How many men does it take....

...to raise a tent?
I never did get a final count, but I now know that it also takes one woman....

Over the summer, the barrack square between the school and the casemates was home to a tent that was used by the EdVentures program. It wasn't big enough to serve as a venue tent for the Harvest Jazz and Blues festival, but it worked fine as a beer tent, so the tent builders unlashed it and walked it over to its new location.
Then one fellow needed to remove the pegs that the tent had been lashed too. I was wondering how this was going to be done and then he started to work with this odd contraption.
Next the poles for the new tent were laid out and the workers set to building the roof.
once the roof was all framed in, they needed to put the tarp on. It was laid on in sections and pulled into place.
and then lashed together
Once the roof was all on and secured to the base of the roof frame, they had a tent raising party! All the workers gathered at one end and on the count of three, most lifted while one went to work inserting the legs.
This was repeated all around the tent. Here you can see the woman in blue placing a leg pole.
Then new pegs had to be put in so that the tent could be lashed to it. They used a jack hammer with a cup like attachment to pound the pegs into the ground. When they came to the asphalt, they used an attachment to drill the hole first.
It was one of life's small mysteries that I now have an answer too.

cleaning up

my desktop. Here are some yarns spun this summer. If you have seen them before, please forgive my forgetfulness. It happens sometimes.



And some dyed roving.

Now that I have shared, I can get them off my desk. Just a few more things to clean.
Like the garden. We are suppose to get a hard frost tonight. Grrr. Guess what I am off to do?

Goodbye lake......

Mira harvested lake grass again.
My little wheel inside one evening.
The kids made a fish holding pond.
And Liam caught a fish to put in it for a little while.
Kid fishing in kayaks.

Kids pushing Uncle Sandy
Front porch with the red truck on the side ( I have to admit to a serious amount of guilty pleasure derived from driving that truck. It is so big that it beeps when it backs up, but it was great to drive and we all fit! Thanks Dad for the loan for the couple of weeks that we were away)
Look who came to the fire one night!
Well marshmellowed kids around the fire.

There may be a few more random lake picture show up when I am up to my neck in snow. Just to remind myself that this too, in time, shall pass.

Heaven on Earth Explained

You have heard me call Skiff Lake "Heaven on Earth" several times now.

Here is the reason.....
Bill's cousin made this plate in a ceramics class and gave it to Bill's mother. She showed it to me one day when we were all there and "Heaven on Earth" was suddenly very frequently heard. It became the cheers when beer o'clock rolled around, or when we were sitting on the front porch just watching the ducks swim by begging for scraps. Waking up in the morning and having coffee on the front porch, or at night while having a sip of something a little stronger around the fire.

Ahhh.

Heaven on Earth.


I did some dyeing before I left for the cottage. I knew that my new wheel was coming with me and I didn't want to run out of things to spin. One of the bundles was purples, blues, browns and greens.
This skein was the other one that was completed at the lake and was given its soaking in 100% genuine Skiff Lake water.
It, too, had the hanging with the can treatment on the front porch and here it is, at home, on the current warp on my loom. The purples and blues are the heaven and the greens and browns are the earth. So...."Heaven on Earth"!

Is this better?

Scanned from an old photo from about 20 years ago. The photo credit goes to a fellow who was know by the unlikely name of Bunny. An old friend, Andrew T, found it a stack of old photos and put it up on FB. And then I snagged it.

Aug 09 -Heaven on Earth 4- Really?

This is what happens when you give a 5 year old a camera and the subject gets tired of being the subject.

Spinning My Wheel.. Lake Edition

When I packed up to go to the lake, I made sure that I packed up Victoria to come, along with enough fiber to last me two weeks.

One of the colours of fleece that I worked with was this blue. I really wanted to call it "Skiff Lake" but they were too dark.

But because I was there, and because there was a bucket and a lake near by, this skein was washed in the hallowed waters of Skiff lake.
There was a convienent porch rail to hang the skein from and of course canned goods to weigh it down. Once there, it is hard to think of going to the grocery store in Woodstock. The store in Canterbury sells staples like milk, bread, chips, ice cream, and beer, but fresh veggies are rarely fresh, so we resort to some things canned or frozen.
What do you think? Stormy lake? Deep Waters? Skiff Lake Waters?

