FIELD TRIP!

Monday was the last day of classes at the Craft College. So, Tuesday we all went on a field trip (cue "Magic School Bus" music). Our trip took us to Legacy Lane Fiber Mill, operated by one of our recent graduated, Alyson and her sister, Amy. Amy (in the black) is due with baby #1 next month! Good luck Amy!
Click on any picture to see it bigger.

The trip was a little longer than necessary due to the unfortunate circumstance of the navigator knitting. We finally made it to Sussex after enjoying the spectacular views of the back roads of New Brunswick. There, we met with Pippi and her Mom (who blessedly knew the way to the mill) and the caravan continued.
It was great to see Alyson again and see what kind of an operation she has.
The first machine was the picker. This loosens and separates the fibers.
Next came the de-hairer. This will separate any guard hairs and vegetable matter that was left after the washing process. Then it goes through a carder and roving or batts come out the other end.



The roving is stored in tall slender drums until enough is ready to prepare for spinning. The roving is then put through a machine which makes all of the roving the same size. The size of the yarn that the customer wants dictates the size of the roving.

Then the spinning happens. They have great control over the size of the yarn that they spin. Everything from fat bulky to gossamer weight.







After the spinning, comes the plying. They can also ply as many singles together as the customer wants.




And the last picture is the cone winder. They also have the option of making skeins. It all depends on what the customer wants. Right now they are specializing in processing other farmers fibers. But soon they will start processing their very own alpaca. They acquired a herd of alpaca in January and will soon begin their first shearing. But more about that tomorrow.

In The Pink

I just finished spinning my "riding the pony" roving. Sorry about the blurry photo. Someday I shall read the camera manual. I swear! As for the yarn, I am actually working hard on creating slubs so that I can weave slubby scarves like this one.
I'm loving weaving with the slubby hand spun! Dressing the loom and weaving the scarf yesterday took about three hours. I expect fringing to take about 20 minutes. I have learned that I can not mix anything with the hand spun yarn. The amount of stretch differs so greatly that even though I think that I have good tension, when I take it off the loom, ripples bulges appear. Very disheartening. In fact, the two mixed warp scarves that I posted a while back may be destined to be taken apart and re-woven. I'm not loving the seer-sucker look.

But that is a task for another day. Right now I am working on a couple of scarves that are a bit darker and commercially spun. The pink needs to have its twist set (which I shall do tomorrow) and the warp made up before I can put another hand spun scarf on.

When I am an old woman....

I shall wear hats!

Hats with feathers and fringes!

Hats with flowers and tassels!

Hats with fish and tentacles!

Tall hats that match hand spun, hand woven scarves!


When I am an old lady, I shall wear hats!

Happy Jackie Day?

I have to say that today at work ended up being very special. I arrived before everyone else, as usual. And I was tidying up the kitchen when Bronwyn (a second year student) came in and gave me a hug and said that she hoped that I had a great day. "So far so good" was my reply. Then she told me that she had won a scholarship for next years tuition! A little while later, I was reminded that it was our last day of class for the second years and they were wondering if I could have lunch with them. "Of course!"

At lunch time I went and picked up my lunch from the staff room fridge and went to the textile's studio class room to have our last day of class lunch. The little sneaks had planned a party for me and were calling it "Jackie Day"!!! I was sideswiped! They had cookies (deadly chocolate ones with mini peanut butter cups and caramilk squares inside!!) Chocolate cake. Cheese and crackers. Chips and salsa. I ate so much.

And then they gave me flowers and presents. Sandi had asked me yesterday what my favorite flowers were. We had been talking about gardens a few days before and though nothing of it when I replied "Irises" And then went on to describe the irises that I have that will bloom in about 5 or 6 weeks. Well, the florist had no irises (except the open ones on the counter) and so she picked me up tulips. They would be # 3, after peonies.
Aren't they pretty! They also had some other things like the BEST FRESH DATES ON THE PLANET! An assortment of bath relaxation products (including a compressed "instant" face cloth), Lotto tickets (no winners), A "queen for a day" bag, Chocolates that I am NOT sharing, And a new car. They had all heard of my car troubles and thought that a Jag convertible would be just the thing. I can only agree. There was also a card made by Pip, in which she sweetly thanked me and promised to be more tidy next year. I'm going to hold you to it!

So thanks to all of the Fiber Arts students ( and faculty) for making this a great year and a very special day. I'll be happy to see you all throughout the summer and next fall. Except for Sandi, who lives about an hour away and will not be returning. She was on sabbatical this year and is going to go back to her regularly scheduled life next year. I'm gonna miss you!

