Wool singles - more hikes

I'm spinning up the last of my "good" wool sliver.  I have a bunch of mill ends, but this was the last bag of clean, well processed sliver.  There was just under 300 g of Merino in the bag.  I spun up just over 1000 yds of singles.   I dyed them using weak acid dyes, by adding each skein in order after a specific time.    I have three skeins which are different shades of the same colour.   They are destined for a woven scarf project.  

 I will using gelatin sizing on them just to be sure that they will hold while weaving.   By mixing up the gelatin double strength, soaking the warp in it and letting it dry, there is less abrasion and breakage of the singles.   The gelatin washes out easily when the finished item is soaked in warm water.   

My sweetie had a week of holidays that he "had" to take.   It was another week at home.   We did some lovely short hikes on the days that the weather cooperated.   This trail was one we'd done in the summer, but had been driven back by the mosquitoes.   They were unexpectedly thick and we really couldn't finish the trail as we weren't prepared for that many bugs at the time.     Now of course, the weather is cold.  It was quite brisk and made for a lovely hike.   We could see why there'd been so many mozzies!  There are several ponds, a very slow moving  stream and an unexpected amount of standing water.

The Ash trees had all been cut down.   It looked like they had been only cut part way through and then either pushed or allowed to fall naturally.   Many were caught up in other trees and at weird, precarious angles.  This was the best one with the fungus crawling up the trunk, like scales.

We weren't the only people there that day.  There were a number of people out there which was nice.  Everyone kept their distance but were friendly.   The best comment was from a gal out walking with her mother, who told us that "there weren't any bears"!   Since we don't live in bear country and they are rarely sighted in the area, it gave me a good set of the giggles.

 There is snow on the ground again, so it's doubtful we'll get much more hiking done until spring, but it was great weather for a week off to play outside.    Sweetie also got a lot of headway made on the last pile of maple which was encroaching on my parking spot.   I can park my cute little car safely once again!

Despite all this, there was a lot of down time, including one day which was so dark and grey, that almost nothing was accomplished, except some Animal Crossing and video golf.   I can totally understand the worshipping or celebrating of the winter solstice.   The last couple of weeks with short days can be really frustrating.   I had to be in town for 8 am, and I needed to use my car headlights, and I'm having to make sure that I'm feeding the chooks well before 4:30 pm, or they are already starting to roost for the night.  Only a few more days!

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!

                                                                                                   

 

 

Spin, Spin, Spin

Trying again...   I managed to delete my whole post just as I was finishing up the final proof reading.   Sheesh, twice now I've done this.   The third time's a charm, right?

I've been spinning a lot the past few weeks.   I don't normally watch the telly, but I tend to spin, knit or do some sort of handwork at the same time, if I do indulge.  I have a bit of a love for British period dramas, regular dramas, panel and comedy shows.    We ended up subscribing to the streaming service Brit Box, which has meant that I've accomplished a lot of spinning. 

This is merino.  It's a two ply.  I used a commercial sliver from The Fibre Garden.   It drafted like a dream and was so easy to spin.   I could spin well prepped fibre like this all the time!  I almost didn't ply it, but left it as singles for weaving.  There was a lot of it, but since it is mitten and toque season, I thought it could be  better purposed for warm woollies.

I had about 150g of flax sliver which I spun up as singles.   The sliver is a commercial tow preparation, with some very short bits and a lot of much longer ones.   It spins quite easily.   I have found that drafting and adding the twist works a bit more efficiently if my working hand has wet fingers.   I have a cute little flax water pot which I got from a talented potter one year when I was doing my Master Spinner at Olds College.  I like having the opportunity to use it.   It was also nice spinning the flax.  It's fun to spin and different than wool.  It makes a really nice change up.

I've also been spinning up the rest of some blue cotton.   It doesn't have the lustre that this photo suggests.  It's just plain cotton.   However, my plans for an outdoor photo shoot were scuppered today when I woke up to heavy rains and wickedly blustery winds.   Instead, I just took snaps with my phone.   It is so dull and grey outside, that even by a window, I needed to use a flash.   

I will ply the cotton and pop the finished skein into my container of cottons yarns, destined to become a garment.    I've been spinning up random skeins of cotton yarns and saving them for several years now.   The aim is to have enough to make some yardage for a shirt or jacket.   I should probably take some time to see how much I've actually spun.   It would be disappointing though, to find out that I wasn't even close to the yardage I might need. I think that's why, I never actually check.