Aug 09 -Heaven on Earth 3

One of the things that is wonderful about being at the lake is the kids that are around. You know how sometimes kids bring home someone and you think "I hope this blows over quickly"
The kids around the lake are not like that. They are all wonderful and the type of kids that you hope your kids are friends with.
There was another little fellow that showed up this summer. There were a fair amount of ducks around and then there was this one little guy. All the other ducks were larger so we are not sure why exactly this guy was smaller and less developed, or why he seemed to be all alone. He spent time on the docks and I saw people from several other cottages feed just him and shoo the other larger, more aggressive ducks away.
One of the neighbour girls had this funny fellow. Simon thought that it was so hilarious! He would look at him and say "Why the long face?" and then burst into peals of laughter.
Here is the crew making funny faces on the last night for the kids in the cottage to the right of ours.
Skiff lake... Heaven on Earth.

Aug 09 -Heaven on Earth 2-the crayfish edition

Mira and Sandy in the canoe.
Sandy spearheaded the drive to get kayaks for the lake this year. The kids used them a fair amount. I was in one a couple of times for a short trip but would have dearly loved to have been able to take longer excursions around the lake. As in " pack a lunch and see you in 6 -8 hours" but it was not to be. This year.
The kids did get a fair amount of time in them. Liam found out that it was possible to fish from a kayak. And he did. Quite often. Oh to be 12 again.
Oh wait.
Hormones.
Forget that last statement.
Mira found a crayfish again. In fact, I became quite excite when she was exclaiming that she had found a crayfish and was chasing after something by the neighbours dock.
The .. thing.. jumped out of the bucket that she had and I thought "woah! that is a HUGE crayfish". I jump the boundary line, and after a very quick apology to the neighbours sitting on their front porch, run down to help with this huge crayfish.....only to find that she was chasing after a frog. Probably the same frog that I had captured on film ( or pixels as the case may be) the day before.
The "huge" crayfish was maybe 4 inches long and sitting in a bucket on our dock.
While I was there this year, there were vast amounts of time that my in-laws were not there. There are many places in the cottage that are well known to me. I know where all of the dishes belong. I know where to find the toilet paper and the paper towel. Towels and bedding are no mystery.
However, this cottage has been in Bill's family since 1944. There is a lot that has happened that I have not been privy to.
Since the first year that Earle bought the cottage and land while he was on leave from WW2, there has been a "guest book". I am sure that there were many visits from guests that did not make it into the book. But many are there, along with the comments that some of those people left behind.
Like this one. I know that they were not alone in their sentiments.

Aug 09 -Heaven on Earth 1

Here is the first of a few posts about the lake visit this year. Both a lot happened and very little happened. After my busy busy July, being at Skiff Lake was like being at Heaven on Earth.

Although it didn't start that way. About 15 minutes out of Fredericton, I realized that there was one key thing that I forgot. Bill was planning to stay in town for a few days to do some sorting of papers. He was the holder of the key. The kids learned a few new words that day.

You see where I am going here, eh?

However, I knew that my in laws and brother in law were planning on coming to the lake that day. The question was .... when. But we had food. We had bathing suits and one towel. We had access to the out house.... oh wait. No. The key to the out house was in the cottage which was.... locked. Hmmmm. We has kleenex and we had woods. We would survive.

Here is all of our stuff on the front porch.
While standing outside unloading things onto the porch, I heard the phone ring. Inside. Behind the locked door. Around this time a call was made from Woodstock to Fredericton and while on the phone, Bill suddenly realized that he hadn't given me a key. Thankfully this translated to the rescue came sooner rather than later. We didn't have to resort to frozen hot dogs. Thank heavens!

Life at the lake worked out well for the kids this year because the kids from a few doors down had the exact same weeks as we did. The twins from the other direction were there for the first week.
It is wonderful beyond belief to have kids who all play well together. Not only do they play well, but they are really nice kids . All of them are the type of kids that you want your kids to be friends with.
Heaven on Earth.
Our second day, a large frog was spotted.

The youngest girls pointing out the frog. See him? Or her? How can you really tell? And do I really want to go there?

One neighbour had borrowed a funky paddle boat. This was a propeller driven one instead of a paddle driven one. At first, I thought that it was a motor boat. Liam insisted that it was a paddle boat and after peering inside, I discovered that he was right!


More lake tomorrow.......