Summer Holidays!

 We packed up our cute little car and headed east.   We'd considered flying out but as this was really a bit of a last minute plan, it wasn't affordable, so we added a couple of extra days for driving time.  It was stupid early when we left, but it was still hot and sticky.   It was a hard first day, when we drove all the way to Edmunston, New Brunswick.   Lots of highways, and since it was the Canada Day weekend, lots of traffic, although it turns out that there was more coming home.   However, we were very thankful to finally arrive at our motel that night.

We got to Halifax the next afternoon,where we plunked down for almost a week, using it as our home base.  It was a good location for where we'd planned out trips, it wasn't so good for evening explorations by foot, as it was in an industrial park at the edge of the city.   Next time, we'll either take the tent and camp, or find a small motel in a rural setting.

When we arrived it was quite cool in comparision to the temperatures we'd left.   Plus, the first day there it rained.  I was so thankful that my fall/spring jacket was in the car.  I'd probably dragged it out with me one day, when the weather was unpredictable,not needed it and forgotten it for weeks.   However that day, it was brilliant to have as I stayed both warm and dry.

Looking over a field at Ross Farm

We started our Canada Day at Ross Farm, in New Ross, an open air heritage farm museum.  It was green and lush.   There were a number of buildings including the original farm house and barn.   We were early and there were few people there yet, so the first couple of interpreters we had were spectacular.   We had an amazing conversation with the gentleman who was in the barn and the man driving the matched pair of Canadian horses knew so much about both the breed of horses, area farming and the Ross farm itself.  The cooper was extremely knowledgeable about barrel making and the barrel making industry at that time.   It made for a fabulous morning!   We headed back to the hotel, and took the ferry from Dartmouth to Halifax, wandered around a bit, decided not to stay for fireworks and instead, went to dinner and had an early night!

Peggy's Cove Lighthouse

The next morning was the Lighthouse Route and Peggy's Cove.   We'd been warned that while Peggy's Cove was spectacular, it was often disappointing because of the crowds.   We were fairly early and people were just starting to arrive.   If I were to do this again, I'd head out even earlier, or go later.   It was however, not disappointing in the least.  The scenery was incredible and so different than what we'd seen the day before.  The area is rugged and set on a huge outcropping of granite rock.   You can see out over a huge area and it is spectacularly beautiful.

Annapolis Valley Look Off

We took a day to head out to the Annapolis Valley and went to the Look Off.  You can see right across the valley to the Bay of Fundy.  We'd hoped to see the Tidal Bore but our timing and the tide's timing didn't match up in any way and it wasn't really feasible to get there for the tide times.   Oh well, next time.

Mahone Bay

It was an amazing trip.  Highlights included the Rug Hooking Museum, which we found by accident, and which had an absolutely phenomenal display of both antique and modern hooked rugs, and the friendliest people working there.   The scenery everywhere was spectacular and so different from one area to another.  Lunenburg was the prettiest town, so colourful and unique.  Mahone Bay was picturesque in a more modern touristy way, but still pretty with lots of little boutiques and shops.

Scenery from Swissair 111 memorial

The scenery everywhere was amazing.  After the cool Canada Day, the weather warmed up to comfortable temperatures and by the end of the week, it was crazy hot.   We actually abandoned our walking tour of Halifax half-way through, went to the motel, changed into our swimsuits and hit one of the beaches where we paddled in the Atlantic Ocean.

I will say for sure that I didn't get to stay long enough.  It may be the only time that I've ever said that, as I'm usually quite happy to head home.  We did take an extra day to get home, which made the trip much less exhausting.  While I was happy to get home, it was definitely too short a trip!  I'd happily go back again. 

Westfield Bake Oven Day

Last Saturday we had a cooking day at Westfield, where we worked with the cookstove in the Blacksmith house and the Bake Oven.  We had a variety of recipes which were chosen from Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management and Mrs. Bradley's Housekeeper's Guide.   All the recipes had a bit of prep work which required the cookstove, and then two or three, which turned into four recipes, were baked in the bake oven.

From Mrs. Beeton's, we used the recipes for Beef Cake, Lemon Cheesecakes and Sausage rolls.   Mrs. Bradley's supplied the recipes for Cream Tea Cakes and Strawberry Jam.  As a last minute addition, Lisa whipped up a batch of soda bread.

Most of the recipes looked pretty straight forward, however the Beef Cake recipe, used pre-cooked meat and only egg as a binder.   We had to fudge around with the number of eggs, since the Westfield chickens are still giving tiny pullet eggs.  It didn't really hold together as nicely as it could have or would have with something else added to help it bind.  It was however delicious.




