one thread two thread

Some Assembly Required

2011-10-26T23:22:00.000-03:00

So we have moved. But we are far from being settled. While the house is functional, it is far from being a place where we would feel comfortable inviting the new neighbours. The new place is large. Very Large.

Here are a couple of pictures before we moved things in.

Dining room

Mira's room

office

Kitchen

Living room

The house is bungalow with 6 bedrooms, 3 baths, 2 kitchen, work room, studio space, countless closets, laundry room, linen closet, and A DISHWASHER!

These are the "before" pictures. I am not going to show you the after pictures just yet. And the reason for that is...well....let's just look at a few more "before" pictures. These are of the old place the weekend before the movers came.

OMG! Look at all this Stuff! How did this happen?

I think you get the picture. There are more rooms like this.

Our former living space Filled with Boxes of Stuff. Good Stuff. Bad Stuff. Random Papers. Cables and Cords. Computer Parts, etc. (yes I am speaking to you Dear) Kid Stuff. My Stuff. Stuff we Need and Stuff that We should have gotten Rid Of Ages Ago. (hint hint-no time like the present!)

Seriously! We had been at the old place for 15 years. When we moved in, it was Me, Bill, Mira, and Bug the Cat. The cat eventually went to the Great Catnip Field in the Sky and in the mean time was replaced by Three Kids. So that made 6 people in a space that fit 3 comfortably. And they all had their own stuff. Sort of reminds me of A guy named George.

In any case, it all went into a truck.

And there was more stuff so they came back for a second trip. Although I will say that the second trip wasn't quite so full. The main reason for the second trip was to pick up the freezer, which had to be emptied, and seeing as they were picking things up on Monday and delivering them on Tuesday and seeing as I didn't want my frozen foods sitting out over night I thought that it would be better if we just got the freezer and the food and what ever else didn't fit into the truck although it was a whole lot more than I thought would be left over so I was glad that we had their services for another day even though it ended up costing Way More than I had estimated it would.

A few words about moving guys.

These fellows really know how to pack. At first I was a little concerned because they seemed to be taking a Very Long Time getting things on the truck. There were three guys and two of them seemed to be taking an awful lot of smoke breaks. I was frantically packing the last of the things in the kitchen and it wasn't until we were at the new house that I realized Why they were taking so long. The truck was packed like it was a Tetris Game! No wasted space. Everything was snugged up quite tightly and a lot of the furniture was wrapped in blankets. Reality dawned. I am glad that I am not a mover.

In any case...The kids are going to school, we are working, doing homework, laundry, meal preparations, dishes, unpacking, Garden Stuff STILL ( more on that later) And I am thinking about starting to try and prepare for one of my three Christmas Sales that is NEXT WEEKEND? WHAT!?

Deep, calming breaths.

The long and the short of it is that we haven't been solely focused on unpacking. And so the house looks like a combination of the pictures from the old place and the new one. All that space with all those boxes. I really hope to be settled by Christmas with Most of the boxes unpacked and stuff put away, or disposed of, or given away. The kitchen is mostly unpacked and functional (although I am still playing the "Where did I put That!" game.) The kids bedrooms are mostly unpacked. My studio space had carpet which had to come up, which also meant carpet tack to remove, which then meant that concrete patch had to be bought (done) and applied (not done) before the floor could be painted and all of my stuff moved in.

I am at the point of saying "it will happen when it happens"

And you will be able to look forward to a new view when I post pictures of the snow storms that will hit this coming winter. Not looking forward to That! Although shoveling the drive way will be much easier because it is much shorter and there are no houses right against it! Whhhheeee!

I haven't been avoiding you.

2011-09-16T19:09:00.000-03:00

We are moving and that has taken all of my energy.
Well, that and starting actually teaching including developing some curriculum and delivering said curriculum instead of hovering in the background and quietly helping students.
And dealing with all of the produce from the garden.
And then there are 4 kids and all of the things that they need. Like regular meals and clean laundry and someone to throw a cleaning cloth at the bathroom occasionally.

I have been very very busy.

But once we are settled in about two or three weeks, I will return and give you a tour of our new digs!

one pot

2011-07-21T20:21:00.000-03:00

One of the things that I love about raku is the total unpredictably of what is going to happen to the glaze in the bin with paper. Sometimes one side of a particular pot may look totally different from another.

One of Bill's pot was such a pot.

Don't they look different?

The rest of the yarn bowls

2011-07-20T08:21:00.000-03:00

And, here are the rest of my yarn bowls. I wasn't sure which profile I would like the best and so I threw several different styles as well as hand built a couple of different styles.

A couple of them turned out to be seconds, which in Pottery world means that there is a flaw or two, but it is still functional.

Oh yes, there is one more of which I have yet to get a picture. The yarn bowl in question was my third favorite one and given to a very dear friend who promised to take a picture and send it to me. You know who you are!

Bill's production

2011-07-19T20:32:00.000-03:00

Here are the pots that Bill made during the raku workshop. I am sure that he will have something to say about them.

This one is about 13 inches across the rim

The bottom of this is what is called "naked Raku" where you put slip on the bare pot and glaze over top of the slip and the idea is that the carbon from the burning paper doesn't penetrate where the slip and the glaze are. Except that this one dried too fast and a lot of the slip fell off.

Here is a hand built pot not unlike my yarn bowl. Only larger.

This is a test piece mug. The idea was to mask out portions of the clay before you applied the glaze and you would get black areas.

A two tone vase.

What we call the Ming Vase. More on this one later.

And another naked raku. This one was much more successful.

It is really hot here and I am so glad that I am not firing raku today. It would be brutal!

Raku 2011

2011-07-18T19:29:00.001-03:00

This summer I was brave enough to take another raku course. Raku is a kind of pottery that is fired to it's final glaze temperature rather quickly. The clay is made to withstand relatively quick temperature changes.

You start by throwing or hand building your pots. I was really interested in making some yarn bowls. I threw some on the wheel and hand built a few. The clay that we were using was really too stiff. The teacher was rather upset with the supplier for sending the wrong blend of raku clay. It was so stiff that I ended up ripping some skin off of my hands on the first day. Which is why I ended up doing some hand building.

Bill also took the class with me. He enrolled in a pottery class last winter and really liked it. I knew the teacher of the raku class and thought that Bill would learn a lot from him so I basically forced him into taking the class by getting it for him for his birthday.

After the pots have been bisqued (which is to fire them in a kiln to a low temperature to drive off the excess moisture and make them firm so they don't come apart when they get a bit wet) you put the glaze on them and put them into a kiln. The kiln is them brought up to the melting point of the glaze which is somewhere between hot and stinking hot depending on the weather. We had a hot windless day and so it was stinking hot.

The next day we went to the teachers place where he had a river nearby as well as a cover over his raku kiln.

And we turned the kiln on to fire. The pots on the top were put there to dry a little more. Because of having to put pots into a hot kiln, they needed to be warmed up just a little bit before hand or the clay and glaze may pop and explode a bit. NOT what you are looking for!

And then you wait around for about 45 minutes while the kiln comes up to temperature. Beer may be involved. So may munchies.

When the pots come out of the kiln, They are put into a metal garbage bin with a base of wood chips and some newspapers. The cover is put on and they are left to cool down some for about 15 to 20 minutes.

The pot is then plunged into a bucket of water and scrubbed to remove the carbon on the surface.
Here are two of my pots. I focused mainly on yarn bowls and these were my two favorites.

Here they are a little blurred but the colour is about right.

Summer Studio

2011-07-04T18:39:00.000-03:00

Seeing as it is officially summer, and summer generally means that we are going to spend a bit of time at the lake, and seeing as the official list of "ToDo's" is much, much, much shorter at the lake (at least for me), This year I decided to move a bit of my studio there. My little Dorset loom folds up to be quite small and seeing as space is at a premium at the lake, it is a perfect fit. When I want to weave, I open it up and set it up on the porch.

On the weekend I manged to warp up and weave off 4 silk scarves. I have three more warps ready to go and if I keep up this production level I will need to make and dye some more warps. And soon!

And the view is spectacular.

Spinning Weekend!

2011-07-03T21:54:00.000-03:00

Last weekend a small group of spinners (and knitters) who usually meet up at the Spinning Retreat decided to get together for a mini retreat. Spearheaded by the energetic Steph, she contacted us, found the perfect accommodations on the Kingston Peninsula in New Brunswick at Adair Cabins and organized people into meal preparation groups.

My Retreat Buddy, Sarah, and I set off after kissing kids a happy last day of school and only managed to take one wrong turn. This is actually a record for us. Usually we take at least two, and on the odd occasion more. The fault usually lies with google maps directions and surprisingly enough, Lady Gaga. This time the missed turnoff was smack in the middle of a construction zone with lots of dust. Lady Gaga was also present.

Because the peninsula is a peninsula and we were approaching it from a way that necessitated crossing water, we were treated to a ferry ride. There are a number of ferries in New Brunswick that are part of the highway system and at this time they are all free. The crossing only takes a couple of minutes.

Ferry on the way

Our cabin was called the Deer Run

After a quick stop off at our friend Liz's place, we continued on to Adair's. There are 5 log cabins smack in the middle of the woods. Our group was small enough (or big enough) to have 3 cabins. Steph and Janet had the one with the biggest common room and so it was decided that we would spend the majority of our spinning and hanging out time there.

The place where we spent most of our time

We would also eat there.

Sunday Breakfast

I was actually rather amazed to see that a couple of the cabins were of different construction techniques.

Flat cut log cabin. Note the cell phone on a "shelf"

Round cut log cabin

On Saturday, we went down to the "shelter" which had a kitchen where we could do some dyeing.

Dyeing in the kitchen

There was also plenty of room to spread out and a comfy couch for the knitter to curl up on.

I helped a couple of people to dye with my acid dyes. There was also some people that were using Wilson Cake dyes! The colours did totally unpredictable things! I had no idea what to expect out of that pot! There was also someone with Gaywool dyes. Again, something new for me. The colours were beautiful. The Moncton crew were dyeing fools and by the end of the weekend their front porch looked like it was decked out for a party with all of the coloured fleece! I didn't get a picture but I did get one of Sarah's and my sleeping accommodations. The beds were super comfortable and for once there were enough blankets on the bed!

Our bedroom

Because we were in the middle of the woods, and because it was a particularly wet weekend, there were more than a couple of slugs around. In fact, it looked like a slug convention! Walking between cabins became a game of dodge the slugs. Sadly more than one slug lost the game and ended up being unwittingly tracked into the cabins. Ick.

Big Slug.

There were 12 of us and meals were easily divided into 4 meals with 3 people contributing to each leaving Friday night as a free for all potluck. Needless to say the food was amazing and I regularly ate too much.

I managed to get three skeins spun in slubby form to transform into scarves to hopefully sell.


Piggy Navigator.

And with Piggy on the dash, we made it safely home with no wrong turns! Here he is looking out at the ramp on the ferry on the return trip.

I was sorry to leave on Sunday morning, but we all declared the weekend a huge success and are going to try again next year.

I never thought...

2011-06-20T08:39:00.000-03:00

That I would like pink and yellow yarn. But I dyed it. I spun it. And I like it!

Fiddleheads

2011-06-14T19:52:00.000-03:00

We managed to get a lot!

43 pounds worth. Considering that I saw them for $4.99 a pound this year. I think that we did rather well.

Summer Learning

2011-06-13T19:48:00.000-03:00

Why not take a break this summer from your usually hectic relaxation plans and sign up for one of these exciting workshops?
They all take place in Fredericton and are anywhere from a half day to 5 days! There is something for everyone!

New York 2011

2011-06-02T19:03:00.000-03:00

Yes. This is a bus. This is a bus full of people that I know who are on their way to New York City!

One of those people was my daughter Mira. She hates having her picture taken. I figure that if I keep putting her "faces" out there that some day she will stop making faces when a camera is pointed at her. So far it hasn't worked.

There were lots of rocks and trees and grass that we saw on the way. We left at 5:30 am and arrived at the hotel at about 7pm. We lost an hour when we crossed the border but that still works out to a lot of hours on a bus.

Everything was moving fast in New York City! Including the trees!

We were at the Hotel Pennsylvania which was on the corner of 7th Ave and 33rd Street so we were super close to Times Square. Everyone goes to Times Square, so we went too. What a lot of lights and noise and people.

Just off Times Square was the M&M Store. Three floors of chocolate. And loud music. Mira voted that we didn't stay long. I concurred.

This was Mira and my roomie, Karen. After Times Square, we decided that it was time for a little liquid refreshment and a quick snack. We found a small pub called the Pig and Whistle and had a glass of wine (Karen) a beer (me) and a cranberry juice (Mira).

Mira's cranberry juice came with a lime wedge,I like to eat limes so that is not why my face is sour. She was not quite impressed with NYC. I, however was very happy to be there.

The next day was Sunday and one of the ladies with us is a Flea Market Goer. She had found some flea markets that happened on Sunday and one of them was very near to the Museum of Natural History. I had never been before and thought that Mira might enjoy it. There were a lot of wonderful exhibits. One of my favorites was of the animals that were a link between dinosaurs and mammals.
When Ice Age came out a number of years ago, I thought that, as often happens, many of the creatures featured were basically made up. Apparently not! This fellow was very much like one of the characters that was trying to escape the ice age in the first (I think) movie. There were a couple of other creatures that I recognized that I thought were really from someones fertile imagination. Who knew?

There were also a number of taxidermy critters from Africa. They were behind glass in "a natural setting" which included some real looking fake trees and shrubs as well as a painted background. Pretty spectacular.

There were a lot of other things including this very primitive loom from Africa. I am glad that I don't have to weave on one like that!
We also went to the MET another day, but seeing as Mira was the one that took most of the pictures, I will leave that tale up to her if she decides that she wants to share.

Retreat! Again!

2011-03-28T21:31:00.000-03:00

I haven't been producing much these days although I did get about a foot woven on my latest rug. I just seem to be so busy all the time. Most evenings, I find myself wondering where the day went. I am scheduled to finish work in a little over a month and am looking forward to some time to just get a few things done around the house. Heaven knows that things need to get done!