Happy Feet

Due to lack of camera, I am afraid that I am a bit tardy in thanking Cynthia for these beautiful socks. She was even kind enough to include a but of leftover yarn, should I need too darn them. Smart lady. These socks are getting the "most worn" award. And by that I mean that they are getting around a lot! I must admit that I didn't wear them on the day that it reached 28 C, but other than that... I LOVE them! Thanks so much Cynthia! It is hard to believe that cream of coconut could be turned into socks!
I have my next set of scarves all finished, but due to lack of sun, not photographed. I hate the washed out look that you get from indoor flash.
I have also almost finished my final project for the class that I am taking. Last class is on Friday and next week is my last week of work! I am looking forward to a bit of time off, but, as on of my friends put it, I am not looking forward to not having a paycheck. And because I have been out of the work force for more than two years, I need about 200 more hours than I have to qualify for E.I. We are not amused.
On the plus side is that there is actually some action happening in my flower garden! The snow is finally all gone and there are little green things shooting up everywhere! Some are things that need to be hastened away, but there are a lot of things that are supposed to be there. Lets hope for some warm sunny weather next week so that I can get to the weeds before they take over.

What Next?

After a crazy busy week of trying to get everything ready for the sale that I am at this weekend, I realize that yet again, the learning curve is steep. I know now to ask more questions before committing to a sale. I won't say that yesterday was a complete waste of time because I brought my spinning wheel and almost filled both bobbins, and I met a few new people, but sales wise..... not so good. In fact, the my only sales were to the lady in the next booth who does felting and she fell in love with a couple of skeins of yarn.

Last night was the opening at the Beaverbrook. I was in on Friday to help hang my piece and it looks great! I wish that I had a camera last night. I didn't know that so many people could fit in the Beaverbrook Gallery! The place was absolutely packed! Along with our show, there was also an opening for an artist, Miller Britain, who was big in the Canadian art scene in the 40's and 50's.

Friday morning, I attended a career fair in town for high school students. I was there with the Craft College, which is a part of the Community College network in New Brunswick. I was giving weaving demonstrations and letting people try their hand at weaving. I was really amazed at how differently males and females behaved when approaching the little table loom that I has set up. The guys had no hesitation. They listened to my 20 second tutorial on how to weave, grabbed the shuttle and got to it. The girls were much more hesitant to even try it, and when they did, it was as if they were afraid to do something wrong. There were a few exceptions with hesitant guys and enthusiastic girls, but on the whole, I found this very interesting. And rather unsettling. I wonder at the cause. Hormones? The boys taking up so much space that the girls feel that they need to take up less? Any suggestions?
I also found it interesting that most people did two passes with the shuttle and that was enough. A couple did a few more. And one fellow wove about two inches. I guess that he really liked it!
I have a bunch of homework to do. My last class is on Friday and I shudder to think of how many hours of work I have left on my head. I'll get a picture when it is finished.

list of dones (or crossed off to do's)

I have been busy lately. Much has been finished and somethings have sat untouched. Sadly my silk is in the latter category. But thanks to Sara I shall hopefully have a bit more luck with my spinning of it. She suggested that I spin from "the fold". Which, as far as I can tell, means that you fold your fiber over your finger spin "from the fold" It is apparently easier to draft. Sounds good to me.
1-I may have mentioned that I am taking a class. It is about ideas and concepts in fiber arts. It is great. However, there is this thing called homework that tends to take a bit of my time. This Friday is our last class and our final project is due. I have decided to make a needle felted bust of myself and stitch in the grey hairs that Mira so lovingly plucked out of my brush. If I run out of those, I know where to find a few more. And I know who to ask for the help of plucking them. In any case, I have been working on my little head and when I was almost complete, I decided that it was too white. I needed to dye it a bit. It turns out that I dyed it a bit too pink. Into the pot of colour remover and now I must wait for it to dry in order to add the eyes and finish felting it. I think that I am going to have a long night Thursday.
2-This weekend was a beautiful sunny warm weekend, so, not surprisingly, I spent most of it outside in the yard. Raking and bagging up 15 garbage bags of leaves that didn't get gathered last fall. Cleaning out the flower beds (where there are actually signs of life!) And discovering things that the kids had left outside before the first snow, or hauled out sometime during the winter. Some of that was bagged too.
3- 8 oz silk dyed
4- 3 scarves almost woven
5- warp for 2 scarves and their weft redyed (I didn't like the results from the first dyeing)
6- attended and opening for a show of the Fiber Arts Studio at the Craft College Gallery. Because I took a few classes, I was eligible to have a few pieces entered.
7- Finished all the supporting material for the Beaverbrook show.
There are also countless things at work and home that needs to be done, but don't bear mentioning. Except that I will say that I am almost finished inventory at work. Not for the faint of heart.
And I have a craft show this weekend. I hope that it is a profitable one.

What is left on the "to do" list?

I really don't want to think about it.

Sorry about that

But after getting three link laden spam comments (from the same commenter), I have decided to turn on the word verification.
In other news, the silk is in the same state it was the last time you looked. I have however almost finished shaping my final project piece for the class that I am taking. But more about that later.
I have also woven two of the three scarves on the loom. I hope to have the last one woven today and then all three finished by the middle of next week.
This afternoon we all have an opening. The Gallery at the school has a show of the work of the students in the fiber arts department. Should be a good time.
And I have good news (finally!) to report about the weather. SUN!!!! AND WARM TEMPS!!!! 15 to 21 C ( that would be in the 60's F) I am in heaven!