The Lemon Cheesecakes was actually one of the no cheese, cheesecakes, using lemon curd as a filling.  The lemon curd was quite delicious, but I didn't get more than a small taste as it was contaminated with wheat before I could get my spoon into it.  The Cheese cakes baked up perfectly though.


The sausage rolls worked out perfectly.   I didn't get to taste the sausage, but I'm told by reliable sources that it was absolutely delicious.

We baked one pan of cheese cakes in the cookstove oven and the rest in the bake oven.  The bake oven was hotter, so the puff pastry puffed up better, but they were all nicely cooked.

It was in all, a successful and very delicious morning at Westfield Heritage Village.

The Never Ending Warp

When the guild had to move from our old guild room 2 years ago, we were putting all of our equipment and supplies in storage.  That meant we did a ruthless clean out of stuff that we thought could be easily replaced, or that we'd had in the room for ages upon ages.  We'd offered these items up to members and amongst the offerings were several warps which were chained and forgotten, or not used.    This was one of those misfit warps.  It was wound of 2/8 cotton, 143 threads and get this, 12 yards long!   Those 143 threads would work out to about almost 6 inches wide.  That means that this was a 12 yarn long mug rug warp at the very best, or perhaps someone wound a warp too wide and this was stripped off.   Regardless, it's a bizarre size.   If it was meant to be 6 inches wide, that would make a an awful lot of mug rugs or skinny scarves.

It looked to be in decent shape, for threads of an undetermined age.  It's two colours, rust and beige.  I find that combo rather uninspiring and a bit dull.  However, I found some khaki and turquoise in my stash that add a bit of interest to the original colours.  With those, I figured I could do something useful with the warp.

I've been trying to work something out with this for a while but it's too long to deal with inside the house. There is also the kitty factor, because trying to do anything to a 12 yard warp with 4 cats would be slightly insane.   I don't think they'd sleep through that effort.  Well maybe the old guy, but he's 16 and doesn't wake up for much if it doesn't include food and pets.

I took the warp outside, hooked one end on the garden gate post, stretched it out and walked it back to hook the other end on the same post, effectively doubling the warp.  Now it was 286 threads - getting better.

There was only a cross at one end, but the choke ties were done in slip knots, so I slipped my fingers in between the one part of the cross, thinking that half a cross was better than no cross.   I walked backward, and undid each choke tie as I got to it, separated the warp, retied the choke tie and moved on to the next one.  When I got to the turning point, I added a tie to denote the centre point, and moved back to the beginning.  It wasn't perfect, but at least it's something.

 This is the folded area.  I put extra choke ties in to try to help the threads from not getting tangled up and more difficult to deal with than necessary.   Luckily it's a simple colour arrangement, looking like a smaller rust strip beside the beige.

At this point, I reached in my back pocket, took out the scissors and snipped the warp in half.   There was no way I was going to weave off 12 yards of anything 6 inches wide.  Now I have almost a foot wide and I only need to wind off another 4-8 inches of threads to make the warp wide enough for something useful, like napkins or tea towels. 

As well, it's only 6 yards long, which is a less daunting size to deal with.   I'm thinking a tabby weave.  While I prefer twills, I'm not sure I want to risk that much more thread on this.  While I snapped the threads in a few places to test for strength and it seemed fine, there is still the risk that the cotton has weak spots, which would make for some miserable weaving.

Garden update, and New Chooks!

My two new girls are Leghorns - white chooks that lay white eggs.  They just started laying a couple of days ago and right now they are laying the tiniest little pullet eggs I've ever seen.  Their eggs will get larger as they mature.

When you move a grown hen to a new location, you need to keep them locked in the coop for about a week so they learn that this is their new home.   After that, you can let them out and ostensibly, they will come home each night and lay their eggs in the nesting boxes.

For days after I'd opened the coop door to the outside, they didn't venture outside anymore than to peek out the door and run back inside.  Finally though, they came outside.  They don't go all over the place yet, but stick close to the barn.   They haven't yet melded as a flock with the other chooks, so they keep to themselves.

One of the grey girls who lays the green eggs has decided to lay them outside.   I hear her egg call when she lays, but I've not yet found her nest.  That is where the ostensibly part comes in.  Sometimes a chook or 3 get it in their minds to lay outside.  Then it's like an egg hunt to find their hidden nests.

This is a photo taken though the screen door.  There were three little cardinals who had just fledged and were practicing their flying.  They went from the tomato cage to the deck railing, to the top of the gazebo and back.   The cats spent many hours watching them excitedly.   This was the best photo I could get of them.  They were very timid and if I was outside, they would squawk and chitter and fly away before I could get a photo.  After about 3 or 4 days of this practice flying, off they went to do whatever young Cardinals do this time of year.

