Colours of Mother's Day

 

Fern in our garden

It's Mother's Day today.  It has been a sunny but cool day, with a wickedly blustery and cold wind.   There are little leaves on the trees.   More so in town, where I was taken for lunch, where the climate is just slightly warmer I think.   We were supposed to have a picnic in the big park and watch the ducks and geese, but there was a base ball tournement, and most of the ways in were closed off.  We went to go to the other park, which is along the Thames river, but construction blocked off the main route to the park entrance.  Eventually DH wound his way through side streets to find a way into the park.   It turned out to be too cold to eat outside, and there were no ducks or geese, but it was still nice.

Washing a very nice fleece 

I'm teaching a small class about processing fleece using different methods.  I had lots of short fibres for learning to card with.   It's a crap fleece, so students will have lots to practice with and not have to worry about making mistakes. 

 I also have an absolutely brilliant Icelandic fleece.   It's labeled as a black/grey moorit.  However moorits are usually in reference to a shade of brown from pale beige to reddish brown and this is definitely not that.   However the tog is a pale grey and so very soft.  The Thel is black and darker grey.  It's stunning in colour and a very nice Icelandic fleece.   However, I have discovered I'm not really thrilled with spinning Icelandic fleeces, so I'm donating it to the class, so we can practice dealing with double fleeces.

Finally, I had nothing long enough to comb.   I asked a shepherd friend if I could purchase a fleece suitable for teaching combing, and she gave me 5 fleeces.  One was given with the caveat that it was for me and not for teaching.  It's almost solid black, with some weathered brown tips which will give the yarn character when processed.

What did I really do all Mother's Day?   Except for the lunch break, and a trip to the dollar store on the way home to pick up lingerie bags, for washing fleece, I washed fleece.   I did half of a fleece suitable for combing, and half of the Icelandic fleece.  The other half of the Icelandic fleece is soaking as I write this.   It has been a very fun day and having my guys cater to my need to wash fleece (the class is next weekend) has been very nice.

Yesterday I was at a crank in.   That a gathering of circular sock machine knitters.   We drag out all our heavy metal machines, tables, accessories and sock yarn, to socialise, watch demos and of course purchase supplies, all in a situation unconduisive to actually being productive.   There is usually some sort of charity donation.  The past few years it was Izzy dolls, donated to the local police department for use in kids trauma situations.   I had 26 dolls hand knitted by friends and 6 I'd made myself.  In the past couple of years I've made more, but they are a lot of work to finish up and I 've been spinning, knitting up that yarn, and weaving more, leaving little time for the fussy handwork of the machine knit comfort dolls. Still between my friends and I , we had the most donations!   I also won a door prize, and the donated yarn wasn't taken yet, so I snagged it.  It's really pretty.   Despite the winning of a door prize, I think most crank-ins are really good learning situations.   Crankers are very generous with their knowledge and help others.   I met some really nice people and had a lot of fun.  

A slow and interesting start to Spring

 

The farm next door to us was sold recently.  It had an old bank barn which looked to be in really good condition, all the barn board siding was there and everything. .  I think this was true because they started pulling it down and you could see that it was structurally in good shape.  They then hacked away at fencing, pulling it down.  They had a little bob cat thing with a pincer end which pulled down any branches over hanging the fields.   They put all this debris right behind the old barn.  

Today someone put a controlled burn sign on our property.  They almost knocked our mailbox down in the process :(.  For most of the morning, it was fine.  The wind was blowing away from us and there wasn't a huge amount of smoke.  Then, just after lunch the sirens started.  In the end, the "controlled" burn had 6 fire trucks respond.   I'm thinking all the old hay in the barn and that dry barn wood and fencing probably just went up in a flash.   We have a couple of factory farms in the area.  They rent and buy up fields to feed their cattle.   Sometimes I think change in agriculture is not necessarily a good thing.  A small family farm is gone to a large corporation or a developer looking ahead to sell it off as housing lots in the future.

New on the loom. I took a gradient yarn and divided it up into its various colours.  They were dyed in uneven amounts, so I  warped the loom accordingly.   I think perhaps I should have threaded  the left and right sides oppositely, but once it was on the loom, I wasn't changing it.   I'm using the leftover greys and dark blues as the weft.   

The yarn is an acrylic blend from an English company.   A nearby yarn and craft shop has a huge tent sale in the summer and they have some really good deals on yarns we don't normally find stocked in shops here.    It's a lovely yarn and was something like $5 a 550 yd cake, so you can't go wrong with that.

This afternoon, while I was outside gawking at the fire, I started picking dandelion flowers.   The Weavers guild is having a dye day and we're going to do some nature dyes as well as acid dyes in between, so there is no waiting around.  Because we're planning it early enough, I've set people to collecting dandelions.  Dandelions make a lovely yellow, which is quite bright and cheery.  It does fade, but it takes a while and it's stays a decent yellow, although not quite as bright. 