Pictures of Progress

Weaving-Warp going on the loom. It is now on and being woven.
Spinning-Hand spun slubby for a new scarf.
More spinning- My attempt to spin silk into silver. This is some cochineal dyed silk that was then "saddened" with iron. I almost exploded with excitement when the change took place. For those of you who have never dyed with cochineal before, it is a natural dye that is made up of dead bugs that you grind and boil. Not for the faint of heart. Nor for those that don't like "earthy" smells. The colours that you get are pinks, burgundy, and some purples, depending on what mordants you use. No mordant on silk with iron added gives you this lovely silver colour.
And here is progress of a different sort. Yup. Those are tulips. And that is snow. I took this picture yesterday and unfortunately the up dated photo would be just like the upper right hand corner. Because right now, it is snowing. Again.
Crap. I have been living under a rock today. Bill just came out and we are watching the news about the shootings in Virginia. This is starting to happen far to often. I feel so sorry for everyone involved.

Lambing Season

Over the past few weeks, lambs and sheep have been mysteriously appearing in the weaving studio. The last one that appeared was a ram. I suspect he is the father of them all.
There are 10 people who call the studio their home away from home and nobody is taking responsibility for the arrival of all of these sheep. There is much speculation, but no answers. I was asked if I was responsible and could only answer truthfully. "No", I said, "If it was me you would all be getting random animals that have been gifted to Nicole over the past three years" Nicole. My babe. Who has absolutely no interest in stuffed animals. Well, OK. Sometimes she does throw the odd one at her brothers, but I don't think that I would call that an interest. More like a projectile.

The sun is shining here, the snow is melting. Again. I'm going to try and get the kids to go out. Maybe we'll even wander over to the park to see how muddy they all can get.

One That Got Away

This is a bound weave rug that I wove in my second year at school. All those many years ago. I actually wove it as a wedding present for a very good friend of mine. The marriage didn't survive and I have since lost touch with her. I wonder if she still has it or if it was given away. It measured about 4.5 x 3 feet and was linen warp and wool weft. It was so beautiful that I wish that it was back in my possession.

Here is a detail.



Now back to my current pursuits.
On the socks- Both heels turned, one instep decreasing finished and smooth sailing on the foot.
Weaving- second hand spun and kid/silk blended warp with a bit better tension, but still a bit wonky.
Dyeing-Two warps dyed. One is 3 scarves in silk and the other is two wool scarves. Who ever dries first is the first to go on the loom. I have a show coming up in two weeks and I need a few more things for the table before then.
Spinning- Slubby fiber all spun, plied, and the twist set ready to be made into a warp and go on the loom. Now on the wheel, some silk that I dyed with cochineal and saddened with iron. It made the most delicious silvery grey. I am in Love! I am going to pair it with this
roving so that I can start on my first lace project. It is the Kiri shawl that quite a few people have made. I was going to make it out of a lace weight alpaca yarn, but lace fear took over and that project never got off the ground. Sue suggested that I make it in the sports weight yarn that the pattern calls for. Brilliant! But being one to put off lace, I decided to spin the yarn for it first. I seem to recall that the pattern calls for about 450 yards of yarn and I don't have anywhere near that in one colour of hand spun. So off to the wheel! Pictures to follow.

The Great Egg Hunt

I wish that I had a video of the egg hunt in my house yesterday. But then again, if you remember high school chemistry and all that talk about molecules frantically bouncing around, then you get the picture.
The kids had two egg hunts this year. One here first thing, and one at my Mom's house in the afternoon. Can you say "Sugar High"?
We were 13 at dinner last night again. I know that it is suppose to be a bad thing, but I think that the superstition arose quite a while ago when the death rate was much higher. As I recall, if you sat 13 at dinner, one of you was suppose to die within the next year. Thank heaven for modern medicine.
Along with my crew, there was mom and dad, My brother Von, his fiance Audrey, his daughter Jordyn. and Craig and his girlfriend Heather. Craig is a student at the university who helps Dad and Von at the farm.
Lots of food was eaten and lots of wine was drunk. All in all, it was a great time.

How long...

Before I resort to something like this? She does, after all have three younger sibblings. Click the image to see it larger.


Mira is twelve and, so far, uninterested in boys. At least that is the impression that she gives. She is interested in reading, making cool stuff, and has started to take an interest in cooking. I hope it stays that way for a little bit longer.

ENOUGH!

