Interesting things over the past few weeks

This is the chair I currently have at my loom.   Unfortunately my loom is near picture windows, and gets sun on nice days.   The cats have decided it's more important to nap in the sunspots than let me weave.   I can't say that I blame them.  Once, a number of years ago, when Cat was still with us, he was resting in a huge sunspot.  I was not feeling well, achy and snuffling.  I lay down beside him, in that sun and oh my goodness, it felt so nice!
 So I've let them have their time in the sun.  Soon enough, we'll have snow clouds, or those pale skies with less effective sun spots.   Of course, as soon as we start up the wood stove, Dion will be right in front of it toasting himself.

One of my friends from the Rug Hooking guild also works at her local museum.   She gave me two old cookbooks that the museum acquisitions team decided didn't have any relevance to their local area.  It was a lovely thought and an amazing gift since one of the books is an 1898 copy of The New Galt Cookbook.  It's one of the earlier revised editions since it still have the names of the contributors attached to the recipes.  I was thrilled.

I was out of general occasion cards, so I painted up a few of these for thank you cards.  It was fast and I think quite effective.  I like them a lot.

I was a tad late locking up the chooks the other night and when I came out of the barn, this amazing sunset made it seem like the sky was on fire.  The photo doesn't do it justice.   These moments never last long, and I felt quite lucky to get to see this one.

The fall asters are just starting to fade.  Usually they bloom with the Goldenrod, but this year most of them seem to be blooming as the goldenrod is fading.   They are one of my favourite wild flowers.  I love the colour and I love that they bloom so late in the season when most of the other flowers have faded.

Other than that, the huge storm a couple of weeks ago left a path of downed trees and other damage.   Earlier in the year hubby asked the "tree guy", a local service for a load of wood and said he'd like a couple more.  He dropped off one a few days ago, them dropped one off yesterday  without telling us he was coming and them today I looked up and he's dropping off another load.   Hubby doesn't mind, but there is currently a lot of it out there!   I've been told that most of it's in an easy to process size, so there is that.   

More Crazy Storm Damage

A huge, weird weather system came through the whole area the other day.  The nation wide severe storm and tornado warning system was going off for well over an hour.  We had wild winds, heavy driving rains in heavy cloud cover that had the outside solar lights on in the daytime because it was so dark.  When it was all over and done, there were branches down every where.   We were lucky that we still had hydro, but a lot of areas even nearby had none for hours.   Once again, the storm took out my clothes line.   The clean up of the yard yielded 6 trailer loads of branches, limbs and other tree debris.  The clumps of leaves, just got mowed into mulch.  The worst thing though, was that other half of the tree that fell on my garden in early July, came down, taking a pine tree with it, and it landed - yup, on my garden!   The wire tomato cage and the spiral support are visible, but crushed and one tomato showing on the right side.

It mainly fell on the large Mortgage Lifter tomatoes in the raised beds.  One was just lightly hit, and mainly with smaller limbs separate from the main trunk, so it was fairly easy to clean up.   I ended up picking some of the very low fruit that was still green, because one of them had bite marks in it.   I felt it was better to save the rest of those tomatoes, than feed whatever was making them dinner.   The other plant though was completely covered by the tree.   Hubby trimmed enough away so that I could pick all the still green tomatoes from the plant and bring them inside to ripen.

I was amazed at how quickly the rescued green tomatoes ripened inside.   Mostly ripened, as when I realized that I had to either can them or use them up today, because they were ripening and quite soft, I found a couple of them were not quite ripe inside yet.  I peeled and chopped them up.  Mortgage Lifter tomatoes are a heritage breed which results in huge tomatoes, with lots of flesh bits.  They're great on sandwiches.  I heated them to a boil in a large pot so I could water bath can the batch.  If you heat the jars, and heat the tomatoes, you can put them into a canner filled with near boiling water without risking thermal shock.  I also find that heating the tomatoes allow me to put more fruit into the jars.  

I also used a fair number of the fancy Black Cherry Tomatoes, which are actually greenish brown and green inside. (This is the important information) They are a nice size cherry tomato, albeit ugly.  There are lots still on the vines.  There were too many to eat and I didn't want them to go bad.   A few seconds in a hot water bath and the skins slipped off nicely.  I mixed them into the chopped tomatoes and I thought nothing of it, until I pulled the 7 jars from the canner.   Because the huge tomatoes were chopped, the tomatoes separated, with the meaty part floating over the clear tomato juice.   It's apparently a pectin issue which is released or broken down when chopped too much.   One jar had to wildly green liquid on the bottom and a very green flesh.  I will admit to commenting on the weird effect of the little brown cherry tomatoes.   Then hubby, who remember pulled down the jars for me, reminded me that one of the jars I used was a fancy green glass one.   So I actually think they are all normal and I was just doing the canning by rote and didn't even pay attention to the colour of the jar.  How did I really not notice that?   However, I'm happy that all jars sealed nicely and tomorrow afternoon, I'll be able to remove the rings, clean them up and store them away for winter use.  Thankfully I didn't use one of the purple glass jars.  I wonder what sort of surprise I would have had with that one?