But in the mean time, I am heading to Nova Scotia for a Fibre Arts Retreat on Friday! The retreat in October was just a spinning retreat but this one is for all different kinds of Fibre Arts. Last year there were spinners, weavers, quilters, felters (needle only- no wet felters please) a huge amount of hookers, and a tatter or two. It was a great weekend.

This year Sarah and I are going as well as my mom. She is a hooker who has been bitten badly by the hooking bug! It should be a great weekend!

Sesame Street: Andrea Bocelli's Lullabye To Elmo

2011-03-15T21:55:00.000-03:00

I was hanging out with James while Christine was in the kitchen making meatloaf and for some reason we started to talk about Earnie and Bert and the La La La song. You know the one. Bert sings "La La La La Lemons, La La La La Lamp Post" etc. So I found it on YouTube. And after watching it (and singing along to the best of my ability) this one came up.

I had no idea that Sesame Street expanded so much! Now I want to watch ALL the Sesame Street videos!

Which one is Easter?

2011-03-13T21:59:00.000-03:00

Yesterday for breakfast we went to the Stanley Sugarbush for their Buffet Breakfast. Pancakes, sausages, ham, egg frittata, french toast, beans, and the cutest darn waffles that you have ever seen! Coffee, tea, cranberry and apple juice. We went with Christine's friend Kathryne and it was a good time. I went back a couple of times to get "just a little more" and as a consiquence wasn't really all that hungry for the rest of the day. Two of my cousins from Montreal came up to visit along with Ed's wife Donna, and Paul's son Michael. Listening to Ed and Paul go on was like taking a step back in time. We spent an afternoon laughing and playing "do you remember...?", and then all went out to dinner before they headed back to Montreal.

I forgot to take pictures of the cousins but I did take a few pictures of the critters at the farm because I knew that Mira would be interested.
First there were a couple of goats. One was in a pen and the other was laying in the alley apparently very unconcerned by the massive amounts of people hanging around.

There were a number of draft horses. I don't know what kind but they were exactly what you would expect from draft horses. They were harry and large and really sent my allergy meter through the roof. No pictures of them either.

In the next barn there were birds. Like these lovely peacocks. I think that they had moulted their fancy feathers for the winter because they had very short tails. There were four fancy boys and a very dull lady with them.

There were no chickens but there were a few turkeys. These fellows were the least offensive of the group.

Next came the Bronze turkeys. Their feathers were beautiful.

They would holler their turkey gobble and the guys in the yard would answer.

These fellows were strutting around the yard. Again there were 4 guys and one lady if the brilliant plumage was to be believed.

And I think I found out which ones were called Easter. They were the brothers with the attitude.

Bill's Big Bowl

2011-03-12T03:11:00.001-04:00

So apparently I sparked a bit of the competitive streak in Bill when I told him that he shouldn't get his hopes up too high for his throwing class. He wanted to throw a big bowl.

I didn't scoff.

Too much.

But in the end he proved me wrong. He took to clay like a duck takes to water.

Here is is final bowl. It was 10.5 pounds of wet clay and about 14 inches across. Dried and fired it weighed 5.5 pounds and is 10.5 inches across.

Bill, what do you have to say?

James

2011-03-11T15:11:00.000-04:00

I am in Ottawa right now hanging out with my sister and brother-in-law and getting to know my nephew a bit.

James asleep

Being almost two months old, James spends a fair amount of time sleeping. I have managed to coax a couple of smiles out of him but he doesn't give them up easily. Hopefully when he comes to visit in the summer he will be a little more free with them. He loves lights and shadows and will calm down (sometimes) when pointed in a direction where he can see them.
It has been a while (7 years) since I have done the baby thing and some of it is coming back. I remember some of the good tricks to help calm the savage beast. The "rock\bounce\walk" and the "hum and grunt". And the knowledge that sometimes nothing much will help until they get the poop\gas out on their own.

Brazen sleeping

Being 14, the cat spends a lot of time sleeping too. She has bad hips and knees and occasionaly gets a dropperful of some really good drugs that have her staring at the lights like a college boy. She has the longest fur that I have ever seen on a cat. And surprisingly she is not bad on my allergies.

Published!

2011-03-06T17:13:00.000-04:00

Well, actually I am going to be published. Last winter there was a call for submissions for a new Lark Book for the 500 series. It was 500 felt objects. I submitted 5 pieces along with over 1000 other pieces. The final decision was suppose to be made by December. I heard nothing and so though that I had not been selected. Good enough, I thought.

Last week one of my collegues asked me if I had heard anything from the selection committee to which I could reply "no". She then told me that they selection committee has to take until February to decide and that letters were in the mail for those that had been selected. "Second chance!", I thought, but still didn't expect much. And Wednesday when I arrived home, there was a letter stating that I had had not one but TWO pieces selected to be in the book! There is no money involved but I do get a free book and I do get to say that I have been published!

The second image will have to wait. There seems to be some issue with blogger not wanting to upload it. Oh well. Maybe I'll make you wait until September!

Craftier and Craftier

2011-03-06T16:07:00.000-04:00

Since the new year, Mira and Bill have been taking a night pottery class down at the Craft College. Before the class started, Bill was asking me what I thought that he should throw. Did I want bowls or mugs or something else? Having taken 2 years of clay, most of it on the wheel, and watched beginner class after class make monstrosities, my reply was "Anything. If you manage to throw anything half decent, I will be happy"

Well, after very little instruction (and many, many, many, youtube videos) Bill managed to make a number of very nice actually usable pieces of pottery.

Here are his three mugs. The one on the left even has fish relief on it. They were sculpted out of a slab of clay and detailed and then attached.

Here is one of his first bowls. It is about 5 inches across.

Here is one of his early vases. We will not see his first vase like thing. It is holding 5 pens and can be used to defend the house from intruders. It's a little thick. And heavy. And ugly (he agrees).

Here is a cereal bowl. Bill has also made a much, much, much, bigger bowl. Actually larger than any bowl that I have ever thrown. It is in the kiln being fired right now and will hopefully make an appearance soon.

I think that Bill was rather taken aback by my early comment of "Don't expect too much from yourself" There is a steep learning curve when dealing with clay. Especially when working with clay on a wheel. He was determined that he would take command of the clay and show it who's boss, so to speak. And to show me that he would do just fine thankyouverymuch! And he did.

More Learning about Travel

2011-03-02T12:08:00.000-04:00

Today I learned about getting bumped off a flight.
I was suppose to get on a 6:30 am flight to Ottawa to go visit my sister, her husband, and most importantly, my new nephew!
Early morning travel means getting up early. Did that. I was at the airport in plenty of time. Did the whole check the baggage thing and was directed to go here and there for various security checks. Had my bag swabbed. I think it may have been the combination of a bunch of batteries, loose change, puffers, and the metal coils on my yaktracks that had my bag looking suspicious. He almost seemed surprised when the swab came out clean. I asked him what he was looking for and he said "explosives". He then let me through and I proceeded to wait for my boarding call. The flight ahead of us was delayed a bit and so were we. Fine, no worries.
After the Toronto flight left, the fellow came on the intercom and said that our flight was over weight and he needed 5 people to take a later flight. None of the luggage was going on and it was still too heavy. Apparently the problem was in Ottawa. It was the "weather" and the pilot wanted to ensure that he had enough fuel to circle the airport for hours or land somewhere else. I talked to my sister after I got home and she said that the weather was a few tiny flakes of snow now and again. "I wouldn't even call the flurries!"
In any case, no one volunteered to go later (big surprise) and they started boarding people. When I got there, he looked at my ticket and said, "stand over there please" And so I waited as he let more people on board and told a couple of other people to wait also. Wondering why, I asked a few questions. One woman suggested that it was because we didn't "reserve" our seats. Maybe it was because I didn't "check in" on-line the day before. Any one have any other explanation why me? Or ideas to ensure that it doesn't happen again?
In any case the next available flight would have been this evening and about 8:30ish. And it was going through Toronto. Not being a seasoned traveler, I didn't want to have to deal with transferring in Toronto. I have heard that it is a nightmare and didn't really want to experience it first hand. The next direct flight (there being only one a day from Fredericton to Ottawa) was next week. So I am delayed a week. Having told my story to several people, they all agree that Toronto is a great place to avoid as far as transfers go, but Montreal is fine. I did get a $200 travel voucher to use against the cost of the next flight that I want to take. Next time I will endeavour to be more adventuress and go via Montreal. But I hope to never be bumped again.

Saturday supper

2011-02-27T23:06:00.000-04:00

We had our friend Karen over for supper on Saturday. She brought over some fridge magnet makings and a few design magazines. Here is everyone's product.

Except for Mira. Who used the leftover scrap bits. Of course. And came up with this dancing man.

Here was the main event. Recipe here. Yum.

And for desert we had Flan.

In their little ramekins


Plopped on the plate, bathed in its caramel juices.

And the recipe. Sounds frightening but you can do it! And it is sooooo worth it!

The Perfect Flan
This was a late minute addition to the collection. I tried this recipe from a magazine and it lived up to the title. It is simple and elegant. Even if you're on a diet, treat yourself once in a while with something as superb as this.

1 cups of whipping cream
1 cup of milk (do not use lowfat or nonfat)
pinch of salt
1/2 of a vanilla bean split lengthwise (or 2 teaspoons of extract)

1 cup of sugar
1/3 cup of water
3 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
7 tablespoons of sugar

Put six empty 3/4 cup ramekins in the oven at 150˚ F to warm them.
Combine 1 cup of sugar and 1/3 cup of water in another heavy saucepan. Stir over low heat until the sugar dissolves. Increase the heat to high and cook without stirring until the syrup turns a deep amber, brushing down the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush and swirling the pan occasionally. It takes about 10 minutes.

WARNING: This is a tricky and possibly dangerous procedure. When brushing down the sides of the pan, the hot sugar syrup will spatter a bit and can cause a burn. If it gets in your eye, it hurts a lot. Be careful! Also, when the water is all boiled out of the mixture and it begins to caramelize, it proceeds very quickly and is not easy to control. Watch it closely. The time from a good amber colour and a nice caramel flavour to a brown colour and a burnt taste is very short. If you burn it, start again; it's only a cup of sugar and a burnt syrup will spoil the flan. Use a bit lower heat; it takes longer but will be easier to regulate.

Quickly pour the caramel into the six warmed cup ramekins or custard cups. Using oven mitts to keep from burning your hands, immediately tilt and roll each ramekin to coat the sides. You have to work very quickly as the sugar will solidify as it cools. Set the ramekins into a large 2 inch deep baking pan.

Position the rack in the centre of the oven and preheat to 350˚ F. Combine the cream, milk and salt in a heavy medium saucepan. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean into the cream mixture and add the bean too. Bring to a simmer over a medium heat being very careful not to scald the cream. Remove from the heat and let steep for 30 minutes. If you use vanilla extract, simply warm the cream mixture until it shows the first sign of steaming, add the extract and use directly.

Whisk the eggs, egg yolk and the 7 tablespoons of sugar in a medium bowl, just until blended. Gradually and gently whisk the cream mixture into the egg mixture without creating lots of foam. Pour the custard through a fine sieve into the prepared ramekins, dividing it evenly (the mixture will fill the ramekins). If you don't sieve the custard, an unpleasant surprise encounter with a chalaza may spoil this otherwise devine dessert. Pour enough hot water into the baking pan to come 3/4 of the way up the sides of the ramekins.

Bake until the centres of the flans are gently set, about 40 minutes. Transfer the flans to a cooling rack. Chill until cold, about 2 hours. Cover individual ramekins with stretch wrap and refrigerate. It's best to make this four or five days ahead so the caramel has time to completely dissolve into the custard.

Before serving, bring the flan to room temperature. This can be done using a microwave oven, if you wish. To serve, run a small sharp knife around the flan to loosen it. Hold the ramekin in the palm of one hand and put a plate face down on the ramekin, holding it there firmly with the other hand. Turn them over quickly. Holding the plate and ramekin (now face down) firmly in both hands, shake gently to release the flan. If the flan refuses to let go its hold on the cup, use one abrupt downward snapping motion to release it. Carefully lift off the ramekin allowing the syrup to run over the flan. This dish is heavenly, but is definitely not diet food.

the persistence of squash

2011-02-16T12:32:00.000-04:00

My uncle grew Hubbard squash this past summer. I don't know if this was on purpose or by mistake. Hubbard is very very sweet and tasty. It also is huge. My brother got one that was 52 pounds! The first year that Bill and I put in a garden, he insisted that we grow Hubbard. What he really wanted was sweet mama's. A modest sized squash that is sweet and keeps relatively well. When our garden filled with light green monsters, he realized his mistake. The vines even climbed up the hedge.

Liam and Simon with the squash in the field. Liam is eating a cucumber. No wonder the kids grew an inch in a month. He never stops eating.

Our squash was a moderate 26 pounds. I didn't have time to deal with it in the fall so it took up residence in the living room under my loom bench. And then I proceeded to ignore it. Before Christmas I was always so busy and after New Years I just didn't want to deal with it. Memories of my sister dealing with her squash "for days" had me running scared. It started to turn orange

and I played the gardeners version of chicken. Who will give in first? Me or the Squash? The squash gave in first and started to rot. It happened really quickly! Once a squash has decided that it has had enough, it doesn't waste any time.


You can see the black end and the whitish area on the top was also soft.

I had the day off yesterday and it became squash day.

Skins on Hubbard's are thick. Skins on old squash are thick too. So you can imagine how thick and tough an old Hubbard would be. When my big knife only scratched the surface the question became what next?

Thankfully Liam had asked for a hatchet for Christmas. He was going to break in to the squash when it was time, but his friend was more alluring so it became my job. I gave it a few wacks and it split in two.

You can see the thickness of the skin. It is the slightly lighter bit along the edge. I scooped out the seeds and hacked away the rotten bit (again with the hatchet) and baked it in three pieces. Even after it was baked and I had scooped out the meat, the skin was solid. What with the loss of weight for the skin, rotten bits, seeds and goo, and possibly loss of moisture over 4 or 5 months, it weighed a lot less than the original 26 pounds. But it was still a lot of squash so I made squash soup.