I only got 167 g of them because most of they had lady bugs feeding?  on them.  Some of the flower heads had multiple bugs.  I'll go out tomorrow at a different time to see if I can get more.   While people seem to think dandelions grow all year, they generally have a fairly short time period when they are available in quantity.  Because there is no shortage of them, or risk of them being at risk of extinction, you can pick lots of them with no issues.  Nobody seems to care if you take them from in front of their farms either! 

The guild is participating in a small sale.  We've done this one before and only sell small items.  Generally though, we don't do this to sell things, we do it for community exposure.  Having small items  brings people into our booth for interesting conversations.   I made a bunch of these little yarn horse ornaments to sell.  I used some thrums and leftover yarn, and possibly an old warp I cut off from so long ago I don't remember it.   I almost forgot to put ears on the horses, and wondered why they looked a little off.   Tiny felt ears though, made them look perfect.   

The weather has been quite cool.  The other day we had to have both wood stoves going and that is very odd in May.   My son did put up the sunshade roof though, which he usually does for Mother's Day, if the weather is nice.  Despite it being a bit cool and wildly windy the other day, I took my lunch outside to enjoy the gazebo and some fresh air.  It was lovely.

Just some little things

The garlic is liking this changeable weather.  This photo is from a few days ago.  I took one today, but it was really early in the morning and the shadows made for an interesting but not horribly useful photo.  So the garlic is currently larger and happier than even this.   It's still April and growing really well.  It will be ready to harvest sometime in mid July more or less.  In the meantime, I'm waiting to harvest the scapes which won't show up for weeks yet!

The weather has been very changeable.  It's gone from hot, to cold, with rain, snow and a bit of sunshine.  The Scilla lasted only a few days.  The Daffodils lasted barely a week.  They are just stalks with faded flowers now.   The Alliums are growing well, and already have little buds on them.  They may be early too.   These tulips are the only one's I've seen so far.  The squirrels may have gotten the rest.   Two days ago the blooms barely had any colour and by tomorrow they should be in their full glory.  I wonder how long they will last?

 I have a few teaching opportunities in the next few weeks.  One is a class on processing fibre with various tools like combs, cards, flick carders, drum carder and wool hackles.   However to make this work, I'm washing up some fleeces so we have 2 different kinds, single coat and  double coat fleeces to see how they work differently.   Right now I'm washing a Dorset cross fleece.  It's shorter than I expected so it may be pure Dorset, or Dorset type.  I spun up a fleece of this kind last summer and it was actually pretty nice.  This one is obviously a sheep that liked to roll in icky, muddy, poopy pastures. 

1st cold water soak for washing a Dorset fleece

Ive been doing a cold soak for the first bath, to get rid of the dirt.  This doesn't remove the lanolin, which requires heat.   It does get rid of the actual dirt, mud, some of the urine and feces.  I do the next wash in very hot water, with some orange degreaser and Orvus paste.   By the time this second wash is done, it usually just takes a light third washing, to remove any last stains or stubborn bits.   This stuff is so dirty, that it took a second and third bath in hot water, Orvus and I added some Dawn dish soap.   It only took two rinses though which was nice.   Partially I think because the soap bubbles were backing up in the sink and I had to let the rinse sit for quite a while.  It's not perfectly clean, but clean enough to use.

I have more of this white fleece to wash and then a very pretty Icelandic fleece to wash up.  It's a double fleece and it's so pretty.   I'm just not fond of spinning it, so will sacrifice it to this class.   This is needed in about 3 weeks.

Then I'm doing a nature dye class in June.   A friend gave me a poke to remind me to get on the ball with the planning, so between it, and the SCA event FOOL that I'm doing, plus my son's wedding, it's getting a bit crazy around here.

Of Dinosaurs and freshly spun yarn

I can post this now.  It's a dinosaur made of handspun and dyed yarn.   It was a wedding shower gift for my soon to be daughter in law, who when asked what the dress code was for the wedding was to "wear whatever makes you feel awesome, even if it's a dinosaur costume".  Then she said she kind of hopes someone wears a dinosaur costume.   Since I couldn't do the dinosaur costume,  I figured I could make her a stuffy to keep the fun going.   It's a free pattern on Ravelry and was actually for a dragon.  I left the wings off.  I was going to put a little tulle veil on it, but it didn't quite work with the spines on the back.  It didn't look finished without the spines, so I left off the wedding veil.

I'll have to admit, I do like the partners my kids have chosen.  