Summer Holiday in Ottawa

 We got tickets to a concert at the Canadian Tire Centre in Kanata, a suburb of Ottawa.  Then we went the weekend before to explore the area.  We had plans to visit as many of the big museums as possible because they are the bigger national ones.  That plan lasted only a couple of days before we decided to rethink our plans.  We hated the city.  We hated the city driving.  We switched out our plans to visit smaller museums, farther out of the area.  These required scenic drives and gave us activities with far fewer people and much less traffic.  We enjoyed it so much more. 

Lancaster - Winnie

We drove because it was only a 5-6 hour drive, and with a fuel efficient car it would be much cheaper than flying and getting a rental.   We left in the pouring rain.  It was miserable driving and I was just the passenger.   Just the other side of Toronto, the skies cleared and it was lovely driving the rest of the way.  We took the Trans Canada, so it was a pretty drive.  We had a picnic in Havelock and got to the hotel as it started to cloud over again and drizzle.  We were early, and our room wasn't ready yet, so we waited in the lounge area, where they gave us hot drinks and freshly baked cookies until our room was available.   When we got to the room, this was our view.  A rainbow suggests a good start to the holiday.

We did go to the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum.  We'd visited the other two plane museums, one in Winnipeg and the other just outside of Hamilton, this one was a no brainer.   This one had great displays and a fair bit of well written information available.  The War Plane Museum had functional planes taking off and landing which was exciting and the Winnipeg Western Aviation museum had fabulous, well informed volunteers.   We did however spend well over 2 hours exploring the Ottawa museum.  I think I've had my fill of historic planes for a while.

We went to the Canadian Agriculture Museum and then decided that was enough city stuff.  We drove out to the Cumberland Heritage Village, which was absolutely lovely.  We went to the Railway Museum of Eastern Ontario in Smith's Falls, which was fun but short.  However' we'd done it in the afternoon, so had a nice drive back to the hotel.  On our last day there we found our way to Pinhey's Point, and the very well preserved Pinhey's House built in in the 1820's.  It was quiet, so very pretty, despite it raining.  We ended up finding a toy store that you could see from the highway, but had to drive through the bush to get to.  So much fun.  The concert that night was great.  Luke Bryan had a fabulous performance with a laser light show and everything.   While we have seen some great opening acts, two of the three were okay, and the third was mediocre.  However the main show was well worth it.  While taking the elevator down from the nose bleed seats, I glanced down and estimated that there were close to $2500 - $3000 worth of boots in the elevator alone.  giggle

Canadian Horse (Breed) at the Ag museum.  There aren't a lot of these left anymore, but I've seen a few and they all seem to be black.  They are sturdy, hardworking  horses: a true all purpose breed.  I've seen them being ridden, pulling carts and pulling ploughs.

Our trip to the beach was scenic, both in the drive there and back.  It wasn't a day for sunbathing for sure and the river was very cold.

A pretty stop along the way.  We'd stopped to pick up lunch as a bakery in Cumberland where we got baguette sandwiches which lasted us for two meals!  We had a picnic at a pretty roadside stop.

There were leaves starting to turn red and orange.  It really looked like early autumn.   The long range weather forecast said coolish weather, so I didn't pack shorts and that was a mistake.  We had crazy warm weather all week.  In all though it was a fun and pleasant holiday.  I'd brought my knitting and found that I could actually knit without getting car sick on the way home, until we hit the outskirts of the city so that was productive.   In all it was a fun and pleasant holiday.

Colours of Late August: Yellow

Well the colours this time of year seem to be mainly yellow.  Overnight the late blooming Queen Anne's Lace disappeared, as did the chicory, and a bit of something purple that I didn't take the time to stop and identify it.   I don't know the official name of this flower.  It grows about 2 m (6 ft) tall.  I got a little clump from a  friend, who got her's from a friend.  Years ago, at one of my kids soccer games, the coaches wife was giving away clumps of this flower that she'd gotten from her grandmother's garden.   So it's an old variety of some kind of rapidly spreading, tall, bright yellow flowers.  Lots of people say it's been found at old homesteads, their grandparent's homes etc.   It's reliable as it blooms in abundance at the end of every summer.  It get's pummelled down by heavy rain, and still blooms, just sideways on the grass.  I've no idea how to control it because digging doesn't always get all the roots and one year in desperation, someone used round up on it and it died back a bit and then the next year, just popped back up, stronger than ever.   It's a good thing it's pretty.

Rudbeckia.  This is a cultivated variety that I planted.  It reminds me so much of being a kid and the fallow fields and roadsides were plentiful with a wild variety of this flower.  Of course we called them Blackeyed Susan's then.  I used to braid daisies in the earlier summer and these later in the summer, into my horse's forelock and mane!

It's still one of my favourite garden flowers, especially for the colour it adds late in the year.

The feed store has a tiny plot of dirt beside the smallish greenhouse.   They used to toss pumpkin seeds there and have a lovely little pumpkin patch in the fall.  Then the whole fashionable thing of getting photos taken in Sunflower patches came up, so they planted sunflower seeds.  They grow tall and look lovely, and then at the end of the season, they toss the remains into their compost, beside the old silo.  There are a quite few volunteer sunflower plants growing this summer, which look quite fun with the volunteer pumpkin plants.  Most of the flowers were still looking a bit down, as it was mainly cloudy that day, but this one was most optimistic, and reaching for the sun that wasn't quite there yet.

