Freezing Garlic

 We were able to get the last of the locally grown, hardneck garlic from my sweeties farmer friend.   Usually he sells it in 2 lb bags, but he had 1 lb left.   My sweetie ordered it and it came home with him a couple of days ago, with the warning that it wouldn't last long.  I figured that because the last of our garlic from the 4 lbs we had in the fall, was either drying up or sprouting.  I had the option of freezing it or dehydrating it.   I don't really like the smell or taste of commercially dehydrated garlic, although we have one of those multi-function pressure cooker/air fryer appliances, do dehydrating would have been easy.   Freezing though is fast, and the frozen garlic will last up to 6 months.

The biggest issue with freezing garlic, is actually peeling it.   I checked out a few websites and videos about mass peeling garlic.   Apparently if you put a bunch of the individual cloves in a bowl or container, cover it and then shake it vigorously, the papery skins just fall off.   I tried it.   I tried it several times, in several different containers and as this photo shows, only 2 cloves were partially peeled.  The rest of the cloves papery skins were solidly attached.     The other issue with this method was that a couple of garlic cloves started to get bruised.  I think that grocery store, soft necked garlic would likely work with this method.  It has smaller cloves and may be dried differently. 

I ended up using a large knife, and tapping the garlic cloves, to crack the skins.  Then they easily peel off.  It took a couple of tries to get the pressure correct.  I usually use this method for cooking, but I use a hefty bit of pressure to crack the garlic so that the peel is almost completely removed and the garlic cloves is flattened for use.

It really didn't take a lot more pressure to flatten the clove completely.   Here you can see that the garlic is starting to sprout.   If it were any larger, it would start affecting the flavour, but the garlic taste on this was still good.

It took about 20 minutes to peel all the garlic.  It was a bit over a pound of garlic.  Look at the big, healthy cloves!   If I trimmed the tough root ends off, the garlic oils and odor could possibly escape more easily, so I left the cloves intact.   I should be able to just pluck out a couple of garlic cloves at a time and after a couple of minutes thawing, start to slice them fairly easily.  They can be trimmed up as necessary then.

A few years ago, my husband decided he wanted to try taking his lunch to work in glass containers.  It didn't last long though, because the glass storage containers are pretty heavy.  But plastic can take on the odor of the garlic quite quickly so the glass storage container was perfect.  It does have a plastic lid, but it's supposed to be air tight.   Plus it was a good size.   There were around 3 cups of garlic cloves.     So far there is no residual odor in the freezer.  Yay!     Considering how much garlic we tend to use in daily cooking, I don't think it will last long enough to see if it does last 6 months in the freezer.  I'm happy that it won't be sprouting on the shelf though

Ash Forests no more

The natural forest cover in this area is deciduous trees.  Plus we're on the edge of the Carolinian Forest area, which runs south, east and west of our area.   For a heavily rural farming area, there are a lot of bush lots, small conservation areas and tree lines, which have a great diversity of flora.  It is unexpectedly beautiful in it's own way.  

But the Emerald Ash Borer has caused huge amounts of devastation.   There are were a lot of Ash trees in our area.  For years now, we've been getting downed Ash trees for firewood.    This year though, our hikes have shown us the reality of the Ash wood lots in our area.   Acre after acre of ash trees, cut down.   You could tell here that some of the dying or dead ash trees were left standing because in places, there would be nothing left.  

Big or small, the Emerald Ash Borer didn't discriminate over which trees it attacked.   It looks like it went from tree, to tree, to tree, eating it's way though whole forests.   

I've been careful about where I've been snapping pictures on our hikes, choosing more uplifting, happier, photos, with little damage and few downed trees.   Pretty much all of the trails have some Ash trees cut down for safety reasons.

I think there have been places we've been with more trees cut down, but here we were walking and walking through this.   It was difficult to see the differences in some places, as it all looked so much the same - trees cut down, left to decompose on the forest floor, a few other trees left standing.

Maybe it's just with the snow and lack of the canopy of leaves, it looks worse.   It seemed just a tad like apocalyptic  scenery from a sci-fi film when we went out on Saturday.  What is sadder yet, is this is the closest trail to home!    We had to cut the ash trees in our yard down two years ago :(

In happier news; flax singles!   I'm spinning flax tow, so it has a few slubby bits and maybe isn't quite as fine as I'd like it to be.  All in all though, I'm happy with it.     I'm wet spinning it, from the commercially prepared tow flax top - say that 10 times quickly, lol!  I'm using a z twist because it doesn't seem to spin any differently if I use s twist.  I figured I might as well just make it easy to spin by rote in that case, so z twist it is.   There are about 328 yards in this skein.

I was looking at lights for better photos and although a decent set up isn't horribly expensive, there are a couple of other major house renos/repairs still in the rotation.  So I got a piece of white bristol board, and two pieces of white foam core board.  I taped them together to make a reflector and put them in front of the window.   It's not perfect, but it's not bad either.   I think with some fiddling it could be better.    

New Mittens

 I decided to make a new pair of mittens.   There was nothing wrong with the ones I made a couple of years ago.  They were still in good shape and were still two of them, which seems to be important :)   I was a bit concerned that I'd be in a bit of a bind if I lost a mitten when on a trail, or getting groceries.  It's happened before, but I usually have a couple of spare pairs lying around.  However this was the spare pair before and I haven't replaced them, so it was time.

I had a bunch of Corriedale roving bits and pieces, so I dragged out the blending board.   The blending board is a fun tool.  I have mine because it was a lovely gift.  My first introduction to the blending board was a demo one of the students did at a class.   She brought out the board and a gazillion bits and pieces of fibre, piled them on the blending board haphazardly while poking them down once in a while.  Then she pulled off a single, gigantic, messy rolag.  I couldn't understand why anyone would want a tool which produced what was likely a difficult to spin, chaotic mass of fibre.    Luckily there are a myriad of videos out there which show how easy it is to make functional rolags on a blending board.    I wish I'd taken photos of these rolags, because they were much prettier than the resulting yarn!