I just finished spinning and plying up 450g of Blue Faced Leicester top.   It went pretty quickly and I need to figure out what I'm going to do with it.   It still needs to be wet finished and dyed.   It's a light Worsted/DK grist before wet finishing.   I'm guessing it will bloom a bit and be a worsted yarn when I'm done.

I have some more of the Dorset fleece which still needs to be washed.   It's supposed to be a Dorset /Friesian cross, which actually works with the Dorset, making it a bit softer and nicer to work with, although Dorset is a fairly nice mid-grade fleece to begin with.   I also have some Icelandic that I need to wash up before the May long weekend.   It's an absolutely lovely fleece. It has a great colour, a defined Tog and Thel.  And I rather dislike actually spinning Icelandic fleece.   I'm using it for a class to get rid of it.

I attended a wedding shower this weekend.  It was lovely.  It was held in an old building, now a distillery, with old stone walls, wooded floor and a few antiques scattered around.  The atmosphere was great.  There were treats, a few activities but no actual games.  One activity was making bouquets (the wedding theme is wild flowers).  There were bunches of flowers and greenery, and little bags with tiny vases in them.   Most people made lovely bouquets, trimming the flowers to fit.   However, because there was no water for those vases to make transporting easier, I made a scraggly bouquet and just sort of put the flowers willy nilly in the vase.   When I got home, I trimmed them up nicely and popped them into the now water filled vase.  They are pretty now and now looking wildly over grown.    

The garlic is coming up in the garden nicely.   Some of it is about 8 inches tall already.   Garlic is an early sprouting plant to begin with.  Having been planted in a raised bed may help because the soil often seems to warm up a bit earlier.  As well we've had crazy amounts of rain so maybe all the conditions have aligned.   It did snow yesterday, crazy heavy flurries on and off.  I had to scrape ice off my car this morning too!  Which I find an unhappy task at any time during the winter, but more so in April!

 

How Does Your Garden Grow?

We've had a run of some unseasonably mild temperatures.  We've had some rain, but as we've been on the edge of the weather systems, we've gotten a reasonable amount rather than the heavy rains just to the north of us.  We've had some sunshine.  I can't tell you how nice it is to see a blue sky, rather than a grey sky.  We've had so many grey skies this winter.

I checked the garden beds the other day.   Because we let the chooks out one day, some of the pots have been dug up from them looking for bugs.  They tend to scatter the soil about.  On the ground it isn't an issue, but in the large planters, they can make a lot of mess, and half empty pots.  I'll just have to get more triple mix and manure to make up the difference.

Last spring I bought a couple of bales of straw.   I had some that I'd used to mulch the large raised beds, but I was hoping that if I left these two out over the summer, they'd start to compost and be a nice addition to dress the raised beds in the fall.   They'd started composting nicely and I dressed the empty bed fairly heavily, with 4in - 6 in of straw.   I'd planted garlic in just under half of the other raised bed, so I only put 2 or 3 inches of straw over the garlic.  I wanted it to have an easier time of sprouting in the spring.  I've had some struggle and start off a little curled up one year when I had a bit too much heavy mulch on my garlic.   Today I checked and we have garlic already sprouting!  Of the 45 cloves I'd planted last fall, 8 are already starting to grow.   It never starts out all at once, so I'm pretty happy.   It's hard neck garlic, and mostly the Music variety.  We're supposed to have rain all week, but the temperatures will be summer like.  I'll pop out to the feed store and pick up some compost to top dress the garlic, over the straw. in hopes of getting slightly bigger bulbs.  There are enough for us to use for a while and to use some as gifts.  I've already had family members suggest that they could be the recipients of our excess!  

I planted some chives in a planter last summer.  Not even one of the large planters, but a medium-ish sized pot on the deck, so that it was easily reached to use over the summer.   It sort of languished and never really got useably large, and I forgot about it as I didn't think it would over winter in that particular pot.  It did though and is growing really, really well!  I'll have chives to use this summer for certain.

The Blue Squill is blooming in full force.   We should have two patches, but one is struggling this year.  I think it may have gotten a bit compacted by the snow, weird winter weather and its proximity to the fire pit and maple syrup production. It's hardy though and the bulbs spread quite readily.

We also have the daffodils, tulips and alliums starting.  The leaves are growing.  We won't have tulip or alliums for a while yet, but a few of the daffs are starting to bud up.   With the warm weather expected this week, they should bud up and maybe start flowering really quickly.

My son in law is generously starting some tomato seedlings for me.   He starts all sorts of interesting plants, but as we have somewhat limited our growing space these days, I'm less adventurous in what I plant.  I mainly just grow the basics that we really like to eat, and some plants to put up for use over the winter.  Sometimes it works out better than others.  One summer we at zucchini almost every other day for several months.   Another, I managed to get enough

tomatoes to can for use over the whole winter.  I haven't been able to find that particular variety - Amish Paste Tomato- since.  Too bad because it produced a lot of fruit, but it didn't all ripen at once, so canning it was super easy.  The tomatoes were really tasty too.