Squash Soup

9 lbs squash
2 tbsp oil
5 pears seeded and diced
3 large onions chopped
10 cloves garlic
3.5 tbsp curry powder
salt
pepper
4 quarts chicken stock (veggie would also do)
1.5 cups white wine (chardonnay)
1 cup heavy cream

Bake squash until done.
Saute onions and garlic in oil until soft then add pears and cook until soft.
Combine everything (except cream) in a BIG pot and cook until throughly heated.
Blend with a hand blender or in batches in food processor or blender until smooth.
Serve swirled with heavy cream.

snow

2011-02-06T11:12:00.000-04:00

Isn't it pretty?

This is by no means the worse storm that we have ever had but it seems that since Christmas, we have been having at least one a week. And apparently we are suppose to get more on Tuesday. Sigh.

Waaaahhhhhh

2011-02-05T14:56:00.002-04:00

Warnings

Fredericton and Southern York County
10:45 AM AST Saturday 05 February 2011
Snowfall warning for
Fredericton and Southern York County continued

Snowfall amounts of 15 to 30 cm during the period beginning this evening and ending near noon on Sunday.

A low pressure system will track across the Bay of Fundy early Sunday. Heavy snow will begin this evening ahead of the low and will be ending near noon on Sunday. Along coastal sections of the Bay of Fundy the snow will become mixed or change to rain. Snowfall amounts of 15 to 30 cm are expected.

It doesn't even have the decency to happen during the week.

my two seconds of fame

2011-02-03T17:58:00.003-04:00

That's me weaving at seconds 5 and 6.

It was pretty low budget commercial by CTV. I, and the powers that be, think that we can do better in-house.

Let's try this again! I have no idea why there are two videos. They are the same. And I only uploaded one copy. Clearly I have a lot to learn.....

ATC

2011-02-01T15:37:00.000-04:00

That would be Artist Trading Cards for the uninitiated. I was one of your number until I got an invitation to participate.

Artist trading cards are like hockey cards, or Pokemon cards. Apparently. The idea is to get a bunch of artist types together, everyone makes as many cards as there are supposed to be people, and have an evening of fun. The cards are suppose to be around 2.5 x 3.5 inches. And that is it! Any medium is acceptable.

In our group there were 58 people who registered to participate but there were a few no shows. We had to postpone the event a week because we had a bad storm and some people had other commitments but sent their cards. Which meant that there were a few cards left over. We were invited to trade our extra cards if we wanted to but some people abandoned theirs and so I picked up a few extras of my favorites.

We all were assigned numbers and laid out our cards at our assigned station. We then had about an hour to mingle and look at the other cards that people had made. Then we were told to go back to our cards and pick one then we would all move one station to the right. We then had 45 seconds to chose our card from that persons cards before moving on to the next station. Sometimes 45 seconds was not enough time and sometimes I was able to quickly grab one and then peek over Celine's shoulder (she was in front of me) to see which one I might like.

Some of the cards were beautiful. You could really tell the thought, attention, and time that went into them. Some were nice but not spectacular. And some were, in my mind, uninspiring. You will be able to tell the ones that I really liked because there is more than one.


Celine's teeth

this person did 58 collages on a watercolour

a local print maker David


a variety of photographs

A word here on the photographers. There were a few who printed one photograph. That was it. These were the easiest to chose from. There were a number of them who simply took a half a dozen pictures and printed multiple copies. Also easy. There were others who printed 58 different photos. Much more difficult and much more fun. One fellow printed a large format photo twice and chopped up one as his cards and used the other to lay it out on so that as people took their small piece, they could still see the "big picture".

and a few more

Harriet who love butterflies

some prints, some paintings, some drawings.

a found photo and ten very dirty little secrets that I probably never would have revealed if they were mine.

clay

One of my favorites

Sarah, in her insanity, WOVE all of hers. 58 remember!

lovely delicate drawings

Sue's made from old newspaper layout tape. I have some of this stuff and I love using it.

mine

Mine were silk fusion that I screen printed on, chopped up, sewed the edges, then did a photochemical transfer on the back. The theme of the evening for me was "gecko". I rate mine in the nice but not spectacular category. The ones that I felt were the most successful were the ones from which people had a hard time choosing. Having been there and having seen the possibilities, I have ideas for the future, should something like this ever cross my path again.

And people have been asking ....."OK, so now what will you do with them?" Some may get mounted and put on display, some may end up in my sketch book, and others will probably end up languishing in a drawer somewhere for an indeterminate amount of time before going gently to that great recycling bin in the sky.

Enough already

2011-01-27T19:19:00.000-04:00

Every year, about this time, I start to get a little cabin feverish. The big Christmas rush is over and there is no break until Easter.
I had to stop by a friends house the other day to drop off a DVD she lent me and I noticed that one of her kids (I am assuming) had dressed up her garden buddha before the snow came.

I feel as cold as he looks. And some may say that he is suppose to have a look of serenity on his face. I think that he is a little disgruntled.

And speaking of insanity, two weekends ago, I went to the local Saturday Farmers Market. On the way home I happened to notice some rather strange tracks on the sidewalk. Now I have been known to step outside in the winter in my Birk's to drop the garbage on the street for next morning pickup. Or pop out to get something out of the car. There has to be little to no snow, and it has to be a very short trip. Even then I end up with snow on my toes. Apparently the same rules do not apply to everyone!

I noticed the very distinctive tracks of Birkenstocks and followed them on the trek home for 4 blocks! They then veered off of my path and continued on. I might have followed them just to see how far they went, but it was cold and I just wanted to get home. I am still shaking my head.

Rugs

2011-01-26T06:00:00.001-04:00

Just before Christmas Break, the students learned to weave rag rugs. They turned out so nice that I decided to give rug weaving another go. I did a semester when I was at school focused on boundweave rugs. They are a weft faced cloth which means that the warp threads are completely covered by yarn that you have on your shuttle.
Here is where notes come in handy. It has been a number of years sonce I had woven a boundweave rug. My old school notes were in my office at school because I sometimes find them handy to refer to when a student has a question. My teacher insisted that we keep good notes. She checked through to make sure that all the handouts that she had given us were in the notebook, all the record sheets for everything that we had woven were properly filled out, and all of the things that we had discussed in class were written out. And legible! Our note books were part of our marks. As were things like "studio practice". Basically, did we clean up after ourselves. Oh, for the good old days!
In any case, I was a bit uncertain of how to go about getting the particular pattern that I wanted. Because my notes were at school, I looked through my text books, weaving magazines, and other weaving books. I tried google. I tried to just figure it out. No luck.
I finally gave up and went down to get my notes. And there was the answer that I was looking for. In pen on lined paper. The notes that my teacher insisted that we take. Oh, how we grumbled at the time about getting out notebooks ready for marking. But now, I say "Thank you Susan" as I have said thank you many many times because my notes were so good. Because she insisted that we keep a good not book. Because you never know when you will have to refer back to something. Because it might be 10 years since you last wove a boundweave rug.
Bill likes to throw down a rag to catch any drops of water that may fall on the floor while doing dishes. But it never got picked up. Drove me nuts. So here is the little rug that I wove to go in front of the kitchen sink. It is about 38 inches long and 14 inches wide. Just wide enough to stand on but not so wide that it will get in the way of people trying to get through the narrow space between the sink and the table.

I have another one on the loom, but blogger won't let me upload a photo of it. Maybe it is offended by WIP's. Maybe I'll try again later. Maybe I'll go weave now instead.

Sooooooo familiar

2011-01-25T14:00:00.000-04:00

This scene plays out so often in my life that it is getting a little sad.

New nephew!

2011-01-21T19:09:00.000-04:00

I have a new nephew! He was born on Monday. 7 lbs 11 oz, which is pretty respectable seeing as he arrived two weeks early! His name shall be James Ian. Nick names to follow. Maybe.
He is super cute, but you are going to have to take my word for it because the only photos of him that I have seen are on flickr and I can't grab them for some reason.
This is my first nephew and I am super excited to meet him!

In the mean time, I will leave you with another found picture of my first born.

All that I know was that it was raining. A radish harvest just took place. And that IS a lampshade on her head. Oh. And no alcohol was involved.

Random from the camera

2011-01-09T12:46:00.000-04:00

I have kids. Every now and then they ask if they can use the camera to take pictures of something that they feel needs preservation. I never know what I will find when I down load the pictures.

Here is a small sampling.


This would be garlic.

Liam and a mouse named Cheese

Strange strawberries and a strange boy.

a strange old lady

potato of course

He says he was cold. I think that he liked the pink.

Simon's grape sandwich

Happy New Year?

2011-01-01T18:05:00.000-04:00

Already? Where has the time gone?
Actually, I know exactly where it went. There has been a flurry of weaving and dyeing and selling, sadly mostly undocumented. There have been some minor health issues, which have decreased my productivity and my desire to put words out into the screen as the case may be. There has been life itself which, while I have been trying to do less, seems to conspire to make me feel like I am running on a tread mill with no end in sight. The Christmas break has been heavenly but sadly not anywhere near long enough.

Some good things have been happening here.
Mira created a wonderful snowman in the front of the house

He has some crazy eyes that she made out of wood knobs that she found somewhere and painted

Sadly some jerk knocked the head off. She learned a lesson about art in public places. I really don't understand those who take pleasure in destroying others work. She managed to salvage the eyeballs and will try and rebuild him.

And we had some snow the other day after many days of rain. I asked one of the kids were Bill was and they said out side shoveling. I didn't realize how he was dressed for the task until I went to ask him a question.

Real Canadian or Real Man or maybe both?

He said that he had to come in because his hands got cold.
I hope that it won't be so long until my next post, but until then, Happy New Year!

It is Done

2010-08-08T22:13:00.000-03:00

After 17 years, I'm finally an honest woman. More to follow later.

Cocoons

2010-07-29T10:50:00.000-03:00

For those of you who don't like talk of mayhem concerning bugs....look away. Nothing for you here folks. Move along.

For the rest of you, I purchased some silk cocoons a couple of months ago. I got a kilogram. I know it would be a lot, but I didn't realise that it would be about two grocery bags full! I now have a lot of cocoons to experiment with! I gave a few away to one of the graduating students that expressed an interest in them but still have plenty left.
Last month I led a silk scarf dyeing workshop for which I mixed the dyes ahead of time. I wasn't sure which colours people would like, and I knew that I had at least 9 people and I wanted to make sure that no one ran out. I mixed way too much dye. There was a lot left over.
So dyed some warps and wefts. Enough for 16 scarves. And still there was dye left over!
I dyed some soy silk and still there was dye left over!
So I searched around for something else to dye and found my cocoons! I dumped them straight in the bottles of dyes and added some of the dye fixative and shook. No pictures of this because my gloves were covered in dye by this time. The silk scarves need to sit for 5 days. I let my cocoons sit for 2 before realizing that they looked really dark. It was hard to distinguish the black from the green from the purple. The red was easy too pick out. I dried them out and they sat.
Then I did my residency in the very humid museum where I had my cocoons on display. Then I packed them up is a Ziploc bag and came home.
Bad idea as it turned out.
About a week later I was digging through my stuff and found my bag of cocoons. And they were MOLDY! ARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH! I brought them out side, washed them in the bag with the hose several times and decided that they must be dealt with right away. Grrrrrr.
Into the dye pot they went with some sythropol and baking soda. And they simmered for a while. And it smelled kind of gross.

Cocoons being rinse. they smell much better now.

But the good news was that all that boiling pulled a little of the dye out and I was able to distinguish the colours. Sort of.

They little pupa that did all the work. In the you tube videos I watched, the people giving the tours said that you could eat these guys. they were good and full of protein. I think I'll pass.

I guess that boiling them for a while wasn't quite long enough because I didn't managed to boil all of the sericin out of them. As a result, Mira, who helped with the stretching, and I managed to pull them into some pretty interesting shapes with interesting little lumps and bumps in them. I was amazed at how firm they still were and how had you had to pull them in order to stretch them out.

We pulled about 5 or 6 trays worth. She has already used some of hers in a small felt dress for a felted alien that she is making. Mine are still languishing waiting for me to put on my felting cap again. I am busy weaving and trying to breath in all this heat and humidity.

Blanket weaving 2010

2010-07-23T18:46:00.000-03:00

Last week I was fortunate to be able to conduct a workshop through EdVentures. EdVentures is a series of summer workshops that are run through tourism Fredericton. They are a half day to five days long and cover a huge variety of disciplines and interests. Go check it out, I'll be here when you get back.

I taught a five day blanket weaving workshop geared towards beginner weavers. No previous knowledge necessary. I had only three students so it was easy to give them all individual attention.

We went over the basic parts of a loom and a quick word on the difference between plain weave and twill, point twill and straight draw. We did up warp calculation sheets and then ran down to the store to buy yarn. We started making warps that afternoon and finished Tuesday. I know how much time designing takes so I did up about a dozen designs on the computer and had the students chose which ones they liked the best.

Joanne like the plaid. She chose colours that were her daughters favorite with the intention of giving her the blanket when she was finished. She was rethinking her generous offer by the time that she actually started weaving.

Lise came from Quebec. Her sister lives in town and had told her about the EdVentures program and weaving was something that she had always wanted to try. She chose what I called a progression design. It started with one colour and gradually blends into a second colour before shifting into a third. Lise chose a dark blue, light blue, and white as here three colours.

Angela chose a point twill with different colour stripes at each of the different points. It took her the longest to warp because she had so many colour changes.

I told my students on Monday that I was going to work them hard. It is possible to weave a blanket in a week and that I knew that they could do it but that it was going to be a lot of work. And they all managed to cut off by 3:00 on Friday. It was a little tighter than I would have liked but we still had an hour to go over sewing in ends, fringing and washing.

And here we all are with our blankets! Because there were only three students, I though that I would have enough time to weave on too. I chose a point twill pattern and used some brown yarns from my stash. I have enough two ply worsted wool to weave another 20 blankets so didn't want to buy any more. I also knew that if I didn't finish it would be easy for me to go back the next week and finish weaving it.

On Thursday afternoon, all of the people from the different workshops went around the school and talked about what they had done. Most of the other classes talked about the great music and conversations that they had been enjoying. I felt bad for my students because there was very little conversation and no music. We were all counting and didn't want to be distracted. First counting the warp colour changes, then counting the heddles while threading, and then counting treddles and/or colour changes while weaving. After everyone cut off, they all started laughing and talking and I felt much better. And everyone was pleased. It was a successful week!