Sorry for yelling, but REALLY! I've HAD IT! I get up this morning to a flashing light on my phone. In this neck of the woods that means another message from the school. My kids go to two different schools and both leave messages from time to time with talk mail. One school's messages are short and few, and the other school's principal LOVES to talk. LOVES to leave lots of messages (at least 3 a week). And LOVES to make sure that you heard what she says so repeats everything. And.... Did you know if you press 6 the message will speed up? Thank you Sara for that life saving tidbit of info. Makes her sound like a Chipmunk. You remember Alvin, Simon, and Theodore?
But I digress.
Rolling my eyes, I listen to the message. Guess what? The kids are getting a five day weekend! School has been cancelled. Why? BECAUSE OF A SNOW STORM!!!!! SNOW STORM!!!!! Should I say it again? SNOW!!!! April 5th and school is cancelled because of snow. 20cm worth. About 8 inches. Thankfully it will be turning into rain around noon and no shoveling will be necessary. I hope.
Welcome to the Great White North. Snow Cone anyone?

Deja Vu

Two heels are complete. For the third and final time. I am going to try and turn the heels and start the foot at home this weekend. Using the right pattern. I really only want to knit the foot part once. So I'm going to pay attention. Just watch me!

Snow!

April 3rd, right? The first was a few days ago if I remember correctly. And I am looking out my front window at SNOW. At least one inch. Possibly two. I won't know until I step outside. Which I am putting off for as long as possible. But seeing as I work today and have to leave in an hour, it won't be long enough for the GD stuff to melt!
But on a good note, last night I finished my slubby yarn. It is all plied and doing the resting on the bobbin thing. I found that I had no problem getting slubby yarn without using wine. And in the plying part, I found out that some of my slubs may be a little too big. This slubby yarn is destined to be another woven scarf and there is a limit to the thickness of yarn that I can use. I'll be skeining it off tomorrow so we can see how it looks.
Until then, smell your flowers for me. Mine won't be coming up any time soon.

BIG learning Curve

Socks. Not a hard thing, RIGHT?
Well, I have been having quite a time with my little socks. And now I know why. The pattern has both a child's sock and an adult sock on it. So far so good. Except that they are on different pages of a paper which has been folded in three.I know that the picture is backwards, but I've tried to fix it and it doesn't want to up load properly. IN ANY CASE...... In the picture above , to the right is the general instructions, in the middle are adult socks, on the left are child socks. On the back middle section of the patten is a ruler which is very useful for measuring heel flaps. So I happily knit my heel flaps and every now and then consulted with the ruler on the back. Then came time to turn the heel and back to the pattern I go. But not the adult pattern. No! Not me! I happily flip it to the CHILD'S pattern. No wonder the bloody heel wouldn't turn! I kept on having stitches left over on one needle. So after consulting the "to make heel" section and realizing (or so I thought) that I had read the instructions wrong ( reading a 21 as 27) and had made the heel too many stitches, I took a deep breath, ripped them both back and reknit the heels. Now I find that I could have been in the home stretch if only I had been paying attention. Now we are back to ripping AGAIN and re-knitrting AGAIN. I will not make THAT mistake again. I hope. Some day I may learn.

And just to show you that I can do something right, here is some fleece that I dyed last week.

melting snow reveales

Mira and a friend went for a walk in the woods yesterday. Mira came home all excited.

"Guess what I found?" were the first words out of her mouth.

Only half joking, I reply "Not a dead animal, I hope."

"Ahhh. (pause) Sort of."

What she had found was a turtle shell. With part of the turtle still in it. Thankfully Sam's mom had a few plastic bags in the car and the turtle was quite tightly wrapped. What to do? After consulting with Whitefeather , and the solution of scraping and boiling , or burying was suggested, I decided that any one of those things would be Mira's job and could happen when the days are warmer and I can open my windows with out giving my plants frost bite. The shell, and the remains of the turtle are in the freezer. In a few more layers of plastic.

What is the oddest thing in YOUR freezer?

I love spring

Everything is melting. We are down to about a 4 foot snowbank in front of the house. In a couple of weeks, we will be down to grass. Brown grass from last year, but soon the little green shoots will show their heads. I looked out the window the other day and saw the heart in the snowbank. I think that my neighbour thought that I was a little bit cracked when I ran outside and started to take pictures of the snowbank.
I have to say that there is one thing that I don't really like about spring. The sand that gets tracked in daily. Here in the land of ice and snow our sidewalks get plowed, sanded, and salted after every snow storm. Storm after storm. Sand layer after sand layer. When all of the ice and snow melt, you are left with a lot of sand. Which gets tracked in to my front hall. I suppose that I could save it to put in the sand box for the babe.


And do you remember the pyrex episode ?


Well, I did it again. This time it was rice in a pot on the back burner and I meant to turn on the front burner. One burnt pot of rice later, I decided to do something permanent about my "little problem" You can see my solution above. F stands for FRONT. B stands for BACK. It has been a few weeks and this new system is working for me.

You know who you are....

And now, another poem by that most wonderful of poets, Shel Silverstein.