This is a soft, bulky yarn, using  purple, raspberry, navy and pink colours. I used the rolags and a long draw to make the Corriedale soft and airy.  The yarn is thicker, on purpose, than I would normally spin for mittens, but I was looking for something warmer than my current ones.   By spinning the yarn thicker and then planning on knitting it on smaller  needles, I could create a dense mitten fabric which held the heat better, and let less air whistle through on blustery days.  I've done this before and they are great mittens for scraping the snow off the car, walking and general outdoors activities.  Not so good if you need to manipulate a camera button or other things that require a bit more precise finger action.   

The mittens were quick to knit up because of the bulky yarn.   I was using bamboo double points, 3.5 mm and I was worried one would break, but they did just fine.   The mittens fit pretty perfectly, which is nice but of course I did have my hand easily accessible for when I wanted to try it on while knitting.    I didn't use a pattern because I've knitted a lot of mittens over the years and a plain mitten with a thumb gusset is pretty formulaic.   I just had to play around with a couple of gauge samples before I started to knit for real.

It's a good thing I had them finished and ready to go.   On Friday they were calling for a crazy amount of freezing rain.  The forecast I checked showed about 8 hours of freezing rain and another 4 of snow/freeing rain mixtures.   We'd battened down the hatches here, gassing up the generator, bringing in 3 days worth of wood, scrubbing and filling up buckets with water.    We're on a well and if the power goes out, so does our well pump.  I didn't want to run out of water for the chooks.

It ended up that we had a limited amount of freezing rain.  Just enough to make the world sparkle.   On Saturday, when the temperature was warming up, we went for a hike.   I brought both pairs of mittens for some reason, which when we got to the trail, turned out to be that my sweetie had forgotten his thick gloves.    Now he has my old mittens and I have these new ones.  Not horribly pretty but happily, they are really functional.

The world was beautiful with a crystal sparkle.   Because the temperature was just hovering above the freezing mark, we did get dripped on a bit.  The trail however, was snowy and not icy at all.  The sun shone for a bit, which made it a spectacular and fun short hike.

Wool singles - more hikes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, time to update!

I just cut this part scarf off the loom.   I found some Paton's Lace yarn on sale and picked some up to weave a shawl and a couple of scarves.   It's lovely in the skein, not so much in the woven fabric.   A master weaver friend told me once that if you think there is something off with your fabric, or you don't like it and don't know why, it's probably your sett.

  I definitely had the sett just a tad tight.  The fabric was too dense and felt a bit stiff.  Not only that, but the outside threads started shredding.   I've woven with this commercial knitting yarn before without issues, and know a friend who did so with lovely results, so I'm not sure what was going on with the shredding.  However, I cut off the bit that I was weaving and re-sleyed it in a crammed thread/loose thread pattern, trying to get a bit of life and whimsy into the pattern.   This has worked really well, except the outside threads are still shredding and I've not decided what to do about it.  I will either put some floating selvedges on it, or sacrifice the yarn and cut it off.   I just noticed this morning that it's awfully close to Christmas and I haven't even thought about the tea towels my kids requested.   I've not thought about the pattern, colours, any design.  The warp isn't wound and eeek.. I'm running out of time.

My Christmas cards are done.   This year instead of carving a design for block printing, I tried my hand at water colours.   I have some ancient gouache paints from previous experiments and although they are opaque, rather than transparent, like true water colours, they can be used in a similar way.   I'd like to try some real water colours and see how they differ.  However that will be for another time.  My son, who is a talented artist, declared that they were okay, and the people who received them would appreciate them.  I got a giggle out of his effort to be supportive.

We got one last hike in before it snowed again.  It was brisk out, hovering just above freezing.  It was however sunny and there was almost no wind, so it was a great day to be out.  This is a trail we haven't taken in a while.  It was a nice change to be walking on soil, leaves and grass instead of the gravel that most of the well groomed walking trails have in this area.

I've been spinning in the evenings.   I've been mainly using up bits and pieces of stash. The blue merino superwash was a bit compacted and I probably should have run it through the carder or hand carded it before I spun it.  It was a fast spin and I didn't really worry too much about it.  I was just happy to have it spun and out of the way.   

On the last nice day, we got yard work done.   I got all the leaves off the deck, the hose put away, which is a bigger job than you'd expect since there is about 100 feet of hose, maybe more, and it was frozen stiff.    The part of the roof we had redone is finished, with new eavestrough and because it's the very high part of the house, we had that eavestrough leaf guard installed - yay!  

The bad things are that the mowing deck on the lawn tractor just rotted away.  The paint started bubbling  and this spring my sweetie had to get a friend to weld part of it back together.  Now it has rusted through in multiple places, so it needs to be replaced.   However, the part has been on backorder forever,  and we aren't holding out any hope that it might available anytime soon.  Luckily it's winter and we won't need to mow the lawn for a while.   The second thing is that t is just a nuisance.  The wood guy stopped by and commented on how quickly the last load of wood was cut up and split.   My sweetie laughed and said it was a perfect load and he'd take another like that any day.   Well of course two days later, we had another load of wood, not quite as perfect though, dumped beside the driveway.  The weather hasn't been conducive to getting it processed though, so it's just sitting there, almost in my parking spot.  I can't imagine that there will be time to get it processed and stacked for drying anytime soon, at least with just himself doing it.   I could be a winter driveway decoration!

                                                                                                   

 

 

Spin, Spin, Spin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday morning hike

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

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

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

 

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

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

           

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

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