Remember ......

2010-07-21T21:28:00.001-03:00

THIS?

This past weekend we went to the lake. While picking up provisions at the grocery store, it was impossible to miss that watermelon were on sale.
And seeing as we had a watermelon.......

And seeing as it was a hot day.....
And seeing as the desired wardrobe was bathing suits.....
And seeing as there was a large body of water nearby.....

I was the first

Liam quickly followed and did his best to look goofy. 12 year old boys are a strange thing.

Simon loved the helmet and wore it often for the remainder of the weekend.

The true ham in the family.

Here she is singing in to the "microphone"


I'm cute and I'm not afraid to use it!

Mira wanted nothing to do with the melon helmet. Instead she covered herself in mud.

Poor Bill. His head was too big to get into the melon helmet so he had to content himself with stripping paint off the porch. We were having a wee contest to see who could peel the biggest swath of paint off and I think that this monster will be a hard one to beat!

I feel like I should be posting

2010-07-06T12:55:00.001-03:00

And really I probably should. I have been doing things. All sorts of things. I just haven't felt much like writing about them. A lot of them should have been photographed, but that really didn't happen either.
In sort of the right order.......
I have been to Liam's year end review. He was in Cadets this year and he really enjoyed it.

We planted the garden. Mostly the same stuff as always with the addition of brussel sprouts. Or brussel stench as Mira calls them. There is a lot of weeding to be done, but that is also nothing new.

I attended the Craft College graduation cerimonies. Where Rachel, Celine, Katie, and Jessica all marched up in their caps and gowns and were presented with their Diplomas. Congradulations all! I am so proud of you!

I did a stint as an artist in residence. It was in a different location than last year and I didn't like it nearly as much. Thankfully the renovations that caused the move are going to be complete and we will be back in the regular spot next year.

I heard Nicole's choir sing at the retirement party for her school principal. They all performed really well and we were able to duck out before the speeches began. Sorry for the blurry photo but with other peoples kids I think blurry is better.

I taught a silk scarf dyeing workshop for my weaving group. We all had a great time but I didn't take any pictures. (slaps own hand)

UPDATE: I had forgotten that I had dyed a scarf myself at the workshop! I found it in it's hiding place and rinsed it out and here it is! Still wet. It was a quick pattern (simple knots) with different greens on each segment. I am rather pleased at how it turned out.

Before I finished work for the summer, I took advantage of the nice warping mill at the school and made up about 6 warps. With some of the dye left over from the workshop, I dyed some of them and some will wait until later. The dyes that we used are fibre reactive dyes that only last a very short time once they are mixed up.

And I also dyed some some soya silk sliver. It looks and feels like silk so we will see how it spins up.

One of the reasons that I have been neglegent about posting is that I have been suffering from sinus problems for more than a year. I have some good days and some bad days. On the bad days, I feel like my brain is full of fluff and I have sinus pressure. On the good days, I feel almost normal. I have tried two different courses of antibiotics, and various types of nose sprays as well as allergy medications and x-rays to see if there were any strange growths in there. Nope. I am now waiting to see an EMT. Here's hoping that I get the call soon.

I am weaving a series of 4 silk noil scarves right now. I am finding it hard to find the time to do much weaving because there is always so many other things that are clammoring to be done first. I am not selling anything anywhere this summer so my first big show is Labour Day weekend, and then nothing until November and December, so I guess that the weaving isn't really yelling all that loudly at this point.

2010-06-08T19:57:00.001-03:00

I have finished my yardage that I started a few months ago. It wasn't that complexity of the weave structure that held me back (easy huck lace) nor lack of materials (yards and yards of hand dyed silk noil), nor anything else except for the nasty lack of time. Laundry, dishes, floors, homework, and a pathetically small amount of gardening meant that my yardage warp (really only about 3 meters) sat on the loom for a couple of months. It didn't help that the loom is set up in a room just outside of children's bedrooms and so I can't very well beat away on the loom after settling them down for the night. If it didn't get done before bedtime, it didn't get done. Couple all of that with a sense of tiredness and general lack of well being and you have a sadly languishing warp.

But it is all better now and it is (even better) off the loom. This is yardage that is suppose to be for a short boxy jacket. It is a very simple construction and hopefully won't take as long to complete as the yardage itself did.

Who knew?

2010-06-07T19:46:00.001-03:00

So, there I was. In the local liquor store. It was my birthday the next day and I though that I would pick up a bit of libation. A gal is only the answer to the question of life the universe and everything once, RIGHT?

We picked up a nice bottle of white wine. There was also a bottle of bubbly that looked good. And a couple of beers for good measure. And off we head to the cash. Where I spy this......

Melon Head.
Did you SEE the picture? I couldn't resist!

Yes. That is a cat. In a melon hat. A rather pissed off cat in a watermelon hat.
Yes. There was a surprising hint of melon in the beer. Melon beer! Who knew? Every sip I took was a new discovery. Every time I was surprised by the melon.
I couldn't drink a lot of these in one sitting (too weird) but it was rather enjoyable.

Happy Birthday

2010-06-06T19:46:00.000-03:00

To ME! Here you see my birthday dinner. From the center and then clockwise starting at 12 o'clock, Chicken Korma, Turka Dal, Tomato raita, Potatoes, peas, and carrots with cumin, radish cacumber relish, tomato and cucumber salad, curry rice.
I have to say that I really LOVE Indian curry dinners.

Happy Mothers Day

2010-05-09T19:52:00.000-03:00

Happy Mothers Day to all of the Mothers out there. Especially the one we call Mamoo!

I had a pretty good day. I slept in. Had breakfast made for me. Was able to thread most of my next warp. Has a bath that was relatively uninterrupted (a miracle in itself!). And had a lovely supper.

Scandinavian Chicken Salad. I posted the recipe here. It was one of the first things that Bill made for me and it had been a family favorite ever since.

Mira also made me a cake. It was a Lightening Cake. So called because of the speed with which it can be whipped up. She had her friend over and the two of them were reading the recipe together. As in one would read one bunch of instructions and the other would read the next. Surprisingly enough, this resulted in a few mix ups and the cake wasn't constructed as quickly as advertised.

She then had fun with icing.

This was her first venture into cake decorating and the plan was to try and experiment with as many tips as there were. Colour mixing was also explored.

I likened it to a coral reef gone amuck. The cake was tasty, but I have to admit that the icing was a little over the top.

Fibre Arts Retreat!

2010-04-25T22:36:00.000-03:00

It seems that I have been rather neglegent in posting for the past month. I have been busy though.

One of the highlights of the month was the trip that my buddy S and I took to the Maritime Fibre Retreat in Nova Scotia. It was at Oak Island Resort and we had a blast!

On the trip down we made a couple of stops. The first was at London Wul (sic) outside of Moncton. Ohhhlala! Heidi's place is crammed with all sorts of goodies of the fibre variety. I picked up and carried around a bunch of yarns and fleece before coming back to reality and putting half of them back.

I love this wall of colour

Our next stop was Amherst to see Deanne Fitzpatrick's Rug Hooking Studio. I am afraid that I dropped the ball and didn't get any photos, but it was worth seeing. Colour Colour Everywhere!

When we made it to the hotel were the retreat was taking place, we quickly signed in, dropped off our bags in the room, and got straight to spinning. I hardly stopped all weekend. While I have been busy doing things, one of the things that I have not been doing (along with blogging) has been spinning. It was great to sit and spin and sip tea and chat.

S and I set up across from each other and got right to work. You can see the top part of Victoria in the photo above.
The first thing that I had to do was to ply my yarn that had been on the bobbins for a while. This is a blend of 80% merino, 10% nylon, and 10% cashmere that I bought at the spinning retreat in the fall and dyed myself. One skein is 275 yards, the other is 146 yards.

And then I started to spin my hand dyed merino. And I spun and I spun and I spun. 241 yards and 175 yards. I even managed to ply them before the end of the weekend!

And that was a feat because there was so much going on! Spinning, of course, but also weaving on a rigid heddle loom, quilting, knitting, needle felting, tatting, and lots of hooking! There was even a woman who was doing rope work on a bottle! Did I get a picture? No. I was busy spinning.

I met Janet of High Fibre Diet. It was actually a bit of a funny moment. She was chatting away with one of her neighbours and said something about her and her mother teaching weaving, and I said "Wait a minute! Are you High Fibre Diet?" She looked at me and said "yes" and I replied "one thread two thread!" Did I get a picture? No. I was busy spinning.

At one point, there was a gathering of people looking at someone's feet. Susan's maybe? In any case, she does all of her heels like this. Pretty fancy! She described how she did it and it made sense, but did I mark it down? No. I was busy spinning.

But I didn't spend the entire time spinning. The kids wanted me to "pick up" something so I went for a wee walk on the beach. I found shells and beach glass and seaweed. Guess what souveners I picked up for the kids?

The trip was a really good time and even better, really reasonably priced. I almost feel guilty saying that the whole thing (not including gas and all the stops along the way) was only $169. And that included the room for two nights, the fee associated with the retreat, two buffet breakfasts and one really kick-ass supper. The resort had a pool, sauna, and hot tub, all of which I made good use. The view was spectacular and the staff was great. The only one downside was that Saturday night there was an awards dinner in a conference room really close to our room. There were drunken hockey players and karaoke. Need I say more. Thankfully they finished at 1 and were all gone by about 1:20. But still.

All in all, it was a great time and I am looking forward to doing it again next year!

I love weaving

2010-03-20T11:19:00.000-03:00

I noticed this the other day when I was winding a skein to dye some weft. I thought that it expressed the way that I feel about yarns and fibres in general. Although it seems lately that I have been having a hard time getting things done. And an even harder time getting things documented. Couple that with kids that have pretty much taken over my computer and you have a serious lack of posting.
Spring is here though. About a month earlier than it normally is so I hope that means that I will soon be taking more pictures and feeling more like blogging.

Right now, my WIP are numreous. I have hand dyed merino/cashmere/nylon on the wheel. I am almost done spinning and can soon start plying. I just have to finish that last little bit of spinning. Hmmmm.

Also there are two pairs of socks on needles. One pair was the left over yarn form the pair that I knit for Liam and I thought that there might be enough to get most of a second pair, but alas, no. SO I just have to dig in my stash to find something that will go with the mostly dark blue yarn that I dyed a couple of years ago. They will not be prefect, but they will be warm.

Not much yarn left on the left eh? Thank fully they are at the same place right now so I can make them look like an eccentric pair. That's my plan and I'm sticking to it.

The other pair of socks is with Lornas Laces yarn that I won in a draw a few years ago. I had started a couple of pairs of lace socks but lace needs too much attention for me to knit successfully. These are plain jane socks that will be pretty and that is good enough for me for now.

I also have a warp on the loom. More about that later but here is a sneak peek.

And lastly I have felt vessles in various stages of compleation or experimentation.

Add to that a couple of application forms that I need to fill out and TAXES (ick) and general family life and I'm finding that I have little time or energy left for blogging.
Here's hoping that the spring will change all of that.

Call for Help

2010-03-07T19:36:00.000-04:00

My friend D of Hobbits, Home and Abroad is also a Phd student who is looking for information. It is a survey that is geared towards people who use a different computer at work and at home. I took the survey ( I am not generally a survey taker) and it was relatively painless and only about 20 minutes.
If this is you (different computer at work and home) and you have a few minutes to let D know about your computer use habbits, go ahead and helpout.

Here is the link to the survey.

Thanks.

lost and found

2010-03-02T18:51:00.000-04:00

I don't even remember when I started these silly things. If I wanted to search through my archives, I am sure that I could find them because I remember proudly stating that I was going to knit a pair of mittens in a time that could be measured in months, if not weeks, instead of the usual years.

Famous last words.

Oh. So I looked in the archives and it was worse than I thought. Here is my original entry about these mittens. Go look at the date. I'll wait for you.

Did you see the photo of the mittens? Did you see the state that they were in? Did you do the math and figure out how long they have been languishing in their project bag?

Well, they are finished now. I must have traded the needles for a smaller set (presumably to hold the stitches) because if you look at the thumbs, they are two different sizes. So are the mittens, really. Not my finest effort, but they are finally FINISHED!

The other knitting projects on the archived page are no longer around. The hat and socks are finished and are being worn. I'm wearing the hat and Liam is wearing the socks.

Alas, the shawl is no more. I made so many mistakes and I really didn't like the way that the colours were shifting and pooling. So I frogged it back and it is now a ball. I really like the pattern of the shawl so I think that I will someday knit the fool thing. I think that I have almost 3 years to reach my self-inflicted deadline. So at this point, my goal is achievable.

And what else is languishing on needles in various bags around the house? All that I can think of is two pairs of socks and a pair of mittens. I have at least four things that are in the queue to go on the loom, but that is a story for another day.

Close Ups

2010-02-25T21:22:00.000-04:00

As requested, here are a few close ups of a couple of my pots.

In the first few classes I threw two basic forms. One was belly forms that looked sort of like a honey pot in the Winnie the Pooh stories. Back a hundred years ago when I was a student, it was one of the forms that I enjoyed throwing. I made a number of mugs like this but over time they left my life in various ways. Some walked away in the hands of friends. Some were abused and eventually died. And a couple succumbed to temperature shock.
Here is the last one that I have. It was one of the ones that succumbed to temperature shock. There is a hairline fracture on one side so it has been holding toothbrushes for the last 10 or so years.

I had fun decorating around the handle. I seem to recall that we had a workshop with a fellow named John Glick who showed us some fun decoration techniques that he used. I really wish that I had taken more photos of some of my pottery from this time. Most of the pottery ended up in the hands of others, and none of it was documented. I was still in the delusional land of "I made it once, I can make it again". At the time I didn't understand how children change things.

Oh, the lessons we learn.

Now I know, just because you can do something doesn't mean that you will.

My forms this time around were not quite the same. And as I said, I had forgotten (or didn't take into account) the whole shrinkage thing. The little blue pot is 3 inches where the brown mug above is a respectable 4.25 inches. I was also in a bit of a rush and didn't really want to take the time to make handles. These cups would have had to be espresso cups anyway.

The second type of form that I concentrated on were bowls thrown off the hump.