With no Fleece Festival this year, I didn't stock up on winter spinning fibres.  Since I didn't purchase much last year either, I suddenly realized that my stash is starting to dwindle!  Egads!   I'm not buying anything right now though because we needed some electrical work done in the early summer.  We also just got the roof done and that was fun.  It cost $1000 over the estimate because once again we found the previous repairs had been done in a somewhat dubious manner, although likely the least expensive way possible.  

 When they removed the shingles, they found that there was no decking or sheathing on the roof. So they had to add a layer of plywood to seal up the structure and give something to nail into.  Of course wood is almost double in price these days.   But I will have to say that the roofers were very fast and efficient.   They showed up at 7 am on the dot.  They were finished, cleaned up and out of here by 3:30 pm.   We now have a roof which will not leak and it looks great.  As a plus, I can say they did the job the proper way.   We're happy about that.

Friday morning hike

Today's weather has been amazing.  With a high of 19C and sunshine, it felt almost summery, instead of November!  This morning we took the time to take a short walk on a trail we hadn't done in a couple of years.   All the paths have been groomed and made accessible.  It made for an easy ramble. 

  However, the number of trees which have been removed made it feel like a whole new area.   I'm guessing they had to remove all the dead and dying Ash trees.  It's quite open now and much less like walking through the bush.  It's still a pretty walk though since much of the trail follows a winding river. 

 Being a weekday morning, there were few people on the trail.  We did follow the markings of what turned out to be a little 2 year old toting a huge stick, all around the trails, with his mom and a gigantic Newfoundland puppy, which weighed more than the two of them put together.

 

There was a lovely grassy area; a green oasis in a forest of browns.

A little pond with lots of algae and growth, looked so pretty.

           

   It was nice and relaxing to watch the river flow by.
       

There were ducks on the river.  They were in small groups here and there, rather than one large flock.  However, I didn't have my big girl camera with a good lens, only my phone, so I was too far away to get reasonable photos of the ducks.  Still, I have to say I'm happy to have an alternate camera for when I'm in unexpected situations, so I can at least still take snap shots.

 

Hot Air Balloon Excitement

 This morning had a tad bit of excitement.   We heard a strange  rumbling  noise and a huge shadow in the sky, flying  low and close to the house.   From the window you could see it was a very low flying hot air balloon.  I've seen hot air balloons take off up the road, but I've rarely seen them flying overhead.  One of the few times they were visible, the balloon flew right over us.  They were low enough that they ran the burner, with a definite loud whoosh and rumble.  The poor chickens  who were out, freaked and ran to the trees to hide.   

This balloon was loosing altitude quickly and was very obviously coming in for a landing.  I'm guessing it was unexpected as the field they were landing in, is still full of standing corn.

Then there was more noise and this second balloon was floating by.  It was a bit higher than the first balloon, at least in the distance.  It's difficult to tell how high they actually are from down on the ground though.   As it was approaching our house, it seemed to be dropping in altitude.  The burner made an awful racket, however, you could still hear their conversation!  That was unexpected.

 

 

 

The balloon ran it's burner just before it came to the big maple tree in our yard.  It was pretty spectacular to watch.  I really was hoping they knew what they were doing, and that they were higher up than it appeared from my vantage point.

 

This is what the hot air balloon looked like as it passed by the maple tree on the other side of the yard. As it floated by, I hoped that it wouldn't  have to land on the farm next door, as they have horses.  That would be a bigger panic issue than a few chickens and likely cause more damage than crushing a bit of field corn.

I didn't walk up the road to see what happened next.  I did watch to see if they gained altitude.   It didn't seem like it. The first balloon was packed with people.  The second one seemed to have only a couple of people on board.   I hope they had smooth landings and didn't cause too much damage though, to themselves or the fields.  

 

Marble Cake from 1898

 

Cake! Yum.  I found a copy of The Galt Cookbook, published in 1898 by Margaret Taylor and Frances McNaught from the Department of Agriculture, Ottawa. It is a Canadian cookery book. Many if not all of the recipes are from what was the Galt area of Ontario, now Cambridge, and surrounding communities.

I found this simple recipe for marble cake, using actual chocolate. Most earlier recipes for marble cake that I've found use some other colourant, like cochineal for the secondary colours, not necessarily other flavours.  I'd been checking books as I went through them, to find a marble cake which used chocolate or another flavour, rather than colours.   Finding chocolate marbled cake was definitely a bonus.