I finished planting the potatoes.   I put in about 22 lbs of Yukon Gold seed potatoes.  For the second time, when chatting with people about our gardens, I've had a person ask me why?  The first was an old gal who was disdainful about her friends garden and her efforts to plant potatoes and who kept saying horrible things about why would anyone even bother.   After several attempts at explaining, I ignored her dribble until someone walked by and interrupted her diatribe with "oh, growing potatoes is such fun".   I wish I'd thought of that one.

  This time it was a bizarre question as to why I would plant so many?  I mean, what does it matter how many I plant?  I have the space and we like eating fresh potatoes for as long as possible.  Does it really matter that I planted more than a couple?   Sheesh - it does get odd when I end up spiraling into weird conversations like that.  Really, I'm interested in what you plant and if you have an enormous garden, that's way cool and if you have a single planter box, then that is pretty awesome too.   That we have a common interest is a nice starting point for a conversation and I don't want to pass judgement on what or how much you're growing.  I just like it that you are growing stuff.

Garden update and knitting

In the garden centre this year, there were some decorative  pots of everbearing strawberry plants.   They were large plants, with 5 or 6 in a pot, and many of the plants had runners, with smaller plants already growing.  They were just a couple of dollars more than buying  a single, small, barely started strawberry plant and the same price as bare root stock (when you took the runners into account), that I hadn't decided to order in time for this year.  I purchased 2 pots, and between all the plants, I have a 4 x 6 foot bed of strawberries planted.  There will be a small harvest this year because of the mature plants.  This was my first strawberry and ohhhh, it was so delicious.  It was soft and sweet, not like the imported berries at all.

 On the long weekend, the gals I was camping with had all brought their knitting.  I was inspired when I got home, so I quickly knit up this little winter toque.  I had started it using handspun, but when I dropped a stitch in one of the cables, I ripped it out and began again.  It was easier than trying to figure out where that lost stitch was.  As well, I'd made a mistake on the second cable, which was irking me to no end, so I accomplished fixing that by ripping it out as well.  It's cute, soft and was surprisingly easy to knit as the pattern was super easy to remember.

The currant and gooseberry bushes have liked this spring weather.   They are all bearing decent amounts of fruit.   Since the white and black currant bushes were only planted 2 years ago, I'm pretty happy about that.  The red gooseberries are the same age, and they have berries as well.   My haskap berries were planted at the same time.  One has grown quite large and flowered a ton this year.  The second one is still small and only had a few flowers.   I haven't checked to see what amount of fruit has set on those bushes though.

 The Alliums are flowering.  They are so pretty with their deep pinky/purple globes shooting up from the ground.  There will be a gap in flowers as I don't have a lot between the Allium and the Rudbekia and Echinecea.

 The Woad is flowering though so yay for fresh seed.  I got enough plants from my 10 year old seed to have in my garden as well as pass some on to a friend.  I love the funky sign that I got from Erhardt.  I realize it's autumnal, but it looks cute along with the little whirly gigs and other bits of spinning things which not only decorate my garden, but keep the birds from eating the seedlings.  Before I put out all the tacky decor in the garden, the grackles and robins kept nipping off the tops of the green beans just as they sprouted, pecked away at the young lettuce plants and ate virtually all the strawberries, the first time I tried planting them.

Hodge podge of "stuff".

 This is my newish Weld patch.  I planted it last year with a little tub of plants dug up from Shannon's garden.   One of the plants was tall and she didn't think it would survive.  It did however, and produced much seed.   One of the smaller plants also grew up to produce seed and it produced a lesser amount of seed.  All of that seed though, ended up in the little 2' x 4' space in raised bed #3.   There were 3 weld plants which survived the winter.  I pulled out the weeds and shortly thereafter, all sorts of things started growing.  I didn't know what they were, so I left them.  Today I weeded the little patch again.   I think that most of those little plants are baby weld plants.   Once I am certain about it, I'll thin them out  so they are happier.

The Woad and the Japanese Indigo are happy.  The Indigo is thriving in the plastic cloches.   The Woad is taking it's sweet time to grow.  Considering the plants were so small, really too small to transplant, when I stuck them in the ground under the green cloches, it's actually doing quite well.

We had a hearth cooking class at Westfield.   We were in the Inn, which has 2 hearths.  The other side is larger and there was a boiled rice pudding and a soft gingerbread, which is cake there.  In the small hearth was fresh pease soup and cocky-leeky soup.  The pease soup was good and very spring-like.   We couldn't puree it properly, as we didn't have the right equipment.  The cocky-leeky soup was stupendously delicious though.   It's definitely a keeper recipe.  That's for another post though.