The basic idea of this type of throwing is that you put a big chunk of clay on the wheel and center only the top of it. You then throw your bowl and cut it off the hump. The top part of the clay is centered again and the next bowl is thrown. This continues until the clay is all used up.

Here is one of my hump bowls.

I started to scratch words into my hump bowls. This one says "Truth". The glaze is one that doesn't show up the words at all. Chris, the teacher, said that he was very interested in using "safe" glazes. And by that he means glazes that don't run too much and muck up the kiln shelves. I understand this totally, having seen what runny glazes that were over-applied by inexperienced people can do to a kiln shelf.

This is the one glaze that actually shows the words. I really like it but it is not the glaze that I would like to have on all of my pots. I would like a celadon. Which is basically a clear glaze with a little colour that shows up words and/or throw marks really well.

This cup says "Oh Dear". The reason for this was that it was still a little bit wet when I was trimming and I gouged the foot a bit. So...."Oh Dear.....I goofed"

Finally!

2010-02-24T20:37:00.000-04:00

Here are the first of my glazed pots.

We had 5 glazes to chose from so I did some glaze tests to see how they flowed and how the engraving on the pots looked. There were a few that I liked but I am persuing other options because none of them showed up any lettering.

Here are the two bowls that I glazed last week. They seemed so big when I took them off of the wheel but now that they are fired and glazed, they seem a lot smaller. I know that there is some shrinkage in the kilns, but it seems like a lot to me. All my post seemed to be really small. I guess that I will have to try and throw some larger ones so that they can shrink down to a normal size instead of these tiny little things that I ended up with.

In any case, I should have a few more things to show sometime next week.

Pot progression

2010-02-09T13:30:00.039-04:00

Now now. Not that kind of pot!

This kind.....

These are a few of my trimmed pots. I was going for a stemless wine glass shape. I think that I succeeded in most cases. There were two that managed to dry out a bit to much to trim and they ended up in the waste bucket, but the other 20+ managed to survive. I still don't know what glazes we are going to have available. I hope that they are ones that shows the trimming lines that you can see on the two on the left.
Last week I spent the entire 3 hour class trimming. NOT my favorite part of the potting process, but I generally like the results. On reflection, the dislike of trimming probably comes from my lack of confidence. I feel that I might trim through the bottom of the pot, or that I will not trim enough off the bottom and leave it too thick and it may crack in the kiln.
Practice makes prefect and I seem to have very little time to practice.

presumed lost.....

2010-02-08T21:30:00.000-04:00

Last week, one of my colegues called me into her office and said that she had something for me. I magine my surprise when she handed me my long lost postcard! You can see it in it's humble begining here
There were quite a few things that happened to other postcards that not everyone agreed with and some people "fixed" a few things on the cards that passed through their hands. You can see the progression of the postcards that passed though me by clicking on the link "post cards" at the bottom of the post. There is one card whose progression through me is missing and I have to admit that it was so uninspiring to me that I forgot to take a picture of it.
Here is a detail of the front of mine.

And here is another detail of some fine stitching and a bit of bead work.

The one thing that seemed out of place to me was the small green object that was dangling from a red thread. Any one care to guess what it is suppose to be?

I was baffled until I looked at the back and saw this......

And actually, I am still a bit baffled. On something so rich with golds, why the funny felt lettuce? Maybe the guy on the front is suppose to be the laughing buddah who makes the lion go around and find the lettuce. The red string symbolizing the money.
Even though the lettuce is strung to the front, I like it better hanging over the back where it makes more sense when paired with the story. The green just, in my humble opinion, doesn't work with the front.

In any case, I am happy to finally have my postcard back. There is one, at least that was lost somewhere along the way and has not been seen since. Maybe it's hanging out with the handmade soap that I tried to send my sister a number of years ago. With Canada Post, you never know!

It Is Time

2010-01-30T20:27:00.000-04:00

The seed catelogue came in well before Christmas. So early in fact, that I thought that there must have been some sort of mistake. I guess that the seed people must have been lookig to cash in on some Christmas shoppers.
However, I was busy with all things Christmas (mostly of the making kind) and so it was set aside. And, I will admit, forgotten.
It resurfaced the other day and so Bill and I started to look through it. I chose the peas, he chose the tomatoes. We also ordered broad beans, green beans, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, and dill. Lettuce, beets and brussel sprouts round out the order. We have other seeds left over from last year and so will also have spinach, broccoli, onions, corriander, and basil. Mira might try her gourds again. Hopefully this year, we can keep them in check a little better. They really grew. A lot! Very quickly! And for a long distance. I was quite shocked to go back to the garden after a few weeks absence and find gourd vines having traveled more than 30 feet!
Over the last couple of weeks, we have been blessed with weather that was unseasonably warm. There were a few days when I was able to go about with my jacket unbuttoned and my hat and mitts in my pocket. Sunshine, no wind and temperatures just above freezing. Now we have been dropped back into the deep freeze with night time temperatures in the -18 to -24 C and the daytime highs being -15 C ish. Reality in my little corner of the world. The thought of green things growing in the warm summer sun is a little balm for my frosty toes and nose. Only 4 months till last frost!

New Loom

2010-01-28T10:37:00.000-04:00

Well, actually it is an old loom. It is not even new to me seeing as I have owned it for at least 14 years. What is new about it is the fact that it is set up in my house and I am able to weave on it!

It's a Fanny LeClerc was the first loom that I bought. When I bought it, it was dismantled in a junk pile of a house and I had to go back three times before I had all of the pieces. The place was way out in the middle of nowhere and at least 30 minutes away. We were not amused.

But once I managed to get all the pieces, I set it up in the spare room and started back on my weaving adventures. Then my boys were born and my "studio" became their bedroom. This loom was dismantled and shuffeled to the shed and eventually out to the garage.
Where it stayed.
For years.
A few years after the boys were born, Susan gave me the little Dorset and I was weaving again. I only thought of Fanny occasionally when I wanted to do something like overshot which requires you to switch back and forth between plainweave and twill. The Dorset is a direct tie up and not, in my mind at least, the type of loom to be weaving anything that requires a lot of foot dancing.
This past summer we got rid of the couch and a space in the living room opened up. Then we had the washing machine incident and the old washing machine ended up in my living room for a little while. When we finally move THAT out, I looked at the space left behind and thought "Hmmmm, that Fanny is just about the same size!" And just like that, Fanny was back in my life. It is tucked between a chair and the plant stand which makes it an ideal location because I have great lighting and a place to set my cup of tea and some weaving tools.

Currently on the loom is a set of four scarves to submit to a show that my weaving group is having in March. I tried to take a picture of the first scarf but the lighting, while great for weaving, is not that great for photographing silk. It just looked really wrong. So you will have to be content to know that the first scarf is orange (as you can see) and the others are all different colours. And, yet again, you will have to wait to see the results.

Getting down and dirty

2010-01-20T18:44:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, a new semester of school started, and along with it was a new session of evening classes. One of the classes is a throwing class. Throwing pots on a wheel that is. Not throwing things across the room. Although that may happen with pots from time to time. All accidentally of course.

As I mentioned this past summer, I had taken a year of pottery back in my student days. I really enjoyed playing in the mud, most days, and thought that it would be nice to do a little more. I also would like to make a few large bowls and the perfect mug. I looked for my prefect mug at all of the craft sales that I was at this past Christmas season and didn't find what I was looking for.

So now I have a goal.

Here is what I threw the first day of class. 9 muggy forms and 3 bowls of various sizes. Unfortunately, they ended up being a little to dry to put handles on by the time that class came around again so I h=now have a bunch of "vases" or "handle-less mugs".

Here is one of the 4 bowls that I threw last night. The circular batt that it is sitting on is about 12 inches in diameter to give you a rough idea of the size of the bowl.

And here are the other three bowls that I did last night. They make me very happy!

Next week, I get to trim these babies and try and throw my perfect mug form. And for those of you who have never done any pottery, when you throw a pot on a wheel, you usually leave some extra clay on the bottom and when it has dried a bit, you put the pot back on the wheel upside down and use a special tool to "trim" away any excess clay. That is how potters put a little rim on the bottom of pots. We call then feet.

As for the two things that didn't work out, well, you all know what a lump of sloppy clay looks like right? But I saved my clay and spread it out of a plaster bat to dry a bit. Next week I will get a wedging lesson. I tend to kneed my clay, which is a bad thing. Wedging is sort of like kneeding except that you are both softening the clay and removing any air that is present. Kneeding is an action that introduces air into the mass that you are working with and air pockets in clay are bad in so many levels. When you are throwing, they make your clay uneven on the wheel. Think unbalanced spin cycle in the washing machine and then translate that to wet clay. Not good. It can also cause your pot to blowup when being fired because the air pocket heats up and has no place to go, pressure goes up and a piece of your pot comes off. Also not good.
So I need to learn how to stop kneeding my clay and start wedging it.

Everyday is a new adventure.

Silver Spoon

2010-01-13T19:36:00.000-04:00

For Christmas, I got a gift card from mom for Chapters. I had to go to the mall on Thursday to return something and thought that I while I was there I would look to see if I could find something at Chapters that sounded appealing.
I looked at novels, craft books, the sales shelves and nothing really popped out at me.
And then I went to the cookbook section. There many books popped out but there was one that really grabbed my attention.
The Silver Spoon. I had heard a review of it on the CBC last year and it sounded pretty good. I believe that it had been compaired to the "joy of Cooking" except for Italian cooking. Bill had also been expressing an interest in doing some more ethnic cooking. So the Silver Spoon it was.
And it fits nicely on my cookbook shelf.

When faced with recipes from a different part of the world, you can expect to find some ingredients that you have never heard of before. But I really never expected to see Beef Cheeks as one of them. I never realized that they were a part of the cow that one ate.

And by beef cheeks, they mean the cheeks on the front part of the cow, not the back end. Apparently they are quite tough and stringy, no surprise with all of the chewing that a cow does. But when cooked correctly they are wonderfully flavourful. I don't know that I will ever actually try this recipe, but if ever presented with beef cheeks, I will know where to look to learn how to cook it.

First official FO

2010-01-06T07:36:00.005-04:00

Last year, my friend Amber came home from BC. She had moved out west a couple of years earlier and when her mother told her she was moving, Amber knew that it was time for a visit. Time also to sort through some of the things that she had stored at her mother's.

We had a pizza night and she brought along some of the things that she had decided that she didn't want to cart out west again and among the yarns was a skein of her slubby handspun in white and cotton candy pink. Or Barbie pink. Or Girly girl pink. It was such a shock to see such a colour among Amber's things. She is bright, vibrant colours. Bold, in your face. But pale pink?
It was so odd, and I knew that Nicole would LOVE it, that I grabbed it and intended to make a hat for her.

Well, time passes and other things get made and stuff gets piled on top of other things. And then suddenly it is Christmas time and you realize that people will be showing up at your house and maybe it is time to do a little cleaning. Excavating in some cases.

And I found Amber's Pink Yarn. And a hat was born. It was a really quick knit and I finished it on New Years Day. So it really was the first official Finished Object of 2010.

It is a simple hat. I took a guess and cast on 60 stitches and did the typical k2p1 around until, after trying it on the correct head many times, I decided that it was safe to decrease. Near the end of the skein, there was an unexplained colour change which made this cute little bulls eye. I had some yarn left and thought that it would be cute to give the hat a little..... thing? on the crown. She likes it so far but if she decides that her stem must go at some point before she out grows the hat, it will be simple enough to make it disappear.

Earthy new yarn

2010-01-05T09:16:00.000-04:00

Yet more new yarn. This one 100% merino that I added some silk sliver to as I spun. The silk is mostly white. I dyed it in the same pot as the yarn, but silk sliver is really hard to dye through. The silk doesn't want to open up and let the water in and the fiber on the outside of the sliver is so thirsty for dye that it soaks up all the dye in the area quickly and it doesn't have time to penetrate. So the inside of sliver dyed in the way that I did for this experiment, can have a white core. There are ways to overcome this. The one that I use most often when dyeing silk sliver is to heat the pot up before adding the vinegar. The heat helps the dye to penetrate. You can also paint the sliver, let it sit for an hour, wrap it in celophane and steam it. The benefit to this method is that you can manipulate the silk and pull the fibers apart so that the dye can penetrate.

New Yarn

2010-01-04T16:01:00.002-04:00

Over the Christmas holidays, I managed to get spinning again. It was wonderful! I hadn't really done any spinning since the Spinning retreat around Halloween. I started to spin this 80% merino, 20% silk that I dyed, thinking (haha) that I might have enough time to spin the skein and weave another handspun scarf for my sales table before Christmas.

It didn't happen. At least not before H1N1 hit in mid November. At that time, I just gave up doing anything extra. I was in bed for a week and tired for a month so what I had to sell was going to have to be what I had.

In any case, I finished the skein the other day. It is still not washed and set, but it is all plied and skeined off.

matching colours

2010-01-02T19:57:00.002-04:00

Sarah helped me with the Christmas Choice Craft Sale because my co-organizer was home with a preemie baby and was not available. However, I am very glad to report that Connor is doing fine these days.
When I found out that my co-organizer (coincidentally also named Sarah) would not be able to be there, I called in.....my other friend Sarah. Why do I feel like I'm in the remake of the Bob Newhart show?
In any case, Sarah was more than happy to keep me company, and refill the cookies and keep an eye on the mulled cider and do a thousand other things that needed doing while I was in at the sale and trying to flog my wares.
As payment I offered Sarah anything she wanted, such was my gratitude. Money, fast cars, drugs (well. Maybe Tylenol and Sucrets would be as far as that offer would go)
In any case, she just asked that I dye a skein of yarn to match a skein of silk that she bought off of me last year. No worries! I said....until I realized that the skein that I had dyed before was silk and was dyed with acid dyes and the skein that she wanted dyed to match was a silk bamboo blend and needed to be dyed with fibre reactive dyes because acid dyes will not dye bamboo.
Lesson time.... in my world, there are two basic types of dye. Acid dyes dye protein fiber, which is basically anything that comes off of an animal. Or out of in the case of silk.
Fiber reactive dyes are dyes that will work on cellulose fibers or anything that is plant based. Or, again, silk.
SO my task was to match a colour created with acid dyes with fiber reactive dyes. This is like comparing apples to oranges. There are two different types of dyes with two different types of base colours. Next to impossible. For most people. Thankfully, I had a secret weapon on my side. Her name.....is Harriet. She has been the studio head of the Surface Design department for many years and this woman knows colour. As in KNOWS COLOUR. She was in one day before Christmas and I begged he for a moment of her time. I think she was ironing some burnout velvet at the time and so had a moment to spare.
The conversation went something like this.
Me: Hi Harriet, can I use your brain for a moment?
Harriet: Sure.
Me: I need to match this colour (points to one colour in the multi coloured skein) It was dyed with acid dyes, but the skein that I have to dye has bamboo in it so needs to be dyed with FR dyes.
Harriet:Hmmm. Try 70% Navy, 20% Teal, and 10% Black.
Me: Thank you thank you thank you (accompanied with much bowing and scraping)

And here are the results. Top skein is the silk dyed with acid dyes and the colour that I was trying to match is blue in the center. Bottom skein is the silk bamboo skein that I dyed and rinsed until the cows came home.