Another volunteer, although it's definitely not yellow!  Almost 20 years ago I planted some morning glories in a planter near the front door, where they grow slowly and only had a few blooms.  The next year one plant returned and still was late blooming, with only one or two flowers.   The issue of course was the really bad soil, probably garden soil, hard and compacted and needed to be replaced badly.  I was busy and it wasn't all that important so I just left it and moved on.   Every few years though, I find a morning glory growing someplace around the front entry.  I take that as a win.  These are just the bog-standard variety, nothing special at all, but I do enjoy the little pops of purple.

Another Interesting Holiday Week.

The evenings are starting to cool down a bit and first thing in the morning is starting to feel a little bit autumnal.   With the tree falling on my garden early in the summer, this is the current state of my tomato plants.  They're recovering, just a bit behind.  The one large mortgage lifter tomato was eaten by something in the evening, just as it was starting to ripen.   Since then I've harvested a half dozen cherry tomatoes, just as they're starting to show signs of changing colour in hopes of getting to eat a few ourselves.  These are black cherry tomatoes, which are starting to be quite plentiful in their unripened bunches.  Not so many of the mortgage lifter tomatoes which I was hoping to have for canning as well as eating.  There are only a few of those.   Since tomatoes have  just started showing up in the grocery stores, and they were either not ripe or over ripe, I decided to pop out to the Farmer's Market and pick up a few to start canning.   Several vendors had some tomatoes, mainly beefsteak types, but one vendor had Roma type tomatoes, but only by the half bushel.  Thinking of the timing of the next couple of weeks, I brought home the half bushel, in order to make sure I got at least some tomatoes canned.  We use a bit less than a bushel of canned tomatoes over the winter.

I did two canners full yesterday and one this morning.  I ended up with 19 500 ml (pint) jars. I'm pretty happy about that.  If there are more tomatoes available at the end of the month, or my garden tomatoes ripen, then I can do another canner load full and be done.  Still, I'm pretty satisfied with this weekends results.  The Roma tomatoes were nicely ripe, but not over ripe, nor green.  They peeled quickly after scalding and I simply rough chopped them as I don't care if they are pretty when they're going into soups, stews and sauces.   They are handy to have available and it the right size as commercial tins of tomatoes tend to be larger.  

DH had a week off for holidays.  We did pop out for lunch with our daughter for her birthday.  Otherwise we mainly puttered about home doing things.  I washed fleece, wove off a scarf, re-dressed the loom, made some buttons and socks, and picked, carded and spun some of that washed fleece.  (I also read 3 novels, but I won't mention that)

DH on the other hand spent the week stacking wood.   Our regular wood guy says more people are keeping their wood rather than asking him to get rid of it.  As a result, not only are our wood deliveries smaller, but much less often.  So this year, DH broke down and ordered two larger trailer loads full.  It costs a bit more than getting the logs delivered, but he doesn't have to split it so there is a decent trade off.   Regardless, we have enough wood for this winter, and a good start on next winter's wood, which needs to dry for a year to really burn properly.

Ankle socks made on the Légaré 400 using sock yarn I got from the SOC 2026 crank in this spring.   It's from a fairly local indie dyer, Grand Valley Fibre Company.  The colours are really nice and the yarn is absolutely lovely to work with.  It made very comfortable socks.  It should have since it's super wash merino and nylon.   However, I've purchased other brands labelled merino and it wasn't nearly as nice so I highly recommend the Avid sock yarn from Grand Valley Fibres  .    

These are two new buttons using the Zwirnknopf technique. So apparently one of the button experts says that Dorset button rings are covered with the blanket stitch before you wrap and weave the button while with the Zwirnknöpf buttons you do it last.  Some of the skills overlap and it''s nice to change things up sometimes.   I'm doing a button demo later in September at a local fair, so I'm working diligently to get a few more of the Zwirnknopf style buttons done to increase the display.  They really have quite different end results.    Zwirnknöpf buttons are also sometimes called shirtlace buttons and are another old style of button.  They weren't made in England or the UK, but are from (depending on where you look) from continental Europe, mainly Central, Eastern and Northern areas.  They seem to have been first made in the early 1800's and started being exported after WWI .   They are pretty and are also fun to make.

Zwirnknopf - singular.  Zwirnknöpf - plural.   

Translates to Thread button in English

Early August

Just a record of some happenings over the last week or so.

 Someone crop dusting started up their helicopter at 5:30 am.  They were 2 fields away so the noise was unexpectedly loud.   They were finally done at almost 9 am before they headed off to wherever.  It was a day for a nap!

I was outside gardening when I noticed the sky was this intense blue.  I snapped a photo and a few minutes later it had lightened up to its more usual paler blue.   It was a great colour and reminded me of the skies when I was a kid, living much further north.

The garden was hit by a fallen tree in a freak storm in early July.  The garlic ended up being smaller this year because their roots were severely disrupted but the tomato plants were knocked over and almost all the growth tips broken.  They've been sending out suckers, and leafy new growth to repair themselves which has resulted in my having to prune them once or twice a week since then.  They've also grown tall.  Luckily, it's late enough in the season that I can start pinching off the tips to encourage the fruit to ripen and the flowers to set.   Not a lot of fruit so far this year, I think because of the damage to the plants.   This tomato (a heritage Mortgage Lifter variety) is larger than my hand!   I think that poor tomato plant is pouring all its effort into that one tomato.  