I'm so happy that the garden season is starting.   If I pick up some arugula, spinach and leaf lettuce seeds, hopefully we'll have  salads soon too!   Let's hope that we don't get the fruit trees flowering this early and then having more frosty weather afterwards, which damages the new buds and hurts the fruit harvests.

Maple Syrup Recipe

What to do with the extra syrup this year.  We had a couple of jars of maple syrup that didn't seal.   I tried twice, the second time by adding it to the new batch, reheating and putting in clean jars.   Everything but 2 jars sealed.  That left about 3 cups of syrup to sit in the fridge until we got around to using it.   

I've used maple syrup for butter tarts - oh so good, and for pecan pie - oh so expensive.  Also there is tarte au sucre, a very old recipe thought to have come with or invented by the  early French settlers in Quebec.  It is often made with sugar, or maple sugar, but maple syrup is also a possibility.  I've never made one before and researched a lot of recipes and history to come up with the simplest tarte au sirop d'erable that I could.  My thoughts on this were that in the late winter or early spring,  a lot of ingredients would not be available to early settlers, and flour, cream, eggs and syrup were likely available.   Hens start laying again as the days get longer.  I always notice the older girls starting to lay again in early January.   Cows can be bred to calve early too, or late so that they are giving milk all year.

My recipe turned out to be super rich but very delicious- 

You need -

Short Crust 

2 eggs (large)

3/4 cup cream.  

1 1/2 cups pure maple syrup - but you can use 1 cup syrup and 1/2 cup brown sugar to be a little more economical if you want.

Short crust is just regular pastry.  Store bought is fine if you won't want to make the pastry yourself.

Cream -  I used heavy cream (double or whipping cream) but I imagine any type of cream will do, even just evaporated milk from a tin. I've no idea if milk substitutes would work  as I haven't tried them.

Method-  

pre-heat oven to 400° F

Pour maple syrup into a bowl, add eggs, cream and sugar if using.   Beat until everything is well blended and completely incorporated.  

Pour filling into the pie crust and bake for 15 minutes at 400°F.

Turn oven down to 350° F and bake for another 25-35 minutes, until the outside edges of the filling are set and the centre just jiggles a little.

Cool completely before eating

 

Scarves and signs of spring

I put a new scarf on the loom.   I wasn't sure about this yarn and am still not quite sure I like it, but it's pretty enough I guess. The shop where I purchased it has industrial lights and the colour of things sometimes shift a bit once you get it outside.   It's a little less dramatic, and the lavender more greyish  in real life than it was in the shop.  It's working up fairly quickly.  As long as I don't get distracted it shouldn't take long to weave.  The yarn is a bit thicker than I prefer, but the trade off is a scarf that is really quick to warp up and weave off.  I think it took me 45  minutes to get the loom dressed, including winding the direct warp in front of the fire, so having to deal with an awful lot of static.

It was fairly mild outside and I was pulling some of the ever invading Virginia creeper vines from places it shouldn't be, like taking over the Weigela bush and the back deck.   I had a fairly good sized pile of it, so I grabbed some of the larger vines and twisted them into similar sized hoops.  I wired them together and then wrapped them at the joints.  I ended up using natural raffia because none of the vines were thin enough for me to use in that small an area.   I was planning on making a rather rustic melon basket.  I got the hoops tied together with the raffia, which was interesting because the raffia was in short pieces.  I sort of managed to cut some of the side stakes and get them into place.   I left the rest of the vines out to dry a bit over night, while warning my husband not to burn them or toss them into the junk wood pile, so he knew that my pile of vines was intentionally left littering the deck!

 The next day I took a bucket with a bit of warm water outside, trimmed many of the vines, curled them into manageable coils and started soaking them.  As they became more pliable, I started using them as weavers.  I learned a lot, like thinner ones work much better, and they take a bit more soaking than I'd anticipated.  Also, it takes a lot of vines.   Many more vines than my fairly large pile that I had accumulated.   It's hard work winding those vines in and out of the spokes.  

 After a while my hands were aching and I'd run out of weavers!  My huge pile of vines was down to a few scraggly bits that I'd trimmed off.  I left it out to dry a bit, but neglected to check the weather forecast.   It rained and rained, then got cold so it's still sitting outside, unfinished.  When it warms up, I'll trim a few more vines and weave that remaining bit.  Then I can trim off the scraggly bits.  It will never be beautiful, but it will be functional.

In the sheltered part of the garden, a few undersized and definitely needing to be fertilised crocuses bloomed.   Such a needed burst of colour and reminder that spring is on it's way.