RIP Cat

 So yes, we had a cat named Cat.  His name was actually Mu, as in the Greek letter, but when he was young,  he was the only cat we had, and whenever anyone commented on him, or his whereabouts, it was always something like "Where is the cat? or Has anyone fed the cat?".  One day we realized that he responded to the word cat.  He'd look up. Sometimes he'd come when he was called and so his name changed to Cat.

He was almost 20 years old.  He was really my daughter's cat.   She was a good cat mom, but suddenly found herself in a situation where she had to work 2 jobs and I think she was still taking classes at uni, and Cat was still quite young.  He wanted attention, but she was really only home to sleep.   She came home for Christmas, and asked to leave him with us for a couple of months, while she got back to a normal situation.   Of course we said yes, but when she left to go back, we couldn't find Cat.  He was in hiding and had determined he was staying where he was.   As soon as she headed out, he popped out of hiding.  For years afterwards, she come home and he'd hide.  It was kind of funny.

He was a good cat.  He was playful for many years.  He loved playing with a hand under a blanket.  When we lived in a home which had a gap under the bathroom door, he would play for ages just chasing a finger back and forth in the gap.   He had no idea how to play fight or wrestle, but he'd chase a guitar string around the house if you pulled it along.

 When I had my hip replacement, he parked himself on my new hip and stayed on top of the incision until the staples were removed, when he moved to my feet.  Two days later, when the little staple marks had healed, off he went back to his normal routine.   He regularly looked after me like that.

He didn't like strangers, thunderstorms or mice.  He'd run and hide.  Except for when the farmer next
door was combining.  He'd sit on the table, looking out the patio doors, watching that combine go back and forth, with no fear at all!   

He crossed the rainbow bridge on Sunday night. He will be missed.  He was handsome, caring and a very good pet.  

Supporting Our Local Fall Fair!

 A friend asked me if I'd enter some items in the local fair.   It was cancelled last year and was scaled back this year, still due to Covid restrictions.    There were far fewer classes than other years, to help keep contact risks down.    However there were weaving classes!  I do like to support local events, so of course I'd enter something.    I entered 3 items.   I had a couple of others in mind, but they were for jams, preserves and such.  I wasn't sure I had the time to get them ready, so I went with just the crafty ones.  I really wasn't expecting too much because I've seen the entries in other years and there is an amazing array of talent shown at the local fairs.

I think I did okay though.   I didn't feel right about taking any prize money, especially when times are lean for the local Ag societies, so I asked for my winnings to be donated back.   

This is my rug hooked with hand-spun, hand-dyed yarn.   I really didn't expect this to win at all because in past years there have been some pretty amazing rugs shown.   The second place rug was technically perfect and had absolutely gorgeous colour choices.   The gal who hooked it said she was happy the judge took into account the hand dyed and spun yarn.
 

This wasn't the scarf I was going to originally enter.  I had one with a lovely hand painted warp, but I'd taken it to a meeting to show off and left it in the tote bag.  Of course I hunted high and low and couldn't find it.  I entered this scarf, wool and silk blend, in a bumbaret weave structure.   It's interesting but not quite as striking as the hand painted warp.  Still, I'm happy with it.   

And yes, I found the missing scarf almost as soon as I got home from dropping off my entries.

These placemats were a last minute decision.   It wasn't in the weaving section, but the general crafts.   They are made with a commercial yarn.   I thought they'd go in my kitchen, but the colours don't match.   But they are machine washable and durable, every day sort of placemats and it must have meant something to the judges.   There were some cute appliqued Santa placemats in second place.

So hubby also had the winning bid on a silent auction item and we took home a dry wall lifter for doing ceilings, for the grand total of $35.   He was pretty happy about that!

I was happy to get to hear one of the John Denver impersonator's sets.  He was really good!

I will have to say that local fairs are becoming fewer and fewer.  There are a few big ones which are well supported, but many others struggle to survive!   Next year, please go out and enjoy the fall fair events in your area, even if they are sometimes a little old fashioned.  The livestock competitions are fun.  There are often lots of activities for kids, fair food and more.  You can ohhh and aww and sometimes giggle over the entries in the homecraft divsion and see farm crops, veggies and giant sunflowers.   Sometimes they get the 4H clubs to do educational displays, which can be awe inspiring, when you realize that these are kids showing off some amazing skills and knowledge.  

How Time Flies!