A hollyhock.  I'd planted seeds for black and regular holly hocks.  I think there was one black flowered plant and a few white and light pink one's. Now they've settled into just this colour.  They are pretty though.   I haven't had enough flowers to try dyeing with them, so I'm just enjoying the mid summer colour.  Thankfully they seem to be surviving the wild raspberries that are volunteering that that bed and the chooks who like to hid out there.

It was quite cool the other night so I pulled out the quilt my daughter made me for last Christmas.   Dion adores it and if I don't get it folded up in time, he claims it for the day.  He's a sweet kitty, who is so routine driven it's crazy.  He follows it every single day and you can almost tell the time by his routine.  He does love a good belly scratch though, which is also sort of odd, since most cats won't let you touch their bellies without shredding your hand up.

More buttons and garden update

 I've been fiddling around with making some new buttons.   I wanted to make some shirtwaist buttons and some zwirnknopf buttons, both thread buttons in the same category.  They are a wrapped button, secured with stitches and the button hole stitch border is applied after the threads are wrapped.   They apparently work best on a flat ring like a washer or spacer, rather than a round ring.   I made my first one with a round ring that I use for Dorset buttons.  It was okay, but the roundness of the wire made the wraps more difficult to keep secure and in place.   I ended up starting like a Dorset button and doing the button hole stitch all around the ring first, so that the wrapping threads would have something to grip on to.   This worked well, although not really a zwirnknopf button due to doing that step first.

When I tried to do it properly, with the wrapping threads first, they just keep sliding, even after applying beeswax to the ring and then sanding the ring.   When I tried a smaller ring, it seemed to work with lots of beeswax but every time I went to secure the stitches, they'd just slide off.  It was frustrating.  So other than ordering the appropriate button rings from the U.K., I went on field trip to various local hardware stores looking for washers that were flat rings, with a narrow rim and a large opening in the middle.  I didn't care if they were metal, plastic or fibre board.  Nothing came up at all.  Finally Hubby found a short length of ABS pipe and said he'd slice it up for me to try.   After several attempts and being told it wouldn't work, I was presented with a handful of thin slices of ABS pipe for buttons.  They needed sanding which was no problem and they're  about 1.5 inches in diameter, so too larger for useable buttons, but great for decorative buttons, shawl pins and jewellery,  The plus is that size is also really easy to work with.    The two buttons on the right are shirtwaist buttons and the bunny button is an art Dorset button.  I think it's cute!

This tomato is larger than my hand.   It survived the tree falling on the garden when it was very small and just keeps growing.  My Son in law started the seeds and it's a Mortgage Lifter heritage variety. It's taken a bit for the rest of the tomato plants to catch up after being crushed by the tree in the storm.  

They really only started flowering a week ago.   There are a few chocolate cherry tomatoes and a few more of these mortgage lifters, although they are still small.  I hope that there is time for more of the fruit to set.  We really only have a few more weeks of actual summer, before it will get too cool in the evenings.  I'll snip off all the growth tips  and flowers on the tomatoes then, in hopes of forcing the rest of the fruit that has set to actually ripen.  

Staycation week adventures

 It was a holiday week for us, a staycation with a few day trips planned.   Our first one got rained out by torrential rains.  We'd left to visit friends when the skies opened up and was just pouring down rain.   The rain was so heavy that there was virtually zero visibility.   We tried to keep on, figuring that rain this heavy only lasts for a few minutes, but nope, it kept on pouring down.  We cancelled our trip when we realized that the storm front was directly over us, travelling in the same direction as us ( thanks to phone weather radar!). We took the long way home as we missed our turn because we couldn't see it until we were right there.  Water was pooling on the roads and puddling badly.   A nearby town had photos of water in parking lots coming to the doors and past of some cars!  Crazy weather!

Dome open and CN tower

Our next foray was to a Blue Jays game a couple of days later.  That was also an adventure.   The weather was superb but stop and go traffic on the highway slowed down our trip dramatically.  Our train stop had no parking spots available at all.  Because the train is so much easier and faster than driving, as well as cheaper, we went to the next stop and the same.   The third stop we won and found parking.  We arrived the same time as our train but by the time we got from the far end of the parking lot to the platform, the train had left on its merry way.   Half an hour later, the next train arrived and we had so many Blue Jays fans there, that the announcer was cheerfully telling us to enjoy the game and a reminder of the stop we needed.

My view from 3rd Base line

We'd allowed a lot of extra time, thinking we'd grab lunch in the city and have time to look around the ball park.   Instead of arriving at 12:30 pm, we got there at 2 pm.  Sheesh.  However, the Jays played a great game and they won, which was really nice.  On our way home we took our time getting to the train station, waited for the next train with all the other Jays fans who'd missed the first train, and got to our desired stop with no issues.  The conductor announcing stops wasn't quite so luck and messed up announcing the station stops several times.  It was creating a lot of giggling in our carriage at any rate.  Finally we got to the station and our car was gone!  We'd wandered around the now half empty parking lot in the area where we'd parked and our car was not there.   All of a sudden a very nice lady stopped us and told us she'd just done the same thing.  It turns out there are 2 parking lots (we found out later there were actually 3 different parking lots) and she told us how to find the other lot.   A wander over there and I stayed in the terminal, just in case, and Hubby went off to find the car, which he did.  I ended up leaving the terminal to wait outside because a very noisy and violent person came in swearing and screaming at me, while banging things around.   Fun times (not so much).  