Hector the Collector

Hector the Collector
Collected bits of string
Collected dolls with broken heads
And rusty bells that would not ring.
Pieces out of picture puzzles,
Bent-up nails and ice-cream sticks,
Twists of wire, worn out tires,
Paper bags and broken bricks.
Old chipped vases, half shoelaces,
Gatlin' guns that wouldn't shoot,
Leaky boats that wouldn't float
And stopped up horns that wouldn't toot.
Butter knives that had no handles,
Copper keys that fit no locks,
Rings that were too small for fingers,
Dried up leaves and patched up socks.
Worn-out belts that had no buckles,
'lectric trains that had no tracks,
Airplane models, broken bottles,
Three legged chairs and cups with cracks.
Hector the collector
Loved these things with all his soul-
Loved them more than shining diamonds ,
Loved them more than glistening gold.
Hector called to all the people,
Come and share my treasure trunk!"
And all the silly sightless people
Came and looked....and called it junk.

Internet and Yarn

These are my "Skeins of Many Colours". You know the little bit that is left over when you ply? I just kept adding them all together on one bobbin and then spun a neutral grey to ply it with. I think that they are going to be a scarf. But from now on, I'm going to make a ball and ply from both ends of the ballto finish the skein. These are interesting, but there is a lot of yarn on there that could have been in with my skeins. And now I know how to accomplish that.
This is my drunken mermaids dream. It is the finest that I have ever spun. Except for that fat part in the middle that happened one night over a bottle of wine.

And we are having problems with our Internet connection. It keeps timing out and dropping off of the radar. I am having problems sending e-mails. Some go out, some don't. And to look at anything takes for ever. So I have been missing all of your blogs for the past few days. IF I was smart enough to have added you all to my links list, then it would not be an issue. But as it is, I seem to have little time on the computer at home. Too much to do and the kids are actually starting to use it to do research for school projects. Finally! I have never seen any one so reluctant to go near a computer as Mira. And all Liam ever wanted to do was play games. But both of them have been actively using it as a tool.

There is hope yet.

And the Winner is....

Not my hands. My hand piece was rejected from the show because, according to the curator, he has seen too many hands. Hands are overdone. Unfortunately for me, I'm not done with hands, so hopefully, at some other time, I will be able to get a show of my hands. I have them in many different shapes, media, and sizes.

On a good note, my silk shawl was accepted. I have to admit that it is very pretty. When I was weaving it, I kept saying "prettyprettypretty" I was really happy with the way that it turned out. Can I show it to you? Nope. My bad. I didn't take a picture of it while I had it. Photos are being taken of it so that it can go in the catalogue of the show. I can hardly believe it. My shawl! In the Beaverbrook Art Gallery! This is a BIG DEAL for me! I didn't think that I would ever show anything there. Let's here it for the Canadian Year of Craft!

Unfortunately, I am almost out of the silk that I have been using. I have enough for maybe one more set of scarves. The supplier of that particular silk has retired and so I need to get a new one. And all the other silk suppliers are much more expensive than the Banisters were. They dealt mostly in mill ends so they were able to keep their prices down. As a result of my increased cost of supplies, my scarves are about to take a price hike.
I wonder how my sales will be effected.

St Patricks day storm

This is what I saw when I checked the weather this morning.

Tonight
Cloudy. Snow at times heavy beginning early this evening. Snow mixed with ice pellets overnight. Snow and ice pellet amount 15 cm. Blowing snow. Wind northeast 30 km/h gusting to 50. Low minus 8.
Saturday
Ice pellets changing to freezing rain late in the morning then to rain at times heavy in the afternoon. Ice pellet amount 2 cm. Rainfall amount 10 to 20 mm. Fog patches developing in the afternoon. Wind east 30 km/h gusting to 50 becoming southeast 40 gusting to 60 late in the morning. High 9.

Sigh. Spring ain't sprung yet.

for those of you....

that like to show your outdoor flowers at this time of year, (you know who you are), we here in the snowy (but melting) north have flowers too. They are just indoors. This is one of my Christmas cacti that decided to bloom this year.


I also have the well know fuchsia colour one as well a very pale pink one. I love it when they bloom. Also blooming in my house is a cyclamen that someone gave me sometime last year. Apparently they are suppose to bloom, then everything is suppose to die back, at which point you lift the bulb and put it somewhere cool and bring it out again later. Most people just chuck them. Well, my little cyclamen can't read because there has been one or two blooms on the thing since last fall at least. Right now there are four.

And for those of you who were wondering about my sear sucker scarf done with my hand spun, here it is. You can see the ripply edge on the right side of the picture. Not a bad scarf, but not gallery work.
And this is a bad photo of my wall. With all my family's hands.
I hope this piece is chosen.
And today, Mira is home sick, so most of the running around that Nicole and I do on Thursdays is not getting done, so I am trying a bit of an experiment. I have been putting all of my odd bits of singles hand spun ( you know, the bit on the second bobbin that is always left over) onto one bobbin and today I am plying it with a purpley/grey singles that I spun out of a batt that I carded when I was desperate to spin something, but only had my hand dyed samples for my class before Christmas. So far it looks.... interesting. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Sock Progress

It is now after 4:00 and I have just finished my last bunch of slides for today. I can now understand how some of you can knit socks so quickly. All it takes is time and the willingness to use that time to knit socks. As you can see, I have made great progress on my second sock. And I have now scanned over 450 slides. But not all today. Well over 100 today though. I think that it has been a good days work.

