The loads were definitely smaller than normal, but were maple and a size which was easy to slice up.  Then he got a call that they were in the area, and did he want a 3rd load of Locust wood.   He said sure.  Locust wood is very hard, but slices and splits easily.  Because it's so hard, it takes longer to dry.  However it burns really well and for a long time when it's mixed with other hardwoods.    It took him only a couple of days to have it all sliced and ready to be split.   He does enjoy doing the wood, which is nice since we use it for heat.   

I've been seeing this little guy in the garden for weeks now.   He was just barely a handful when I first saw him.   He's still around.   We had a couple of larger rabbits around for a couple of years now, but I haven't seen a large bunny since last autumn.    This guy though is all over our garden.   He's in the front, the back, and this picture is from in the fenced off garden. The last time I had bunnies in there, I was planting on the ground and my whole crop of kohlrabi had bites out of them.  Not a single one was harvestable.  However with the beds now being so high, my veggies are safe from bunnies at least.  I put in some of the solar lights, some sticks,  some really tacky dollar store spinning decorations, and a lot of straw mulch to try to protect the plants from other hungry garden pests.   So far it's kept the robins and grackles away from my young, just sprouted seedlings.   

We finally had some rain too, so I've not had to water the garden for days.  It's been cool though, so many of the plants have just stalled.   Nothing has grown much over the past couple of weeks except the lettuce and kale.   They love this weather.   I've been harvesting fresh salad every 3 days.   I planted a green leaf lettuce, red romaine, buttercrunch lettuce and kale.   It makes for a lovely salad.  In other garden news, something ate my pumpkin seeds before they sprouted, so they've been replanted.  It's been so cold though, that they haven't sprouted yet either.  

I wish I could say I've woven lots of things.   I've done a bit of spinning.   I thought I was spinning superwash for a pair of socks, but nope, just regular Blue Faced Leicester, so while it's nice yarn, not what I was looking for.  I do have some superwash merino that I can card up for socks though.   I have been weaving off the project on my table loom.  It's a bit sucky because it's a 1/3 twill and the sett is such that I need to use a stick shuttle because the boat shuttle falls though.   Since I'm alternating the twill, there are always 3 shots in a row that I can't used the boat shuttle.   The stick shuttle is slow.   I'm a lot faster with it because I usually use a stick shuttle with the rigid heddle loom, but I'd planned to use the boat shuttle, so it's taking a lot longer than I'd anticipated.

I started dressing the rigid heddle loom with a scarf.  I'm not sure why but I definitely chose the wrong reed, so will have to pull out the yarn from the reed, change it out and rethread the whole thing. Maybe this is why I don't weave nearly so much during the nice weather.

I've been doing lots of research on Circular Sock Machines.   They are expensive.   I don't want to make a mistake.   I may have a line on a functional antique one, but I'm getting impatient waiting, although it's really not that long a wait.  It would still be faster than waiting for a new one and at least I could afford it  more or less, and have a larger fund for yarn available.  New csms cost thousands of dollars, plus they are either coming from the other side of the world, so take weeks to get here, or come from closer, but have months long wait lists.   I'm still hoping for the antique one though.   Hubby thinks the antique one would be best, or if I need to get a new one, to get one from the US, with a long wait list, but more accessible parts.  Plus there is the whole political issues locally with people having had bad experiences with the ones from the other side of the world.   I don't want to get involved in that stuff. 

I was at the Marr shop at Westfield Heritage Village.  Because the day started off very slow, I didn't bother to untie the great wheel.   That was a bad decision though as it turned out really busy.  As well, a lady from Maryland I think, came by.   They were visiting for a few days.  She brought her drop spindle and some flax that she'd grown in her garden.  It was lovely stuff.

I had to make Dion kitty some kitty kickers so he'd leave my baby wombat stuffy alone.   We're both happy now.   I did make baked donuts, filled with jam.  They were delicious.  We ate half of them before I found some ants on them.   I thought they'd be safe in the glass cake stand.  It has a domed cover and keeps baked goods fresh for days.   Obviously not safe from marauding ants though.   I'll also have to replace the sugar as they're in the bin too.   Everything at risk will now go into the cupboards for the summer and not on the counters.    They don't seem to find the ant traps inviting so I'm not sure what options I have other than putting things out of reach and wiping down the counters every time I see an ant.

 

 

Great Blue Heron surprise, and garden stuff

 One of the trails we like is a circle trail, in that you start, and walk the whole trail and end up back at the entrance.  However half of the trail is fairly open.  It's a nice enough walk, but not nearly as nice as the rest of the trail which meanders beside the river.   This time of year that part of the trail feels like you're walking through the happy part of a fairy tale.   The trees reach across the path creating a green arbour in places.  Huge swaths of wild flowers flank the sides of the trails.  Right now it's Queen Anne's Lace and Dame's Rocket, with just a pop here and there of Buttercups.  It's stunningly beautiful.

It's just on the edge of a fairly populated area, so it's amazing that there is quite a lot of wildlife which wanders through the trail too.   Of course there are song birds.  There were young robins looking for treats and hopping ahead of us as they weren't quite confident at flying yet.   There were squirrels and chipmunks and a big old raccoon wandered across the trail in front of us, down to the river, without a care in the world.

We had walked to the end of the river side trail, and turned back to walk to the entrance, thus avoiding the
other half of the trail.  We were close to the riverbank when there was a bit of noise coming from the few ducks on the water.   This great blue heron landed right in front of us.   They are very large birds and usually fairly timid.  This guy though, let us snap some photos and watch him for a few minutes.  Eventually, it was either the ducks, who were still making a bit of a fuss, or maybe he tired of us watching him, or the very noisy, loud kids who were just tromping into the area scared him off.  Regardless, it was a lovely treat to be quite that close to a blue heron.  They are majestic birds, although the noise they make doesn't quite match their looks -  GRAWK!

The garden is almost all planted.   There is some space for a second planting of beans and some space that I left for succession planting of greens.   However, they aren't always successful with the way our summers have been so hot, so I'm second guessing myself now and thinking that maybe I should plant something else in that spot.

My spinach and arugula went weird this year.  I'm guessing it's the late frosts we had.  Both of them went to seed before they were even large enough to eat.   I've replanted the pots though.   In one I've put some summer savory, since the chooks scratched through my last patch and in the other some catnip.  It used to grow wild, but there was none around last summer.   Everything has been watered, fed and what's large enough to have a straw mulch, has been covered.   If I can find a replacement pepper plant for that tiny pepper that hasn't grown since Easter, then I'll replace it.   It feels good to have most of the work done.  Now it's just watering, feeding and weeding if necessary until harvest.... yay!