The next day we went back to the same area to visit our friends and have a bbq and some good conversation.   We took the scenic route to avoid the traffic and were late, but still had lots of time to catch up.   Our way home took us to where we could see the highway, which was at a standstill, so we took a scenic route back home.  It was longer in distance but  probably faster.  

Yesterday, after a busy week, we decided to just stay home.   I spent time in the garden and harvested the garlic.  As expected all the garlic that had been partially uprooted by the storm and tree falling didn't  grow anymore and so there are a lot of smaller heads of garlic.  The two with the undisturbed roots were a decent size though.   I watered the garden and then rinsed off most of the dirt from the garlic and have set it out to dry.  Once the outer skins have dried and become papery, the hard neck garlic will last several months. 

Freak Fierce Storm.

 

First look at the storm damage on the garden

Weather perceptions are defined by what your climate normals are.  We're currently stuck in a miserable heat wave.  Our daytime temperatures are hovering in the 33C to 34C, with a humidex of 42C - 44C. It may not be that warm to some areas, but here it's really quite abnormal.  We're definitely not used to these sort of temperatures, although we get it once or twice a summer for a couple of days at a time.  It's not cooling down much at night either, making for little relief.  

Split tree that fell on the garden

Besides being uncomfortable, there is usually a risk of pop up storms.   We had one of those yesterday afternoon.   I kept thinking to myself that I should bring the laundry in because it would have been dry fairly quickly, when I looked outside and realized that the hazy blue sky was now grey.   I ran outside just as a few drops started falling.  
I did get the laundry off the line but it was starting to get a bit wet by the last couple of t-shirts.   I then ran to the barn to shut the door.  I'd left the chooks inside because the two new girls have still been hesitant to come in at night.   The more they're in their coop room, the more they realise it's home.  Obviously a week wasn't enough to settle them in with the existing flock.

Anyway, by the time I reached the barn, the winds had picked up.   I got back to the house, with the wettish laundry in tow, but I was soaked because the rain was now pounding down.   After changing my shirt and towelling off my hair, I made dinner early because with that rain and the winds, our power could have gone out at any time.  It did flicker, but we ended up being okay. As I started to make dinner I heard the sounds of a tree or branches coming down.   We checked the windows but couldn't go out because the rain storm was now crashing down thunder and lightning too.   It was a quick moving storm and about 20 minutes later, my son found the culprit.  Half a tree had fallen down on my garden!  Yikes

Bird feeders and stands in with the garlic bed

We'll start the clean up this afternoon.  It's going to take a bit of time and a chainsaw.   From a quick glance, it looks like all but a couple of the 36 garlic plants have been crushed, along with all the green beans, all but 3 tomato plants, some peppers and cucumbers.   Fingers crossed there will be enough growing tips left on the tomatoes and peppers to keep them viable.   I'll have to go get more tomato cages if the plants can be saved because they are mangled!

The bird feeders and the  wrought iron and steel hanging posts are bent and tangled in with the branches and plants of the raised beds.  Even most of the large pots and planters were hit.   Last nighty I was able to salvage two tomato plants which were on the perimeter of the fallen tree trunk and branches.   One needed a bit of repotting so I'm hoping that the roots weren't disturbed too badly.

The stupid tree also took down the clothes line.  Luckily it looks like the cable didn't break but just pulled out at the ratchet thing which holds the ends together.  As long as we can find the wheel which was attached to the tree at the far end, it should be a fairly easy, inexpensive fix.  Still, I won't be able to hand the laundry out until the rest of the clean up is done and we can see if we can find the missing pieces.

Another Shawl You Say!

 

I know I told myself I would knit any more shawls, but they are good evening knitting projects.  If it's simple enough, I can knit while talking or watching a show or even reading a book!   This one is entirely handspun yarn.  The grey is Corriedale and the white is Shetland /Blue Faced Leicester cross.  Both were lovely to spin, although the Shetland cross is taking a good while to process to get the VM out.  I found combing was very effective but a bit more work than I wanted to do.  Instead I've been flick carding the locks and carding them with hand cards to make rolags.  Takes a bit of time but I can do more at a time.  If I get industrious, I may call up a friend and see if I can use her picker to loosen all the locks.   A lot of the VM will fall out during that process, making the carding easier and faster.

I carefully measured the centre line, which is a cable to make sure that the shawl wasn't too large.  I then wet finished it in the washing machine with a bit of Eucalan.  I was careful about only letting it agitate for a minute or less at a time, checking regularly and letting it soak in between.  I was trying to get a balance of yarn blooming and just a bit of fulling to keep the shawl from becoming too big.   I'd use a larger needle size to make sure that the Corriedale stayed soft, so stretching was definitely something to take into consideration.  Well the wet finishing worked really well, and the stitches all evened out.  The yarn bloomed nicely and I'm impressed with how well the Eucalan worked to get the yarn really clean and it stayed soft.   It did however, not full much at all and it's a lovely, airy and large shawl.  I'm disappointed at how little the cable shows against the grey yarn.  While I know that cables show up better on lighter yarns, in my mind the grey was lighter than it actually is.  Still, it's a soft and cuddly shawl.  If I don't use it, it may go on a sale table sometime.