BusyBusyBusy

I have been working overtime trying to get a few things ready for the faculty show. The deadline has been extended one day and everything was due first thing this morning. I'd show you some pictures, but they are at home. I am at work right now waiting for some slides to scan so that I can digitize and label them. There are a lot of slides to get through and each one takes about two minutes to scan. So I have a bit of down time occasionally when there is not too much information on the slide to record.

Enter....The Socks. I'm working on an i-mac with a built in camera.
I used to sit and twiddle my thumbs occasionally for about 30 seconds between slides and it became old pretty quickly. So I decided to bring my knitting in and this is the progress that I have made in 30 second intervals between more than 300 slides. For the first time, I am knitting both sock at the same time to avoid the dreaded Second Sock Syndrome. You can see the humble beginnings of sock #2 hanging off of the needles of it's larger sister. So far so good. I have about a gazillion more slides to get through so I may finish the pair before the end of the year, which here occurs sometime in May. I doubt that I will get all of the slides done though.

But getting back to the reason that I have been absent from here for so long.... I have a felted wall piece, a dyed silk shawl, and a hand spun scarf. I had originally wanted to make a series of scarves with the hand spun but the second one I had a few tension issues. I decided to pair my hand spun with some mohair/silk blend that I dyed to match, and the mohair has no stretch to it what so ever where as the hand spun could be stretched about twice it's length. Some yarns just stretch more than others (as all of you knitters and weavers know) But when they are on a loom together, all of the yarns have to be under tension. I tried to compensate when I wound on and tied on, but apparently not enough. The finished scarf looks sort of a little like seersucker. Not what I was going for. So, to make a long story short, I have to do a bit more experimentation. I didn't feel that that scarf was something that I could show as my "best work", beautiful though it was.
I have also have a cold that has been keeping me awake at nights even though I am dog tired when I go to bed. Maybe I should just get up and blog!

Thanks for stopping by and I promise that I won't wait so long to wright again.

Tales of a drunken spinner

This is my mermaid dreams merino roving. I was going for fine and I think I have achieved maximum fineness. For me anyway. I didn't have much time to spin last week and so when the weekend presented itself, (wahoo!) I finished up the first bobbin and got started on the second.

This is where the 'drunken' part comes in. Bill decided to watch a couple of movies and open a bottle of wine. I decided to join him. Along with my spinning wheel. I propped my self up on the futon in our "home theatre" and there, with the wheel and the afore mentioned wine, we watched Indian Summer and The Notebook . We have seen these movies many times before and love them both. While watching a movie I've seen before, I can do things with my hands that don't require my full attention. I'm sure that you all know what I mean. I have progressed in my spinning to this point and so though that it would be fine to spin and watch. Multi-tasking is a thing that I do with moderate success. And to be honest with you, I think that I would have been OK if the wine hadn't have been involved. Or maybe the beer before supper. One of them anyway. Because when I woke up in the morning my first thought was "I wonder what my spinning looks like" After the movie, I was surprised to find out that it was almost midnight and well past my bedtime and quickly took myself off to bed, not giving a second thought to the fleece that I had massacred.

You can tell the end of the movie was holding my attention much more than the fleece (beautiful though she is) by the (ahem) slight unevenness of my bobbin. And those over spun parts. And the slightly thicker spots.

But on the bright side, I had been wondering how to spin unevenly like my first few skeins. And now I know. Just add wine.

Eye Candy

Hot off the loom. My first skeins of hand dyed, hand spun yarn. Now we can add handwoven to the mix. I'm loving the spinning. And weaving with this stuff is wonderful! I sett it at 8EPI sleyed in a 6 reed because of some slubs. The weft is a wool/silk blend that just disappears and lets the beauty of the yarn come through.
Next on the loom is a silk shawl. Warp dyed by me of course. As I was winding it on, I just kept saying "So Pretty! So Pretty!" I am pleased with it so far. It is all threaded and tied on. I just have to put in my warp spreader and header and I can start weaving. I hope to have it off the loom in a couple of days. It feels good to be weaving again. I had to take a bit of a break after the Christmas rush was over. And January and February are usually a bit hard for me. I just want to hibernate until spring is near. We had a couple of really nice days here and I am feeling more energetic than I have in a while. Come on spring and hurry up!