I wanted to knit a new winter toque.   The pattern called for a heavy worsted weight yarn.    I tried with a commercial yarn but it wasn't heavy enough, plus the colour didn't rock my world.   The pattern has a wide, cabled band.  I hunted through my stash and found some merino which I thought was an appropriate grist, which I'd spun worsted.  A worsted spun yarn would give really nice definition to the cables.   First, I dyed the white yarn to a mottled ecru colour.    It was nice and I liked it.   I started knitting and the cables looked wonderful.  By the time I was at the final 10 rows, I was questioning my choice.  The yarn was obviously just a tad bigger than needed, so even with my choosing a smaller size, the hat was too big.   Plus, this was a robust yarn.   My hat was really heavy!   So it's been frogged, with nary a photo for remembering it.

I made and canned salsa.  The recipe said it should thicken up with about 10 minutes of boiling.   It took over an hour.   Next time, I'll just run all the veggies through my food processor to rough chop as hand chopping took forever.  I have enough for half our winter needs though.

Apricot jam made from an 1832 recipe for Apricot Marmalade.   It's very delicious.   Apricots were crazy expensive at the market this year so it's also the most expensive jam I've ever made.   It's a good thing it's so tasty!  Just to mention that I've no problem using grocery store fruit, but I only found imported apricots this year and no little baskets or containers of local apricots.   I was happy to find them at the market.

This bowl of garden fresh tomatoes and basil became a really good marinara sauce.  I didn't peel the tomatoes though.  I just chopped them up, added some onion, garlic, parsley, carrot, zucchini, and a bit of dried italian spice.  I tossed everything in the slow cooker and set it on low.  I stirred it twice, otherwise ignoring it.   About an hour before it was done, I shredded and added the basil leaves.   I liked it as is, although hubby added some chopped leftover hamburger patty to it.  It was good day one, but it was spectacular on day two.   There are several meals of pasta sauce in the freezer too!

This is a bad photo of this year's bounty of canned tomatoes.   I ended up with 38 pints.   I actually ran out of clear jars and had to use a green glass jar, so one of the jars looks like it has ugly brownish tomatoes in it.  I'm aiming to using that one first.

Hubby has been chopping and splitting wood.  Not only did we get several loads of logs delivered, but a huge willow tree dropped a couple of branches on the neighbour's field, so he was out there cleaning up that as well.   The neighbour is in his 90's.  It really seems like there are not a lot of young independent farmers out there.

 

Garden happenings

 I harvested this handful of cotton a few days ago, from the two cotton plants I over wintered.   There have been a few bolls ready to harvest over the past few months, but these all popped at the same time!  I now have a sandwich baggie full of home grown cotton and two very straggly, ugly cotton plants.   I'm not sure if I'm going to over winter them again.   Our climate really doesn't support the growth of cotton and it's not like I'm getting a superb harvest from my potted plants.

There are a couple of milkweed plants growing in the garden, hidden in with the madder plants.   This year I saw a monarch butterfly caterpillar.     Oddly enough, this is the first time I've seen one in the wild, on a milkweed, where they're supposed to be.  I was pretty happy and hopefully it survived to make a cocoon.

I was in the garden, picking a tomato and realized that the whole top part of one of the plants was missing.   It was like it had been snipped off.  There were several other branches lower down that were stripped off all their leaves. 

After careful checking I found this tomato hornworm, another caterpillar I'd never seen before.  This thing was huge.  It must have been almost 4 inches long!  My sweetie snipped the branch it was on and tried to feed it to the chooks, but they wanted nothing to do with it. 

I looked them up and apparently they eat pepper plants as well.  I wonder if they were responsible for a couple of my pepper plants just disappearing over night?   I was definitely not as happy about seeing this beast as I was the monarch caterpillar.

I made english muffins from scratch.   I used a recipe from 1859.  It was quite easy with delicious results.

Filling the Pantry

 More flax has been spun and more is being spun.   I'm still spinning it as singles.  It's still enjoyable spinning.  I'm almost done another 100g bag of long flax.   It's going fairly quickly, but as I'm wet spinning it, I need to take breaks to let my fingers dry out or they get all wrinkly and uncomfortable.     I checked my container of hand spun linen skeins and I'm pretty sure I have enough to weave something.  I just need to decide what to weave.

A friend called up and asked if I wanted her excess garden produce as they were heading out on holidays, and didn't want to leave the veggies to grow too large to use.    I ended up with a ton of cucumbers, zucchini and some beans.

First, I found apricots at the market, so ended up making an 1832 jam recipe for Apricot Marmalade.  It's very yummy.  Then I made cucumber relish.   I'm still trying to decide whether to make a second batch or not.   It's a bit time consuming though.   

After the cucumber relish, I made bread and butter pickles and finally zucchini relish.  We should be set for a while.

dyes and flax loooove!

 I totally can't believe that almost a month has passed since my last post.    I've been busy but still feel like I haven't accomplished much.   As well, we've had a lot of rainy and stormy weather which tends to knock our wifi connection out until the weather clears again, making blog updates difficult.    The weather has been really odd.  Flowers are blooming early and our trees look like they do at the end of the summer.   