I did play yarn chicken with the bottom white stripe.   I was sure I had enough yarn left in the ball to cast off after I'd knit the required rows.   I got to the half-way mark and thought that  for sure there was enough to finish.   When I was 3/4 done the cast off row I was starting to wonder whether it would be better to switch out the yarn now, or to risk running out with 3 or 4 stitches left.   I kept knitting and yes, I won with 6 inches of yarn to spare!  Phew!

Happy Summer Solstice

Our guild dye day was somewhat disappointing.   We had two options and you could do both.   Nature dyes, with 4 different pots and weak acid dyes, because you could easily paint a warp or a skein while we waited for the nature dyes to take.

I pre-mordanted all the wool for the natural dyes with 10% alum.  We had easily 2-5 times the dye materials to WOF ratios so there should have been lots of dye pigment available.  The only issue we really had was that there wasn't enough power to keep all the pots simmering on the hot plates.   The walnut dye went outside in the sun.  The madder ended up in a crockpot and the dandelions on a hot plate, which never got past a very low simmer.   The stinging nettle went inside onto a stove, was forgotten about and ended up bubbling gently and happily away.   Until this combination, we kept blowing breakers.   Hindsight being what it is, we should have moved another pot or two to the inside stove and left one on the hot plate in the garage.   Live and learn.    The stinging nettle was an experiment and I'm pretty happy with that colour.  It was a lovely green.  I left this one 48 hours before rinsing and it's a little darker than another sample that I'd seen which was rinsed shortly after being removed from the dye pot.  

I'm not sure what's up with Kevin.  I've absolutely never, ever seen him being silly.  He is a very proper kitty, who never seems to do anything to make me laugh.  He was waiting for me to turn the tap on.   He usually comes up to me and stares until I notice him and guess at what he wants.   He usually leads me around to various places in the house before ending up at his desired goal.   I'm guessing that he didn't want to play that game that day and just waited patiently.  While he likes to drink fresh running water, his water bowl was also full of fresh water.  When he's at the sink, he sort of gently puts his front feet in as little as possible to reach the tap, like it's some sort of great irritant.  He does squint his eyes at me if I don't figure out what he wants quickly enough though.

A little rant and some updates

New scarf on the loom.   There was a yarn sale a few weeks back and they had some yarns by Caron, which while acrylic, is super soft.  There were some odd colour ways, but several really nice ones.   I liked the purple painted colour way in the ball, but it made for a rather dark and heavy looking scarf.  A couple of the colour ways were white with short lengths of colour which have made really nice scarves.   This is a blue which is weaving up with lovely patches of green and purple.   I'd gotten a teal to use as the weft, but it was too dark. I unwove it, restarted weaving with the same yarn as the warp and really like the colours and the way it's weaving up.   It sort of feels like a night sky with the northern lights, which is making it fun to weave up.

I meant to wash fleece over the weekend but had a very quiet read a novel, knit a bunch and warp the loom weekend.   I still have 3 1/2 sheep fleeces left to process.  I'll have enough Orvus to wash them, but will likely need more degreaser and Dawn.  Also I have some absolutely lovely, although full of VM cria (baby alpaca) fleece to play with.  Yay me!

My baby got married to an absolutely lovely and wonderful young lady who my whole family adores.  She is friendly, warm, funny and caring.  She makes friends everywhere, remembers people that she met at conferences and places in previous years and just made everyone she was with feel welcomed and befriended.   It was the most amazing thing to be a part of.   While we already considered her family, it's now official.   The only downside is that she's very allergic to cats, and my cats leave enough cat hair and dander around to make another 2 of themselves, so we go to visit them, rather than have them visit us.   It's not worth risking her health for that.  She is however extremely worthy of getting hand made items.   It's so easy to love her and the way she fits into the family.

The Alliums just keep on giving.  Even after their flowers are spent and they've gone to seed, they are an interesting architectural element in the garden.

washing and processing a new fleece

 I've been washing fleeces.   This one is likely a BFL/Shetland cross.   It's about a 3-31/2 inch staple length.  There is a bit of VM, which is to be expected since the sheep are kept outside all the time.  The worst VM I've ever found came from sheep who were kept in a barn almost all the time.  It was just loaded to the point of almost being unusable, especially when combined with the excess lanolin produced from being sheltered all the time.   

This fleece was easily cleaned. I put portions of the fleece into lingerie bags. I used my laundry tub to soak, with no agitation for any of the soaks or washes.   I used a warm water soak to remove a lot of the actual dirt.  Then I used a hot water wash with Orvus paste and Zep degreaser, which removed most of the lanolin.  The second wash was just Orvus and a tiny squirt of Dawn dish soap in hot water.  It needed 2 or 3 soaks in decreasing temperatures of hot water.  As the water cooled down during the process, I used the next water bath at a similar water temperature as the previous one had as I drained it.   Since the two factors for felting wool are agitation and abrupt changes in temperature, this would hopefully stop that from happening.