I know that monitors present colours differently and all, but I am pretty impressed with Harriet's assessment of the colour and her knowledge of the fibre reactive dyes that we use at the school. I hope that one day, I will have half as much knowledge of colour and how to reproduce it.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-02T15:19:00.000-04:00

Doesn't that look lovely? And nasty? I'm sure that it is not the hardest puzzle going but thanks to mom and dad and Christine for doing most of it. Somehow, I wasn't particularly in a puzzle making mood this year.

One thing that we were in the mood for was food! We had a few people over for New Years Eve and Bill went all out with the food preparation! Starting in the upper left near the green CD case, mushrooms in puff pastry, chicken samosas both hot and not, coriander hot sauce, potatoes in garlic mayonnaise, sour dough olive bread, spinach and feta filo triangles, chicken tikka, black bean dip both hot and not, and corn chips for dipping. What is not seen is the flan that was going to be for desert. Seriously way too much food, but I didn't have to cook a single thing yesterday.
Sarah brought over a game that her brother bought her for Christmas called "Dirty Minds" if memory serves me correctly. It features rather risque clues to mundane things that you have to guess, IF you can get your mind out of the gutter. Some were easy, some rather hard. No pun intended. We laughed and laughed and Bill has said many times that he really like the game.

I have found that lately it has been getting increasingly hard to write blog posts. The lead up to the Christmas season was particularly brutal this year and I took a while to recover. I didn't feel like doing much of anything beyond the usual things that need to be done at home as well as what needed to be done at work. That left me with little to post about and no energy to try and be entertaining. Typical post from December would have probably gone something like.....

Work today, cleaned dye kitchen, again, fixed the Clement, vacuumed under looms, put new warp on for media class. Couldn't think about supper so left it up to Bill, again. Did laundry. Homework with kids. Fun fun. Read for a while, went to bed.

Not riveting reading.

But I have had a break from many of the usual routines and I am feeling a little refreshed. I hope that this will lead into a new surge of creativity. I started a new felt vessel last night so I think that the year has started off on the right foot. I also plied the yarn that I spun at the spinning retreat two months ago. I have had both Bill and Mira asking to be taught how to spin and so my excuse is that I needed to clear my bobbins. The real reason is that I needed to feel the sense of accomplishment that comes with finishing some of the UFO's that are sitting around. But more on that later.
Happy New Year everyone!

2009-12-30T09:46:00.003-04:00

The kids took may pictures of the tree, but I think that this one is my favorite. It is like one of the old style trees with the candles instead of lights. Either that, or an Ent who has had enough and is getting ready to leave.

The kids decorated the tree again this year and I have never heard such squabbles. Nobody was putting anything on in the right place, everybody was in the way, no one was choosing the right ornaments, or conversely, everyone wanted the same ornament to put on. I have put on the 2010 calender at the beginning of December, " Decorate the tree ALONE" And I just may stick to it.

It seemed to be the year of big presents. I was the giver of small presents but the aunts and uncles and grandparents were givers of big presents. Mamoo and grampy gave a big tent that the kids can use camping or at the lake in the summer, Uncle Sandy gave sleeping bags to all the kids, and Aunt Christine and Uncle Joe gave the kids a Telescope. A real on that Joe found second hand from a woman who's husband apparently said "you have too many telescopes so you have to get rid of a couple". Unfortunatly, the photographer was asleep behind the camera. either that or she gave up trying to get a good photo of the animals around the kill (aka: kids around the presents)

And here is the nasty puzzle that I dumped at the farm. Hmmm. Maybe I should have said "brought out" to the farm. I once had a fellow tell me, upon hearing that we liked to do puzzles at Christmas, that if I wanted, he could get me a 15,000 piece puzzle.
I told him thank you , but to take a long walk off a short pier. I did puzzles for pleasure , not for the challenge, and definitely not as a thing of torture. 15,000 pieces. Jeese!

Mom said that she didn't think that such a puzzle existed so I did what any one would do and googled something along the lines of "nasty large puzzles" and found a puzzle that was 24000 pieces. NO THANK YOU!

So mom, how has the puzzle progressed.

Vacation

2009-12-26T14:49:00.000-04:00

It is 9:23 and the kids are all still sleeping. There is no need to harass any one to get up, get dressed, have breakfast, make lunches, wash faces, brush hair......you get the picture.
We had a great day yesterday. Opening presents here and then off to my parents house to eat freshly made waffles (thanks Joe) and more presents.
There was great conversations and too much food. Mom and Christine worked on one of the two puzzles that Christine gave me last year. I did one last year, the one that I thought was the easier of the two and it was devilishly hard. So I thought that we would all do it this year. Bwahahaha!

NOTE: The next day......

So life happened around me and here we are , the next day. December 27th. I did a little cleaning and rearranging yesterday while the kids spent the day watching movies. Bill made flan in preparation for New Years and we discussed what else needed to be prepped ahead of time.

I am starting to think about my next felting project.

There is no need to haul kids out of bed again this morning!

Vacation is grand!

Happy Christmas

2009-12-25T10:37:00.002-04:00

Happy Christmas all!
I am posting from my new I-pod touch!
It is a lot of fun,but it takes a little more time than using a regular key board so I don't think that I will be posting with it too often. But it is a really neat new toy!
Thanks papa for the awesome present!

pounds and pounds

2009-11-29T18:06:00.004-04:00

Of meat?
A couple of weeks ago, Bill went to pick up our yearly allotment of beef. It is raised by a fellow that Bill's brother went to school with. It was a full side of beef that weighed in at about 400 pounds. It was all pre-cut and labeled into steaks, various types of roasts, stew beef, hamburger, and a couple of bags of brisket. I had never heard of brisket before and the first year that we purchased a side of beef (a quarter actually) I really had no idea what to do with it. Eventually, I decided to treat it like a roast and cook it slowly in the oven. WOW! It was the tastiest and most tender meat that we had eaten in a long time! Lots of fat and bone, it is true, but the flavour was amazing.
When you get a whole side of beef, it is really amazing how many T-bone steaks there are! I think that we are set for the next year. It is really wonderful to know that the meat that we are eating had a good life, lived out doors, and was slaughtered as humanely as possible near the place where it was raised.

Art Trek

2009-11-24T20:21:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago, Fredericton Arts Alliance had an Art Trek. The basic idea was that practicing artists and crafts people would open up their studios and the public would be able to drop in and have a look around and purchase you wares if they were interested.

My studio (a small corner carved out of a messy room) is NOT where I want to be inviting people so my friend Karen said that she would host any of our fiber group that was interested. Trish and I took her up on her offer.
Karen has a beautiful house over looking the St John River. She has sunny windows and a husband that dressed up and played doorman.
Trish is a felter of hats and garments. The garments take a lot of time and I think that she has much more fun with the hats so she had many hats. Many many different hats.
Here is my corner of the room. You can see a couple of Trish's scarves and her large vessel that are also made of felt.
Here is Trish working on her needle felted world ornament. She has family scattered all over and has given some of them a felted world. The idea is that each Christmas pins with the other family members names are placed on the world in the correct location.
Eric is taking a break from being the greeter with a quick look through the paper. Doesn't he look spiffy?
It was a fun weekend and I even made a couple of sales!

Hmmmm......

2009-11-15T09:34:00.004-04:00

So I guess that it has been a while. I have been super busy weaving, dyeing, and getting ready for shows. Not to mention the other things that fill up one's day when one has work and a family. Unfortunately, a lot of what I have been producing have not been among my favorite things. Don't get me wrong, they are fine, but they are not spectacular. No pictures of anything. But the list goes something like, 8 shawls, 5 (soon to be 6) scarves, and 20 odd skeins of yarn (dyed, not spun). My spinning wheel has been sitting rather silent lately except for one wonderful weekend.

The spinning retreat.
Halloween weekend, Fredericton hosted the 9th annual spinning retreat. It was in a hotel that is located in the heart of downtown Fredericton and not to far from the craft college. About 60 people attended from the Maritime Provinces and some people even came up from Maine.

There were about 8 informal mini workshops that were included in your registration fee, and three larger workshops that had a bit of a cost attached to them. I taught a dyeing one where the students all dyed 100g of merino roving. A good time was had by all. Did I get pictures? Nope.
But I did get some pictures of one of the mini ones. This is the crew who did needle felting.
I brought Victoria with me and I worked her hard that weekend. Every spare second that I wasn't eating (and eating well, I might add) I was spinning up some dreamy 50/50 silk/merino roving that I bought from the Yarn Source. I also picked up some mohair locks from the Black Lamb. As well as some bamboo/merino/alpaca from Legacy Lane. All together there were many more vendors (about 13 or 14) but with a limited budget and a lack of desire to deal with raw fleece, I limited my spending.

Check out the carpet in the ball room that we were in! You should seen all of the fluff and stuff that was left behind when we packed up our wheels and went.
It was great to spend a weekend with like minded people. Where talk of fibre content and ratios and favorite wheels were the norm and not the exception. There were people who had been spinning for years and others who had never spun before but wanted to learn. Some had very modern wheels, others that were showing their years, and one woman had a huge antique one that she had refurbished. Next year's retreat is in PEI. If anyone out there is interested, let me know and I'll let you know the detail when I know the details.

Edit: So after talking about what I bought, I forgot to show you! Silly me!

To the left, the white stuff is 80 merino, 10 cashmere, 10 nylon. At the low low price of $10 per pound! So I got 2 pounds. Wouldn't you? Next, a mix of (I believe) merino and bamboo. Then merino, bamboo, alpaca. The small green bag is merino and silk, and the small orange bag is merino locks. Yummy! And it is all displayed on one of the eight shawls that I wove in the past few weeks. This one is destined to go into the Crafts Council show "Snow".

There. That's better!

Children BEWARE!!!!

2009-10-26T21:32:00.003-03:00

From the comic Luann......

Has a certain kind of appeal, doesn't it?

Sorry for the long absence. I'll be back soon with some FO's! Including knitting. Life has just been crazy busy and couple that with a slow computer and you have some serious posting issues.

As they say in the TV business.....Please Stand By.....

Bitter Sweet

2009-10-04T07:34:00.000-03:00

Almost two years ago my friend Charlotte died of ovarian cancer. She left me her large loom. I had (and still have) no place to put it. Not even in storage.
Last May, her husband and I took down the loom and put it in storage in his house. At the time he told me that I could have her yarns. Two things prevented me from acting right away. Again, I had no place to put them, and it also seemed like desecrating a shrine. I asked if it would be alright to wait a few months. He said that that would be no problem.

Fast forward more than a year. Bill cleaned out some of the stuff in the back shed, we got rid of the couch and moved the chair that was stored in the shed to the living room. And I saw vacant space. That could be filled with yarn. I would have loved to put it in my studio, but unfortunately, that room, at this time, does not exist.

Last Wednesday, John and I bagged Charlotte's yarns. I has a day full of errands to run so I borrowed my dad's truck. We managed to fill the back of the truck with yarn. I had no idea that there was that much there.
And it all had to come into the house.

It made the first stop in the living room. This was, as I mentioned, on Wednesday. After the yarn was dropped off, supper needed to be made. Homework needed to be done. No time to sort yarn and no place to put it when it was sorted. I needed to make a trip up the hill to buy some plastic containers. I bought 5.

Silly me.
I didn't get back to the pile until Friday. Nicole wasn't feeling well, so I had to leave work early and pick her up. It turns out that she couldn't have felt too badly because she became upset when I told her that we were going home and not, as she wished, out to eat at a restaurant.

I fed her lunch and put her in front of a movie so that could start sorting. Things got much worse before they got better. I sorted all afternoon Friday. And more on Saturday. And I finished up the sorting on Sunday. I also had to make a couple of more trips to buy some more bins. The final bin count was 19.
6-60L bins of DK weight skeins of yarns, mostly from Briggs and Little, a local mill (and mostly in browns), 1 mohair, 1 linen, 1 with silk, rayon and the extra cotton that wouldn't fit in the cotton bin. 3 of fine wool, another of superfine wool.
One that I called "boucle and fun stuff". It will be interesting to open up that bin again. One that has a lot of Fleece Artist and Henry's Attic yarns. One that I called "Odds and Ends". Again, it will be interested in seeing whats in it.

One that is full of full bobbins.
Charlotte was a tapestry artist and used lots of colours and made a lot of her own bobbins from paper. This was a practice that she continued with her other weaving. There are some regular bobbins that have yarn on them too. A surprising amount actually. So between the paper and regular bobbins, there is a 45 L bin full. I have a few idea about what I can do with them.

I also found out that Charlotte had inherited the yarns of another weaver friend who had died a few years ago. Nel was from the Netherlands and was also very active in the weaving community. I have a lot of her handspun yarns too. All in natural animal colours. Maybe enough for a blanket.

There was also a couple of bags that I passed on to others. The bag of acrylics and other types of synthetic yarns that I knew I would never use went to the salvation army thrift store, and the bag of yarns that were perfectly fine but things that I, again, knew that I would never use, I brought to the school for the students to pick through. I might go through some of the bins again later so that I can give a bit more to the students.

I'm sure as I haul things out to use, I'll let you all know that it was from the "Charlotte Yarn Collection". I have already used a few bits and pieces in my latest shawls. The shawls are hanging off the back of my chair begging to be fringed and have their ends sewn in. I'll get a round to it. At some point.