Saturday Chore

This is the view this morning outside my front door. Maybe later, when the coffee is finished and I'm feeling a little more energetic, I'll venture out and give you a view of what faces us in our drive way. My back aches just thinking about it. In case you haven't guessed, I have a camera for the weekend. I'll be running around snapping all sorts of things that I have been up to lately. Because I have been doing. Including weaving my first wheel spun skeins into a scarf! I am also working on a couple of things for a faculty show at the school. It is a curated exhibition, so I have no idea if what I submit will be chosen, but it won't be chosen if I don't submit anything. This year is "The Year Of Craft" and in honor of that, The Beaverbrook Art Gallery in town here is going to have an exhibition of the Craft College Faculty work. You may have heard of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery because it has been in the news lately.There is a court battle going on right now about the ownership of over 100 paintings worth millions of dollars. To make a long story short, the board of directors says that the paintings were donated to the province of New Brunswick by the late Lord Beaverbrook, and the current Lord Beaverbrook (the late LB's grandson) says that they have only been on loan and he wants them back so that he can sell them to raise some money to pay for repairs to his summer home. There is a lot more to it than that, but there is the story in a nut shell. You can guess who's side I'm on.

And do you remember The Pink Thing? We have found another way to wear it! It's like a fuzzy pink evening gown. If only they made one in my size!

What's for supper?

Me-Stew

I have nothing to put in my stew, you see,
Not a bone or a bean or a black-eyed pea,
So I'll just climb in the pot to see
If I can make stew out of me.
I'll put in some pepper and salt and I'll sit
In the bubbling water-I won't scream a bit.
I'll sing while I simmer,I'll smile while I'm stewing,
I'll taste myself often to see how I'm doing.
I'll stir myself round with this big wooden spoon
And serve myself up at a quarter to noon.
So bring out your stew bowls,
You gobblers and snackers.
Farewell-and I hope you enjoy me with crackers!

Courtesy of Shel Silverstein in Where The Sidewalk Ends.

This poem has great significance to me because this is just about how I feel right now. Like I've been boiled and served up. I just spent 2 hours mulling over the cook book selection in Chapters. Who knew that there were so many choices? I had a gift certificate to spend and Bill and I (it was a gift to both of us) decided that a cook book would be a good thing. I could have bought a book about spinning. Applaud my restraint. No wonder I rarely venture to the mall

Sign of spring

I just checked the weather page and for the first time in months, there is a UV index. I'm sure that this is no big deal to all you people in warm climates, but up here it is a cause to celebrate! Until I remember that when I was a kid there was no such thing as a UV index and it took all day at the beach to get a sun burn.

Melanie, if you check my profile, and click on the e-mail icon, you can e-mail me directly and I can sent you the info about our spinning group. Hope to hear from you.

I'm a leftie and never knew it!

Tonight was my spinning group meeting and while we were all there spinning, chatting, and what-not, one of the ladies asked if I was left handed. "No" was my reply, "Are you?" She was a right handed person too. As was everyone eles there. But I, apparently, was spinning left handed. ? I had actually tried to spin with the other (right) hand a few weeks ago when I was giving the wheel quite a work out and had a bit of cramping in my left hand and I just couldn't do it. How weird is that? My first though was to wonder if this was some sort of body memory from a past life. In my universe, almost anything is possible.

So now I'm wondering if any of you right handed people spin with your left hand? Or I suppose that if you are a leftie, do you spin with your right? Enquireing minds want to know!

Edit: When I say spin leftie, what I mean is that my left hand is closest to the wheel while my right is holding the bulk of the fiber.

Disappointment

Thanks for all your well wishes. Thankfully, we were not terribly hard hit by the flu. Not like the Sidney Fly from about 7 or 8 years ago. THAT was a bad flu. Bill was in bed for two weeks. He missed Christmas entirely. I was down for a week and brought the kids out to my moms house so that I could get a bit of rest. That was a BAD flu. We are almost all better now. Except for Nicole. She seems to go from being a bit better to feeling a bit worse. Maybe it's because the house is a little cool and she has an aversion to clothes. Her motto is "Naked is better when you are 3". Personally, I just keep putting on more sweaters these days. But it seems that we are coming out of the deep freeze now. Tomorrow is suppose to be hovering around freezing. You know that it has been cold when you look at the weather page and say"-10 this morning. That's not too bad."

My big disappointment came on Sunday. Sunday was actually a nice day. Little wind, sunny, just around freezing. I was feeling better and decided to go for a walk to gather up a few things for a green Thai curry that had been hovering in my mind for a few days. I walked up to the local independent Chinese grocery store (the Friendship Store) to pick up some coconut cream for the dish. Unfortunately they were closed on Sundays. Who knew? So I hiked down to the local independent grocery/meat store (Victory) to pick up a few other things to go into the dish and decided that I would give the Superstore a try for coconut cream. After searching the isles, I finally had to ask at the service desk if they had such a beast as coconut cream. " Yes" was the answer. I was told where to find it and find it I did. but it said "cream of
coconut" "Same diff" thinks I. Whoa. Was I wrong. Apparently the sh*t that they sell as "cream of coconut" is some foul concoction for making pina coladas. The first ingredient was sugar. A sad fact that I didn't find out until I opened the $4 can and saw the clear,thick liquid surrounding the mass of white chunks. In the end, my savoury, spicy curry dish was cloyingly sweet. So sweet, in fact, that Liam (aka Snack Snack Sugar Lips) said that it was too sweet. Lesson learned. I never though that I would be compelled to wash a curry dish, but I did. I put the mess in a
strainer and rinsed it. Yesterday on the way home from work, stopped at the local independent health food store (Aura), picked up some REAL coconut milk and tried it
again. The dish was still a bit sweeter than normal, but much better. And I am having the leftovers for lunch. Speaking of which, I'm hungry.