I tried a batch in the drum carder, but didn't like the results.   The VM doesn't generally fall out in a drum carder, usually does when spinning.  What I had missed was that this fleece was a bit tippy, meaning the tips were weak and were either a bit felted or they just broke off when processing, and there was a bit of a short undercoat and some felted cut ends.  These caused a lot of neps to be formed in the drum carded batts.   I tried combing with Valkerie viking combs, which produced a stellar result but about 25% waste, which is pretty normal.  The problem that I found though was that required a lot of arm strength with the felted tips and cut ends.  I ended up flick carding the locks and turning them into rolags, which resulted in minimum waste and a lovely, spinnable rolag.  It's still a lot of work though.

I learned something.   I'd been taught early on that flick carders work best using a tapping motion to create static electricity, which opens the lock and lets the VM drop out.  This technique works exceptionally well, and doesn't take a lot of effort since it's just a gentle tap, tap that's needed.  However, this works until it doesn't.  With the weak tips and the bit of felting at the ends, that brushing that I've always warned people not to do, is totally required here.  The tips need more effort than the tapping allows for and the felting at the cut end, despite being really slight, doesn't respond at all to the tapping.  This means that I was tapping away and accomplishing absolutely nothing!  So I resulted to a mixture of brushing the tips and then tapping.   Takes more time and much more effort but I was able to get those beautiful rolags that I like to spin.   It's going to take me forever to process this fleece at this rate.

Now if only I had labelled the lingerie bags that I'd used to wash the 2 white fleeces in.   They are all the same bag, as in the same colour, the same size, the same everything and when filled with white fleece, yup, they look all the same.

Beaded Dorset Buttons

 All the peppers and tomatoes are in the pots.   All the flowers for the deck are planted, although I just realized that I've been watering Geranium cuttings all winter, and I have an empty hanging basket that I should pop them into.   I just found out why the parsley plant didn't do well last year, and not only because of the swallowtail butterflies.   There is a chipmunk that likes parsley and I see him at the planter, nibbling away at the leaves and stalks!  It's supposed to be rainy on Saturday, so I've planned for some time on Sunday to finish up planting the seeds.  Beans, cururbits, Kale and chard on deck please!

I was playing around with Dorset Buttons a couple of nights ago and learned how to add beads to my buttons.  There is a rug hooker that does Dorset buttons as well, but she uses heavier yarns and larger rings to make them.  She adds all her beads after the buttons are finished and just sews them on.   I didn't think that would work with my buttons.  The Dorset buttons I make, are smaller and with finer threads, so I learned several different ways, including adding them while winding the spokes and sewing them on afterwards using  3 different methods. I'm pretty pleased with my first attempt.   I used Perle cotton and some nice glass beads.   Next time I'm at a textile store, I'll check for some beading needles with larger eyes, just to make things a little bit easier. What I had worked adequately, just not as easily as I'd hoped.

This is another attempt with Perle cotton and glass bugle beads.  It's smaller than the blue button.  I think the ring was too small for the space the bugle beads take up, as some of them are pushed down a bit.  Auto correct keeps trying to make it seem like I'm using Beagle beads, rather than bugle beads, which is kind of funny.   Apparently bugle beads come in different diameters, which seem to vary by very small amounts, like .2mm, .4mm, .7 mm larger.  Really, it might be fun to try, but I'm not in any hurry to source these as I can't imagine that what I made wouldn't work for most purposes for which I might need it.  These work fine for me.  Gina B Silkworks has some interesting button tutorials on YouTube, which are really well done.

FLEECE UPDATE: I've two lovely white fleeces washed already.  I have the remaining 3/4 of the Icelandic fleece washed.  It was a really enticing grey, but I didn't enjoy spinning it.  I gave some away and I'll try again with the rest.  I washed up a bit of New Zealand merino that I've been carting around for a while too, just to get it out of the way.    I've a fabulous black fleece and two more white fleeces to wash, as well as half an amazing cria (baby alpaca) fleece that I can't wait to work with.  Guess what I'm doing this summer?

Garden and fibre update

I've been digging in the garden.  The May 24th weekend is generally the weekend that we plant our gardens.  I'm usually away on that weekend so I generally wait.  This year, the long weekend was early by almost a week, so I held off planting anyway.   We had some coolish nights, but some early May weird frosts and I'd rather be safe than trying to find new plants.   I don't usually plant cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkins and other squash until June, after having a huge problem with squash bugs from planting early.   

Mortgage Lifter Tomato seedling

My son in law started some tomato plants for me this spring so I've planted two varieties, Mortgage Lifter and Black cherry.   Most are planted and seem to be doing fine.  I'd looked for a couple more of the large tubs to add to my pots and raised bed collection, but no stores around here seem to sell them this year.  If I wanted fancy, expensive but not quite big enough pots, there were a fair number but of large garden planters there were none any where.   So Monday I'll grab some of husbands 5 gallon syrup collecting buckets, drill holes in the bottom and use 2 or 3 of those instead.  They'll require more frequent watering, but should do fine for my peppers, kale and Swiss chard.