So as you have now may have guessed, the sweet in the title is from having a whole new stash to play with. And the bitter comes from the fact that I really would much rather still have Charlotte around doing her magic with her yarns.

How many men does it take....

2009-09-19T04:00:00.005-03:00

...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

2009-09-17T07:25:00.000-03:00

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......

2009-09-16T07:16:00.000-03:00

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

2009-09-15T21:33:00.004-03:00

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?

2009-09-14T04:55:00.000-03:00

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?

2009-09-13T06:46:00.000-03:00

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

2009-09-12T08:47:00.000-03:00

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

2009-09-11T20:36:00.002-03:00

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

2009-09-07T08:12:00.000-03:00

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

2009-09-06T21:39:00.004-03:00

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.......

Up Date

2009-07-30T21:04:00.002-03:00

Yes I have been busy. No, I haven't been blogging. Or taking pictures. Or doing anything beside being busy.

I have worked at our little shop.

I have taught a morning workshop in paper weaving to 7-10 year old kids.

I have taught a weekend workshop in temari balls to 6 adults.

I did 6 hours of spinning and dyeing demonstration for the New Brunswick Crafts Council at their summer shop.

I spent a hot sunny day washing clothes and hanging them on the neighbours clothes line because my dryer broke.

I don't want to talk about it.

I've cooked and cleaned and tried to wrestle with some of the piles of things in my house.

I got a call that my grandmother lost her battle with cancer.

I have ignored the big garden and tried half heartedly to do something about my irises that are rotting because of all the wet and weeds.

I am scheduled to start my Fredericton Arts Alliance Artist in Residence week tomorrow so I have been getting ready for that.

I found out that I start back to work a week earlier than I thought. August 24 instead of August 31.

I feel like my summer hasn't happened and now I am looking at it being over in three weeks.

I am tired.

And in case you haven't noticed, I haven't felt very much like blogging.

I feel slightly over extended.

Having said all of that, I think that I am going to take a small break from blogging.

Maybe something will show up here before Sept 1, but more than likely not.

Thanks for all your love and support and I'll see you in September

Iris Garden

2009-07-22T06:27:00.000-03:00

I decided to try something a little different when I did my dye session a few weeks ago and put together colours that I normally wouldn't.

Here is the result of my experiment.
The singles.....
And the yarn. The colours are a bit washed out.
This is a little bit better. I am actually going to keep this one and find something to make out of it.

Iris Garden
138 yds
4 oz
my own hand dyed fleece
100% merino

One fish two fish....

2009-07-21T06:37:00.000-03:00

One, two, three, four, five,
Once I caught a fish alive;
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
Then I let him go again.
Why did yo let him go?
Because he bit my finger so!
Which finger did he bite?
This little finger on the right!

The fish are finally wired and hung! The are swimming on the way into the bathroom. One of the few previously empty wall spaces in the house.

Hot summer days (and nights)

2009-07-20T06:49:00.000-03:00

A few weeks ago, I had a dye session where I dyed about 2 pounds of fleece. I love days like that! Over the past few weeks, I have been spinning a lot of that fleece into yarn. Victoria has been given quite a workout! I love spinning on her, but I still prefer plying on the S10. The bobbins are bigger for one, and the bobbin lead drive feels better to me when plying.

This is "hot summer days". I think that maybe it was a wish and a prayer this summer that we would have some hot summer days. So far, the only really hot day that I remember was the one that I was pulling pots out of a 900 degree kiln. That wasn't quite what I had in mind.
I usually just ply the yarn on itself, but this time I thought that I might try something a little different. I had spun some black merino a while back and it was just sitting on its bobbin still. The original intention was to ply it into a black 2 ply for use in my hand spun scarves.
Instead it ended up with the hot summer days.
So I guess that it can be called "Hot Summer Days and Nights"

100% merino
Orange- my own dyed
Black -Commercially dyed
170 yards
6.3 oz

Bike Bugs

2009-07-19T10:19:00.003-03:00

The older kids biked to the farm yesterday. It was raining a bit, but they didn't seem to care. Which is a good thing this summer, because around here, if you don't want to get a little damp, most days you would end up huddled inside.
But I digress....
They all made it home at the appointed time and Mira comes in looking like this....

It seems along the way, they stopped and picked some cattail leaves/fronds/spikes/ whatever they are called, and stuck them in their helmets so that they would be like bike bugs. I had a really good laugh.

Mira's comment, spoken with great enthusiasm...."The cars all stopped for us! Every one!"

Small wonder!

Raku Pots

2009-07-11T19:45:00.007-03:00

When I was a full time student, I took first year clay. After I graduated from the textiles program, I went back and took second year clay. I could have gone back for third year but the student loans were adding up and I figured that it was probably time to find a job. Sigh.

I spent the first day that we were making pots focused on throwing. It was not quite like riding a bike. The first pot that I threw was beautiful. The second was alright. And the third ended up in the muck pile. Peter gave a throwing demonstration and along with the explanations I started to remember a bit of what I had learned about 17 years ago.
I managed to get some measure of control over the forms that I was throwing but by no means was I in complete control.

I had taken a night class in 2000 so I had thrown since my student days. It was good to get back to it. I just counted and I threw 17 bowls! Oh my!
One of the other things that I really enjoy doing is building boxes. I hand built some during my 2000 night class and was planning to make some more this time around. Peter showed us a couple of videos and one of them had a fellow that uses an extruder. After a quick look at the extruder forms that the school has, I decided to make some extruded boxes.

I made some little boxes and some bigger ones. There were also some end bits that I thought would make interesting as small vessels.
Here are two more boxes and a vessel of sorts.
Another box.
On Wednesday, our last day to build, Mira came by and made a cup. She came back on Friday to glaze it. Liam came with her and I gave him a bowl to glaze. They both turned out really well.
Yet another box.
This one is my favorite box.
One of the other things that I made years ago was a mold for fish. I built clay fish and a friend helped to make a plaster cast of them. I brought the mold in and after I had made some fish I offered the mold to anyone else that wanted to use it. By the end were were referring to the fish as "those damn fish". They were slightly awkward to place on the small bricks because the backs were slightly hollowed out but had a hanging flap of clay on the back that made them uneven.
More fish. I think that my two favorites are the two in the front.
There are a few more pots that are less successful that I didn't take pictures of. Now I have to find a place to put a bunch of these. And of course there are some of you that will be getting some when you visit.

Raku

2009-07-11T13:24:00.004-03:00

Yesterday was the last day of the class and as such, we had a lot of work to do. A lot of pots to glaze. A lot of pots to fire. A lot.
Here is the class photo. Peter, our teacher, is second from the left in the back. He is a great teacher. Very patient and willing to help. The students were Erica, Ken, Jose, Ralph, Sean, and myself.
Peter was also willing to pull out the big heavy pot that I wasn't wanting to risk dropping. By this time my arms were getting sore and a little shaky.
I used a different set of muscles from the ones that I normally do. Grabbing objects with long tongs and really really not wanting to drop them is more difficult that one would think.
You can see a bunch of pots sitting on the top of the kiln. This warms them up a bit so that there is less shock when they get put into the kiln.

And some times you have to bend and stoop. Keep in mind that yesterday was the hottest day of the summer so far and we had to put on protective clothing because the kiln is nearing 1000 degrees. It was really hot sweaty work.
We fired late into the night. Erica's husband came by with their two beautiful dogs.
When the sun goes down you can really see how hot the pots are when they come out of the kiln.
You can see the fire too as the paper that we put in the barrel ignites.
In this photo, you can also see Heather, who is a potter and LOVES to load and unload the kilns. I was more than willing to step aside and let her take a few turns.
And the smoke. I really smelt bad when I finally got home.
I was ready to fall down after the last firing and so I left at about 10. There was still some clean up to do and the last person left at about 11:30.
All in all it was an awesome week, but I have to admit that I am not all that keen to repeat the process. I loved building the pots and glazing them, and I really liked seeing what came out of the kiln, but the firing was a bit too physically demanding for my liking.

Next post...... the pots!

Dirty Potter

2009-07-09T19:19:00.008-03:00

I guess that I have been absent for most of the week. Sorry about that , but I have been playing in the mud. I have, for the last few days, become a dirty potter.

I have been taking part in an EdVentures workshop. As some of you may have read earlier, I am teaching a workshop in Temari Balls this summer as part of a workshop series . And since Monday, I have been taking a Raku Pottery Workshop. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were devoted to making things to fire. They were then bisqued so that we could glaze them and then glaze fire them in the raku kiln. Bisquing is basically cooking the pots so that some of the chemicals are driven off and the pot becomes hard enough to handle without fear of breaking.

So sorry for no photos of the actual making of the pots. I spent most of the time with my hands (and various other parts of me) covered in clay. Clay and camera don't mix, and ever time I thought of taking pictures, I would think "I'll take pictures as soon as I wash my hands". Unfortunately, washed hands were quickly followed by something else equally dirty. So, sorry. no pictures of any sort of production.

Here is the set up for out raku firing. Normally, pottery is fired to a bisque then glazed and fired to what ever temperature the clay body can stand before melting. This process takes a couple of days. In raku, the clay is bisqued, then glazed and fired quickly. In fact, it takes about 45 minutes from the time that the pots get put into the kiln until they are ready to be taken out. It is TOTALLY AWESOME!

Here is the set up that we have. We first put the kiln in place (which you can't see here) then put the metal garbage cans at the ready. The garbage cans have a layer of sawdust in the bottom to give a good surface for the pots to sit on once they come out of the kiln.
Here are the different glazes that we are using. There are 11 different ones. So many possibilities! Erica, one of my class mates, is contemplating the possibilities.

Here is the kiln. It is a gas fired kiln that, once warmed up, takes about 40 to 45 minutes to reach about 920 C. We gradually increase the temperature over the time by turning up the burner.
This is the first firing in the kiln. It is easy to load because the kiln is cold. After the initial firing, the kiln is hot (oh baby so HOT) and it is a little more challenging to load it.

Here you see me and Shaun getting ready to unload. We have in protective leather jackets and aprons. The heat is intense. By the end of the first unloading and reloading, my face was beet red and stayed that way for about 40 minutes. After that, I used a face shield. As I said to someone, I am NOT a "real man".
The caution tape is to keep the general public from wandering in and burning themselves or getting in the way.
The pots come out of the kiln and go into the sawdust bins. After a few pots get put in, some newspaper gets dropped in and because of the heat of the post starts to burn. This causes what is called reduction. The burning paper causes the oxygen in the garbage can to burn out and the oxygen molecules that are in the various glazes start to be leached out by the oxygen deprived environment and a shift in colour occurs.
The lids are put back on the bins after each pot is put in it to keep the oxygen low.
Here are a few of the test pieces that some of the students have done just after being put in the bin.

We had a lot of interesting observers. There were periods of waiting......and waiting.....and checking of the kiln......and then suddenly a flurry of activity.

After the kiln was unloaded, the small pieces of fire brick that each pot was sitting on had to be unloaded and then new fire brick put on the shelves and on each piece of brick, a new pot was placed. It was very challenging to load the kiln. it radiated heat and so each fire brick needs to be put in with the long tongs (relatively easy) and then a new pot needs to be gently placed on each piece of fire brick with the tongs (not so easy). The pots can not be too close to the edge, nor can they be touching and you really don't want the pots in any place that is in a "hot spot", which is where the flames lick along sides of the kiln and the pots and makes a localized area where the temperature is hotter. The problem with this is that the glazes have all been tweaked to melt at about the same temperature ( thank you Peter!) and hot spots will melt the glaze in that area sooner. Melted glaze is molten glass and molten glass runs. Which can create one hell of a mess.

After the pots have sat in the sawdust and newsprint bins for about 15 minutes, it is time to quench them. The tongs are again used to lift the pots from the bins and gently placed into vats of water.

After a few minutes the pots are then cool enough to handle and the black from the smoke is scrubbed off. And there you have it! Raku pots!

And by the end of the day, I was totally bagged. This was just about the first day that we have had all summer that actually felt like a summer day. The sun was shining and really really hot. When we weren't "on duty" ( we each took turns loading and unloading the kiln as well as being the one who watched the kiln to make sure that it didn't over fire and run glaze all over the place) we would duck back inside to glaze a few more pots or grab a drink of water.
After we fired the last kiln of the day, most of us went out for a beer. And I meant to take a picture but... I have to admit that once that tall frosty beer was set in front of me, thoughts of pictures flew away.

Tomorrow, Day two of firing and .... my pots.
But be warned, it will be late in the day or maybe not even until Saturday. Tomorrow, we will fire until we are done. No matter now late that may be.

Oh my.

Introducing......

2009-07-03T08:23:00.002-03:00

The new new washing machine. It's a Maytag. It was more expensive than the other new washing machine, but guess what! When I plugged it in, it worked!

Dad came and we loaded up the first new machine and the dryer, brought them back to the store and basically traded them in for a higher end machine. It was quick to hook up and when I pushed the power button, there was POWER! Can you imagine?

Thanks Mamoo and Grampie for all your help in this ridiculous song and dance. You two are the greatest!

And for those of you who wandered over here to see something soft and fluffy, here is 208 yards of soft merino goodness. My own hand dyed of course.

Canada Day, the 09 Edition

2009-07-01T19:43:00.005-03:00

Yesterday morning, while checking my e-mail, there was a knock on the door. It was delivery man holding a box.
A slight turning revels the name "Victoria" along with "Louet"
I've been wanting a traveling wheel for quite a while and lately the time was (monetarily) right. So Victoria was duly ordered and anxiously awaited.
She comes with her own carrying case that converts to a backpack.
Everything fits happily into the case and there is enough room to stuff fiber and a kniddy knoddy too.
The set up was really quick and (so I've been told ) the take down is equally as quick. It is a little bit different from my old S10. It has scotch tension (which will take a little getting used to) and the bobbins are quite a bit smaller, but it is easy to treadle and doesn't take up much space.
Unfortunately, the day was slightly overshadowed by laundry.