I mixed the try ingredients in one bowl, and the wet in another.  I used a pretty standard method for making the batter.  I added the flour, cream of tarter, soda, salt in one bowl and stirred it with a wisk to mix it well.   I creamed the butter and sugar, added the egg and beat it until light coloured.   I then added the milk and vanilla.   I added the dry ingredients in several portions, mixing well between additions.

I separated out approximately half of the batter into another bowl.  I found a box of bakers chocolate, did a quick search to find the size of chocolate blocks in 1898, and ended up using two, although in hindsight, it was unnecessary.   It would have been tasty and fine with a single modern block of baking chocolate.   I stirred the melted chocolate into one half of the batter.  

I had buttered and floured two 8 inch cake tins.  I only used one.   I think that my batter was a little thick and it blobbed rather than delicately spooned into the tin.  In the end, I realized that not only would I not be able to spread this gloppy goop into two pans, but they would be very thin layers if I did
so.  I scraped the batter into the pan, best I could, first using a spoon, then a spoon and spatula and finally, just the spatula.   I had to run a knife through to try to get the two batters to settle, and then I dropped the pan lightly on the counter several times to try to eliminate any possible remaining air bubbles.

It took about 30 minutes to bake in a 350 F oven 

The finished cake is a lovely cake.   While I was worried it would be dense, it has a lovely texture.  It has a soft crumb and a flavour which shows off the butter, vanilla and chocolate perfectly.   It didn't need an icing to help it along.   It is perfect as is, although for a birthday, I'd definitely ice it

I am putting this recipe into my repeat file because it is worthy of being baked again.

Next time I would sift the flour first.  I think that would help keep the cups of flour be less compacted, helping with the too thick batter.  Or I'd add another 1/4 c of milk.

The cake is likely pretty accurate though.   I have no idea what the cost was because I had all the ingredients on hand.  Not horribly expensive though as it's a single layer cake without any large amounts of ingredients

Processing Nettles Experiment

Here are the samples of nettles processed three different ways.  The green, thicker fibre was fresh nettles, peeled and scraped with an old butter knife.  By old, I mean , I found an antique butter knife at the thrift store for 50cents and used it, as they have a straight, dull edge.  Modern butter knives, or table knives, have a bit of a taper to them, and often have a bit of a serrated edge at the tip.   That made it much more difficult to scrape the nettles, hence the antique knife use.

The whiter fibre was from the nettles that were dew retted.  I bundled them up and layed them on the ground, flipping them every couple of days.  Depending on what you read, it can take anywhere from two days to a couple of weeks to be fully retted.  I left the bundles for two weeks before I tried to process these.    The fibres didn't easily peel off of the bark, or the centre core, so I thought they may be under retted.  The colour was nice though.  

The darker fibres had been retted for several weeks more.  I'd actually sort of forgotten about them as I was busy with canning.  My sweetie asked me when I was going to use them as he needed the space where they were sitting, to stack wood.  The outer bark had totally disappeared in some places and there were fibres actually showing.   They were quite easy to peel off, however they were breaking at some of the nodes on the stems.  Rather than a creamy colour, they are grey.

I don't have any proper processing equipment, like a flax break or hackles, which would have made this a lot easier and more useful.   I had a mallet, some wool combs and medium carders.

The under retted nettles and I call them under retted because the outer bark was difficult to remove in a lot of places.   I lightly bashed them to break the pieces up, pulled out some by hand and them combed them.   Many pieces still stuck.  I combed the fibres to remove more of the trashy bits and after getting a bit frustrated, just spun them and hoped for the best.  They were fairly long, spun quite nicely, but some of the bits were stuck fairly firmly.  

The over retted nettles were very soft.  The outer bark released quite easily when combed, but there were still some fibres with bits out outer bark stuck to them.  I ended up carding these as the fibres were shorter after combing, maybe 3-6 inches long.   I spun them from the end of the rolag, with a semi-worsted forward draw.

The green fibres should have been spun before they dried out.   I had to twine and ply by hand, which is an acceptable way to make a strong cordage, rather than yarn.  If I had a spray bottle, I think spritzing them with a bit of water, covering them and letting them sit for a couple of hours would have made this much easier.  But the sample I made suggests that this would make a strong rope.  I think it would make a lovely addition to a basket making project.