 I found a skein of fuzzy blue acrylic in a thrift store which I used for the weft of the 2nd scarf.   I think it might be a short scarf though, as at 33 inches, I'm a bit over halfway through the skein.  I like how the blue is a bit more subdued than the black weft of the first scarf.

FOOL was a great event, although it kind of had a quiet end to the weekend, when huge winds blew through and threatened rain.  This caused virtually everyone to pack up and head home early.  It was a great weekend though.  We had a paper making tent set up where much cotton lint paper was made.  Here it is drying.   We did spend a bit of time racing around picking it up every time the wind picked up though.

Spring Flowers and the start of gardening

There is a green haze on the bush lots and many of the trees.   I was beginning to wonder if we'd have leaves by Mother's Day.   We usually do have them, but this year everything seems a bit slow.   We've been getting one reasonably nice day and then day after day of cool, grey, wet weather.  The spring bulbs came out en masse.  Usually it's a lovely progression with first the crocuses, then the Siberian Irises and the Scillia.   This spring they all bloomed at once.  Then the Hyacinths come, and then the daffodils with the tulips finally showing.   Again, these all bloomed at once.    Usually I get several days to sit outside with my tea and enjoy the heavily scented hyacinth blooms, but this year, I got a whiff in passing because it's not been warm enough and the stupidly strong breezes just keep happening.

This year, thanks to our very active squirrels I'm guessing, there are daffodils in the ditch, by the neighbours field and hyacinths in our front flower beds.  Both of which are similar to what I've got in my gardens elsewhere.   I don't really mind that they've done that.  I was considering planting a few daffodils out on the edge of our property anyway and the hyacinths up front aren't a bad thing.  Although I do like to be able to drink my tea outside to their scent.  They are one of my favourite spring bulbs.

I've been playing outside the the garden.   The raised beds have been dry enough to weed a couple of times, so I've been pulling out quack grass and something else with long stringy roots but no growth yet at this time of year.    I need to add some compost and manure, but I found some cell packs of started lettuce plants, so picked up a few and planted them already.  

Earlier this spring, near the end of March, I planted some woad seeds.  This seed is at least 10 years old.  It's germinated well in the past but this year I wasn't so lucky.   I had already over planted, with 3 or 4 seeds in a pot, but it was slow to start and then only a few came up.   I soaked some seed over night and planted that at about 5 per pot, in the same pots as the first ones.   I got enough to come up for use and there may be extras to give away.   The one woad plant that came up last year, is getting ready to flower, so I will have fresh seed.  Yay!

  I'm going to be away for the long weekend, and really can't rely on my menfolk to water my seedlings, although they will do it if they remember.   I figured I could get them to water the garden, so I planted out the woad early.  It's cold hardy and I put it under little plastic cloches from the dollar store.   So far it's holding it's own.   It will be much easier to get the garden plants watered than the little tray of
pots inside the house.

There are now 24 green cones protecting the woad. The large clear cloches has Japanese Indigo.   There are more in a second bed.  This is a bit of a risk as the plant is much less tolerant of the cold.  However, I have enough to replant, as well as some extra for a friend, should the cold weather be too much for the Japanese Indigo.  However, if it survives the next week or two, the plant will have an advantage of a couple of extra weeks growing time, when my garden gets full sunlight.  Hopefully it will make a difference to both seed and indigo production.

I've been spinning and plying Merino - both white and natural grey.  I don't have photos yet.  I will say that the grey has an odd texture that almost feels a little dry, that I'm not sure about, but it's a lovely colour and quite soft.   The white is lovely as well, but it's also obviously more processed thatn the grey. 

Rant -   Mainly, other administrative type things have been taking up my time, which has been a little frustrating.  It always gets a little bit frustrating and then poof, it's done and I get to spend a long weekend with friends, hoping all goes well and unwinding. It's never felt too much though until this year.  This year it's been compounded with not only organizing the classes for the event FOOL, but also with teaching a 3 week spinning class and prepping for a historical cooking class.  The cooking class is a non-issue since it's really just reading cookery books and doing an occasional cooking experiement ahead of time, figuring out a time line and documenting it.  I actually found it the most relaxing in the few days that I devoted to it.  The spinning class was where the pressure was, since the dates were sort of shoved at me.  If I'd really had a choice, I'd have waited until after the long weekend, when I had less on my plate.    But it is what it is and it's done.  Now to figure out where I found all the supplies and get them put away again.