The garden has been a partial success.   The green beans and salad greens have loved the straw bales.   I've had issues getting cucumbers, zucchini, radishes, beets and carrots started, not because of the bales, but because something was eating all the young plants down the night after they sprouted.   Next year I'll have to work out some way to protect all the seedlings; maybe cloches pinned down or something.

After an extra week of delays due to backorders, the new dishwasher has arrived.   It also arrived while my sweetie was working from home, so while I had an afternoon with the hookers (rug hookers) in the park, he installed it on his break.   He told me that there was an issue with it though as it was so quiet that he couldn't tell if it was running!

I did some spinning.  I finished up the superwash merino.    Then  I did a sample dye vat of Japanese Indigo, to  see what sort of colour it had.  Just a bit early maybe, and I was using up old Thiox, so it was a bit of an iffy experiment.    But there was colour, lots of colour.    

I dyed 2 skeins of the superwash merino.   It is a lovely soft blue.  I'm happy with this colour.   My indigo vat wasn't fully reduced.   I'm thinking it was the old Thiox, but it could have been that I jumped the gun a bit on timing as well, so it may not have had the extra time needed to be fully useable.   Still, it's the sort of blue one would expect from a woad or indigo vat, so yay for that.    

Then I shoved a handful of merino/cashmere/silk in the vat to see how much dye was left.  The photo is actually a bit lighter blue that in reality.   It's super soft of course, but the colour is lovely.   After this came out of the vat, there was more colour, however after a late start, the light was fading, so I ended it there.

A day trip to the Fibre Garden , my favourite spinning supply store was my birthday present.   I got some extra heddles for the 8 shaft table loom and some lovely Finn sliver.   Best though, was some long line flax.    Flax strick is really difficult to find here, but sometimes the shop has some long flax sliver.  It's processed, but with 12 inch lengths of flax.  It's super slick to spin and really it feels like it spins itself.    

I absolutely love spinning this stuff.   It feels like flax. It spins somewhat close to spinning strick spins like.  And it smells like flax.    This skein is 76g of long line flax sliver.   There were 3 packets in the shop.  I came home with all 3 of them.   

Hiking, jam making and other things have happened.   I'll try to post things more frequently.

One of those weeks...

 Gooseberries and a few black currants are topped and tailed.  I've popped them in the freezer for now.   I didn't weigh them yet.   However, I'm fairly certain that with what I have from last year, combined with this haul, there will be enough for a batch of gooseberry jam.  

There are more berries on the bush and I might get around to getting them.   I pick the berries just before they are ripe.   The first couple of years here I waited until they were ready to pick and they were eaten before I could get to them.  It seemed like there was a full bush one afternoon and by the next morning the bush was fully stripped of berries.    So vexing!

This year I've left the red currants for the birds.  I got the first harvest of the white currants, but today I realized that the birds had eaten the rest of them.  So much for that.  The black currants are just ripening.   There are raspberries beginning to turn red.  The blackberries flowered a bit early and some of them already have fruit, albeit very green fruit yet.  There should be blueberries in a week or two.   If I get around to picking them, the wild black raspberries may give a good harvest too as there are a lot of volunteer brambles this year.

My sweeties truck spent a bit of time in the shop getting fixed.   Then my car needed a routine

servicing.   I didn't want to wait at the dealership while it was getting an oil change.  They do manage to fit simple tasks like an oil change in, but I've waited 2 hours for it to get done and really didn't want to risk that happening.   As well, they are a bit laissez-faire about sanitizing.  The iffy mask wearing and the wiping down of things with a few squirts of cleaner on a dirty rag icked me out. So I had my sweetie pick me up and while I waited, we went for a walk along the river.   It was so nice.  The weather was perfect.  There was enough breeze to keep the mosquitos away too. 

 I'm switching the servicing of my car to my sweeties mechanic, as the rather rude call after I got home, demanding that I fill out a survey and give them the score they wanted, before I knew the questions that would be asked, really turned me off.   

The dishwasher died.   It's been faultless for over 10 years but the electronics have gone screwy.   Sadly, we don't think it's worth fixing.   I've discovered it's a joyless task looking for new appliances.   Half of them have delivery dates for the fall.  A bunch more just aren't in stock, with no timeline as to when they'll be back in stock.     I can't seem to get curbside pick up set up.  Nope, I don't want you to install it for some stupidly outrageous price when I have people who can do that living here.  Argh.   I want to just stash my dishes, press a button and come back later when they're clean.   I don't want to wait until September or October to be able to do this!

The the clothes washer started making weird squealing noises.    It's never ending...