Monday, while doing a load of laundry, there was a loud CLUNKTHUNK, and things stopped happening. Ever hopeful, I stopped the machine and started it again. Maybe it would be just a badly unbalanced load. Unfortunately, the same loud noise was heard and it was equally as disturbing.
Being handy with a screw driver, I undid the bottom panel to see if anything came loose.
And boy oh boy! Something really came loose!
See the two flat parts on the gray thing? Those are part of the concrete ring that acts as a stabilizing device on the front loading washing machines. They are suppose to be level with the floor. They are so not.
I felt this warranted further investigation and so I took the top off. And this is what I found.
See the coiled spring? The hook on the bottom of it is suppose to be attached to the plastic casing that surrounds the drum. Do you see that beige cylinder that has the cord running through it? If you visually follow the cord down to the plastic liner, you will see that there is a little tear in the plastic where there is sort of a hump. That is where the spring is suppose to be. Not good.
Seeing as the wash was in the middle of a load of towels, and there was no quick fix for the machine, I loaded it in to the wagon and dragged it all to the nearest laundry mat, which, thankfully, is only about a ten minute walk.
I was talking to the world famous Mamoo later the next day and she said that she could come and pick me up and we could go washing machine shopping together. So off we went.
And bought a new washing machine and dryer.

Ain't it pretty? It was the floor model so it was a good price. Or so it seemed. Unfortunately when we got it in the house (which meant moving a hutch and book case) got it all plugged in and ready to go, pressed "Power" and......nothing. I downloaded a repair guide (seeing as there wasn't an owners manual) and looked and looked to see if there was something that we missed and ...nope. Calling it a night, we went to bed so as to be able to tackle the problem in the morning. Thankfully the obnoxious noisy neighbours were, for once, quiet.

Morning comes and after coffee, Bill decides to take the top off thinking that maybe there was a wire that was jiggled loose in transit. And lo and behold, there are a whole bunch of loose wires. In fact every wire that is suppose to go into the Central Control Unit which is the, let's call it, BRAINS OF THE MACHINE! And where was the Central Control Unit? Back in Mexico I guess. It certainly wasn't in my brand new washing machine.

Ohhhhhh. We are not amused.

What made the day even better was that one of my boys came down with the flu. And you with kids know that kids with flu mean , well, lets just call it laundry. I wasn't letting THAT sit around until tomorrow, or heaven knows when this whole mess get straightened up. Being Canada Day, everything is closed today. Except for the laundry mat. So guess where I spent a quiet hour today.

Oh oh oh! I almost forgot the icing! Yesterday, the phone company sent someone to fix the neighbours phone line. There was something wrong with the voltage between the house and the pole so the whole line needed to be replaced. Fine. We had been having sporadic problems over the past couple of weeks and I could live without the phone for an hour or so. The fellow came and checked our lines after he had done the "repair" and everything seemed fine.
Fast forward about 6 hours and suddenly the phones don't work. There is a hum. The neighbours phones are fine, so I use it to call the company and the earliest that they can get someone to come look at the line is Thursday. Holiday today, don't you know.

13 (or so) years ago, when the phone company was N.B. Tel, we had someone come and install a second line on a Sunday. Because there was always someone on call. Apparently Alliant, or Bell Alliant as they are now called, doesn't feel the same way about customer service.

Welcome to the new New World Economy. Where you pay top dollar for crappy service and a premium price for incomplete products.

Happy Canada Day!

Why I used to nap in the playpen

2009-06-29T07:27:00.003-03:00

No, really, I did. When my twins were little and I was suffering from chronic sleep deprivation I would climb in the old wood playpen and curl myself in the corner by the wall, cover myself in one of their small blankets and take cat naps while they played in the room. That way, I was there if they managed to get into trouble and need me for whatever reason ,but at the same time, they couldn't get me.
Naps were essential in those day. Nights were spent more awake than asleep until the boys started sleeping through the nights around 2 years old. Tired tired tired. Bone crushing exhaustion. Relentless. That is one of the things that I remember most from that time when my boys were small.
The other thing was dirt. Dirty dishes, dirty diapers, dirty laundry, dirty floors, dirt, dirt, dirt. I was so exhausted and things just kept getting ahead of me.
Eventually they started sleeping through the night, which meant that I could too, and I slowly, slowly started to conquer the piles.
People used to say, "remember the times when they are little, you'll miss them when they are bigger". I haven't yet hit that point.

Hurdie Gertie Ball?

2009-06-28T19:17:00.005-03:00

Today the Fiber Arts Network had a Gertie Ball workshop. And what might a Gertie Ball be?
It is a inflatable ball that you can felt around!

Trish was our host and workshop leader. She lives about 10 minutes outside of Fredericton. Here is her view. Quite stunning, eh? If you pardon the chair cushion and the other eager photo happy friend.
The first thing that we had to do was chose the size of our ball and blow them up. They came with a small plug and the ball was put plug down into a small bowl so that it wouldn't roll around.
We then put wool batts draped over the ball, a second layer was wrapped around the ball.
Here is Grim. he is Trish's dog. He is only a year and a half old and he is so well behaved! He hung around, checked all of us out, and once he found out that we were friends of mom's, he never said another word.
We put a third layer of wool around the ball and any embellishments that we would like.
Next came the pantyhose. The legs were cut off and the body was stretched over the fleece.
A second and a third pair were put on going in different directions so that all of the fleece was covered.
The wool and ball were the wet down and rubbed for about 5 minutes.
And then we dribbled our fleece covered balls on a solar pool cover for about 5 minutes. Talk about a muscle workout!
We then checked to see if our fleece had felted. Once it reached soft felt stage we were able to remove the pantyhose.....
And pull the plug and deflate our ball.
Were then had to start to felt by hand. This required rubbing and rolling.
Here are out finished felt. Some are hats and some are vessels.
And then we ate! It was a pot luck and everything was good!
What a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

Good idea gone way wrong

2009-06-26T08:04:00.000-03:00

I have been spinning for several years now. I have a Louet s10 wheel and the bobbins have an amazing capacity. Normally I spin up 2 full bobbins with 4 oz on each and then ply them onto a third bobbin. I can fit all 8 ounces on one bobbin. Just.
I was also introduced to the idea of plying form a center pull ball. The basic idea is that you make a center pull ball and then ply from both ends. I have had marvelous success . Most of the time.
Introducing "My Little Pony" the tangled edition. This is one of the standard colour ways that I dye. Some people think that it is too "hot", but enough like it to keep me dyeing it. I have to admit that it makes me happy in a strange little girl way.
I think that the problem is two fold. The first is that I normally let my singles rest on the bobbin. This is not a designed thing, just am indication of how busy I am. Generally, if we are not watching a movie, I am not spinning. Those damn "To Do" lists just keep on growing no matter how many things that you cross off. In any case, I have NEVER had such highly energized yarn to try and ply. You can easily see all of the kinks and curls.
Learning experience #1. Let your yarn REST before trying to ply from a center pull ball. Other singles are happily resting as per learning experience # 1.
The second problem stems from my ball winder. It sits, for the most part, on the edge of my trolley that my computer sits on. The trolley is next to my loom and also in front of Rosemary, Bay, and Lemon Grass. Plants don't you know. To water them I move the trolley. Which is next to my loom as I think that I have mentioned. And if I am not careful, the ball winder can get bumped by the loom. Sigh.
In any case, this led to a few strands of yarn that didn't quite stay in the ball and got caught up in the whole plying thing what with the kinky, curly yarn.

In any case. While watching Alvin and the Chipmunks (Nicole's choice) I started to ply this....ball. It quickly became a mess. I persisted, but eventually decided to mentally step away from the wheel so that I wouldn't just get the scissors and ....well....you know.

This morning, with a fresh mind, I took another try and after much picking and plying of a few feet at a time, I managed to get the whole thing untangled and plied.

Ta-da! I think that I am going to let it rest for a few days on the kniddy-noddy before washing it out.

Made With Love

2009-06-25T18:41:00.007-03:00

Welcome to "Made With Love". It is the name of the shop that I am in this summer. Some of you may remember that I was part of an Artist in Residency program the past couple of years. Along the same boardwalk are other shops that are filled with local craftspeople and artisans. This year I am in one of them with six other people. Several of my casemate mates were in the same spot last year and I was invited in by Erin, who was a student at the Craft College.

Welcome to "Made With Love".....
In no particular order.....

Chelsey, who is a self confessed bead-aholic. She makes all her own findings (which are the posts, clips, jump rings, ear wires etc.)
Then there is Yolande. She and her husband do twice yearly wood firings. They have built an anagama kiln on their property in the north of New Brunswick. They are doing a firing RIGHT NOW! and I can hardly wait to see the new pots that she brings in over the next couple of weeks! Most of what you see here are electric fired. The wood fired pottery is truly special.
Next up is me. Because I have such a diverse offering, it takes several photos. First are my hand-dyed yarns and origami cranes. You can also see a few of my Temari Balls on the tree. I am giving a workshop in temari this summer as part of the edventures workshop series.
I also make origami cards.
Then there are my silk scarves and hand woven, hand dyed scarves.

Hand dyed, hand spun, hand woven scarves. And silk velvet and silk satin scarves as well as my hand spun yarn.

Amy La Loon is another potter whose bowls look as if they will scurry away with your cereal or soup. On the top right, you can see her "corset tea pot". I can almost hear it singing "I'm a little tea pot.."

Ashley is a graduate of the fashion and textiles departments . Ashley is very dedicated to the environment and uses only organic cotton and fibers whose production are easy on the environment.
Erica's designs are all inspired by nature and she uses mostly sterling silver. I suppose that I should have done a few detail shots. Believe me when I say that they are beautiful!
And then there is Erin. Erin is also a graduate of the Textiles Department.
Her main products are hankies, including these with instructions,

And hand knit owls. I had to turn this one around because like befts, they all like to go to the left.

Thanks for stopping by. And if you are in the neighbourhood, please stop by in person!

Recycled silk

2009-06-24T07:56:00.000-03:00

I was fortunate enough to receive a bag of silk threads from a friend that dyes silk fabric to make hangings and pillows. She dyes yardage and strips the fabric into the correct size, then makes her product. They are truly beautiful.

And so are the threads that she felt she couldn't throw out.
It was slightly challenging to spin the thread balls but with a bit of pre-drafting I managed. I decided to ply my recycled silk with some black merino.

The resulting yarn is a lot of fun. The colour changes quite frequently and the black really ties all of the different colours together.

Detail.

Recycled silk threads
black merino
Skein 1- 84 yards
Skein 2- 77 yards

On the loom

2009-06-23T08:48:00.003-03:00

Fine wool scarves, in red this time. You can't tell from the photo, but the outside edges are a tad darker than the center. They are nice. The colour is beautiful and the colour changes are very subtle. But I have been avoiding the loom lately and I think it is because I am just not inspired by these scarves. Sigh. I think that I will just have to press on . Or maybe that should be "weave on".
We will see where I am by the weekend.

Commission

2009-06-22T08:03:00.003-03:00

I had a call from the man that I made the stole for last year and he was interested in having another commission done.
This year he wanted bookmarks to give as gifts to graduating students. This pattern was from the phrase "Jesus Remember Me".
He wanted 20 in all. Ten green and ten purple.

I was quite pleased with the way that they turned out. And thankfully, so was he.
I may make more using a different pattern. But later.

The Almond Brothers

2009-06-21T20:42:00.000-03:00

What? You think that I have the title wrong?

I beg to differ. These guys are definitely made of almonds.

Well a couple of them are made of Brazil nuts, but who is splitting hairs?

These are Mira's creations. Bill makes a breakfast cereal that contains whole nuts and Mira, looking at them, decided that they would make good carving material. Imagine my surprise when I open the freezer door and found a few little carved men. And there is Mira, in the back yard carving away.

And of course they needed somewhere to stand and so the chocolate stage was created.
Alas, they suffered a grievous accident and were eaten by giants. When speaking to the giants later, they declared the Almond Brothers delicious.

Smooth as.....

2009-06-11T08:43:00.002-03:00

kitten's wrist.

That is what my Father-in-Law says about something that is soft soft soft.

And seeing as this is merino, and seeing as it does remind me of the colour those beautiful smoky cats that some people have, Smooth as a Kitten's Wrist seemed like a good name for this colour way.
Although next time, I think that I will go for a little more variation. A few darker spots as well as a few lighter spots.

Here is the singles. At the top of the picture, you can just make out my high tech roving holder. One of those firm plastic gift bags. It sits conveniently on the floor beside me when I am spinning, holds a crap load of roving, there is nothing for the roving to get caught on, and when I am done spinning for the night, it fits on the treadle!

Final yarn. On green leaves in my front garden. Summer is almost here!

Content: merino
Source: my own dye pot
Yardage : 130
Weight: 4 oz

Zorbing

2009-06-10T09:43:00.004-03:00

We watched Bolt the other night. And as some of you may or may not know, there is a hamster, named Rhino, in one of those hamster balls that played a big part in the movie.
This led to a discussion of hamster balls and how fast a hamster could travel while in one. Having no idea, I googled "hamster ball" only to find that most of the top hits are for some video game. So I did the next best thing. YouTube. I think that I added "rodent" to the search mix and came up with several poor videos of hamsters in balls. But we answered our question. Those little guys can go surprisingly fast!
We kept on looking at various videos (it is so easy to get lost in YouTube land) and eventually we found Zorbing videos. Apparently it started in New Zealand.

Hamster ball for humans.

Who knew?

Seriously, click on the link.

There is nothing stranger than humans.

Oh My!

2009-06-06T18:28:00.002-03:00

Today is my birthday and what better way to celebrate than to talk about making cards.
OK. Supper is on the way and the Conde de Valedmar is already gone ( a little something that I picked up when I left behind the "mommy's night out", so maybe this is the second best way to celebrate a birthday. Or maybe not. I'll leave you to decide.

Let's talk about origami. Origami cards to be specific.

I start out with some funky paper. I recently discovered that there were some really wonderful scrap booking papers on the market. Some are two sided which makes for a really interesting card.
They are first cut to size. Then they are folded with the first few folds.
Because they are done en-mass here is a view of the first set of folds.
I then make the second set of folds and match the front's to the back's.

Then comes the gluing the fronts to the backs and the final pressing stage.
And of course, I just realized that the final product are down at the new shop that just opened for the summer, and I didn't take a picture.

I guess that you will just have to come back later.....

In the mean time, here is a little something that I found on my bedside table.

Isn't life interesting sometimes?