The garlic is looking really good this year, with strong, thick, dark green stems.  It's in the front of one of the raised beds.  Behind it I've planted tomatoes.   In the other raised bed, the front is full of lettuce, a couple of volunteer onions, cilantro and a hot pepper plant.  Once I know the weather is consistently warm enough at nights, I'll plant green beans in the rest of the raised bed.  Once the garlic is harvested, if I have enough time, I'll replant beans in that space, otherwise, I'll plant  salad greens.

The blue gradient shawl is almost done.   Because the yarn had very distinctive colour changes, I wound cakes of each separate colour and dressed the loom in stripes.   The downside of this is that the weaving is all the same.   I did start with the darkest grey for weft, transitioned through to the dark blues.   If I can trust that the shawl will be about the length that I've actually woven, with about 2 inches wiggle room, then I've succeeded in using the remaining yarn from the weft.  Otherwise, I'll have lost at yarn chicken and have to use that medium blue for the last couple of inches.  My brain is telling me that I might look odd with only that little bit at the end.  I'm happy to get this one off the loom though, because there wasn't a lot of interesting colour changes weaving this.   That's why I like colour effects like short colour changes, log cabin and things like that.  Lots of interesting things happening without a lot of effort weaving.

I've been washing more fleece.  One of the new fleeces was a little musty smelling.   The fleece was strong and not damaged, so I washed it all up over several days.   It washed up nicely.  The only issue is my own fault, because the lingerie bags I was using were fairly fine meshed and probably took an extra wash to get them clean.   If I processed them with combs, all the trashy vm bits would come out, but I've run some of it through the drum carder to make batts that I've been then hand carding.  Mainly this is because I'm doing a demo of spinning, possibly on a great wheel, and it's easier to  make the rolags with pre-carded fibres when you have to talk with people at the same time.

There is usually a larger patch of poppies but this year there were only 3 buds.  The first one to bloom was the prettiest.   I think the last one will bloom tomorrow.  With the Allium, some sort of little white star shaped flower, the woad and the lilacs, there are lots of little and big bees around,  I hope they stay and do their pollinating thing!

Busy, Busy May

A Crank-In is a gathering of people with Circular Sock Machines (CSM), both new and antique, who meet up for a day or sometimes a couple of days, for fellowship, instruction, help and fun.  There is a local one, SOC2026, in a nearby town.  For one low price, you get a light morning snack, lunch, several demos, classes, a swag bag of sock making related tools and accessories, and  meeting old, and new friends.  The downside, or maybe upside, is several vendors with yarn, tools and other supplies.   I purchased 3 skeins of yarn, and then won a door prize of another 2 skeins, which happened to be in the same colour ways as two that I'd purchased.  I could have traded them in, but since I liked them, I kept them. So pretty.  I also bought a 400g cone of sock yarn in greens, while not my favourite colour, is one that I almost never purchase unless it's mixed with lots of other colours or very much on the teal side.   I also got a gift certificate for donating the most comfort dolls, some of which were made by friends because they thought it was a great idea to support!

Woad is flowering

The May long weekend SCA Arts and Science event went well.   It was fun, despite a couple of rainy hours in the middle of Saturday.   We had 70 classes, many of them for 2 or more hours, and 202 people came out to play!  My garb is all washed, dried and ready to put away.   I have some lovely new oatmeal linen for a new tunic and some rust for an apron dress.  I taught a class about using fleece processing tools, and still need to finish unpacking things.   I couldn't give away enough fleece though, and had to bring some home.   I'm washing up the second of the gifted fleeces today.

Allium beginning to bloom

The farm next door has been putting drainage tile in the fields this week.  It's a bit of a noisy endeavour so I was happy to go out for tea with my friend E today.  We tend to be able to chat for literally hours.  We go to a local Tim Horton's coffee shop, which kindly lets us sit in a corner with our tea and coffee for 3 hours while we catch up.  You know, because we haven't seen each other in a week or two, lol.

Yesterday I had to get the brakes done on my cute little car.  The front brakes cost next to nothing, but of course the back brakes were brand specific parts so cost almost $2000 to fix.  This came with an estimate for a new tie rod and bushing, at another $1200.  Sigh... they did fix the rattling heat shield while they were at it though, included in the price because they've tried to fix it every time it's up on the hoist but the cute little car has too much stuff in the way to just tighten it up easily.   It's just over 10 years old and has up until now, been a car needing very little work.  It's still fun to drive and most importantly I can see everything out of it.  The repair shop loaned me a Chevy Impala, a huge boat of a vehicle in comparison and ugh, it's definitely not made for short people, and definitely not on my radar should I need to replace my cute little car.

unknown shrub

The weather has gone from cool, to hot, and now back to cool with a slew of tornado and severe storm warnings in between.   This meant that the lilacs, on which I hadn't even seen any flower buds, were in full bloom by the time I got home on Monday and the dandelions, that I've been trying to find time to pick and freeze for an upcoming dye day were just past their prime blooming time.  There are still some out there, just more work to gather.

I don't know what this shrub is.  It's planted by the barn door and must be ancient since it was there when we moved in 17 years ago.   It blooms faithfully every year.  Whatever the weather, it grows reliably and when I ask my son to trim it, he usually hacks it right off near the bottom and in a couple of years it's large enough to trim back again.   Every year though, no matter what the size, it gives a plethora or these small but plentiful, vibrant pink blooms.