Happy Hump Day

Flu.

Ugh. So it has now hit everyone in the house except for Bill. It is also strange in how it effects everyone differently. It hit poor Simon the hardest. He was down for three days. He has just reported that he feel better.

Gotta go though. Small girl wants a book read. I'm hoping it is not one that I have memorized.

Why did I want snow?

Well, today was a snow day for myself and the kids. Bill had to go to
work for the afternoon. Wonders of wonders, the powers that be actually
cancelled university classes for the morning. Thank heavens. That meant
that Bill could help shovel before he had to go to work. We had snow
last night, followed by some rain and then we are being plunged back
into the deep freeze by late this afternoon. So there was no waiting
for later. It was hard to shovel the wet snow, but it would have been
impossible to shovel the solid frozen mass that it would all become.
Kora, from upstairs, came out and did her part too. It is so nice to
have neighbours who will help with the shoveling chores. We have had
several who wouldn't even shovel the front steps. Now I am slightly
sore and tired.
So I took one of those online tests. This one was
pointed out by Judy

Take the Quiz here!

I always liked Elinor. Although I don't think that I could live up to her example.

I hope to get some spinning done this evening. I've been a good girl and deserve a treat.

FYI

I thought that this was common knowledge. Why? I have no idea. Maybe because I have know about this strange reaction for years. My sister and I used to do this all the time when we were kids. Why? Again, no idea. Some things kids just DO. I feel sorry for a lot of kids these days. Some are so schedulized and watched and kept near that they have no time to explore and experiment like we did as kids. You know who you are. You are the ones who wouldn't want your kids to do what you did when you were a kid. I some days have to take a deep breath and let my kids go when we are at my parents house. They live on a farm and there are all sorts of potential dangers. But there are all sorts of learning opportunities too. We ran wild from June to September and I survived. The things that I have to worry about out there are inanimate and not living breathing beings. Some people are scary. To all of you scary people, I say "GO AWAY".
But enough of that. The funny reaction that I mentioned earlier was the simple fact that you can clean pennies (and any copper) of corrosion with ketchup.
It is science fair project time and Mira finally decided what her project was going to be. She had made a battery with zinc washers, pennies, lemon juice, and paper towel a couple of years ago with her papa and decided that this was what she would do for her project. Bill decided to bump up the demo (and at the same time make a piece of equipment that he may be able to use in his first year lab as a demo) and make a battery cell using copper plates and zinc flashing all soddered together in a battery type cell structure (in reality, a pill case). I was helping to clean the copper and zinc plates and Bill wanted me to sand all of the copper plates to clean them. "Why don't I just use ketchup?" I asked. Well, I'm not going to get into the discussion that followed, but let us say that the sceptic was soon converted. Converted to the point that he told a few people at work today about the wonders of ketchup on copper as a cleaning agent and they were all amazed! Who knew? Just one of those useless bits of childhood information that actually turned out to be useful.
Don't believe me? Just dump some ketchup on some dirty, scuzzy pennies. It only takes a minute and they look shiny and new. Did you know this? Or are we New Brunswick farm girls just weird?
And you though that ketchup was just for fries!

happy V-day

Happy Valentines Day all! I hope that it is a good one.
Today is a working day for me, so when I polled the kids last night at supper as to what they wanted to eat tonight for supper, I sadly had to shoot down Pizza and Lasagna. There were a few other dish ideas tossed out on the table, but the clear majority turned out to be pesto. And salad. That is for me. I feel that I need to chew on some crunchy green stuff to combat all of the cookies that I ate on Monday. This week is Teacher Appreciation week at the Boys elementary school and I had volunteered to do something or it. Bake cookies was the easiest thing, but it turned out not to be the wisest. Butterscotch chips and I get along too well.
I had recently been a part of a recipe swap hosted by Amanda and there are some tasty dishes there, but a lot of them take more prep time than I have between getting home from work and having supper on the table before the kids "die from starvation". But on the good side, tomorrow looks like it is going to be a snow day and I will have a bit more time to cook. 15 -20 cm of snow and then some rain in the morning. Rain! Can you believe it? After the deep freeze that we have been in all this time, it is going to rain. Global warming for you. The clouds must be able to retain a lot more heat than they used to.

Note to Self.....

When Pyrex says " from stove top to oven" the don't really mean it.

Yesterday was one of those rare days when Bill had to be downtown at lunch. After he did his business, he stopped at Victory and picked up a few things including Chicken breasts. He lovingly brought these home, chopped and diced and poured various thing on them and left them to marinate. So (joy and bliss) when I got home from work, supper preparations had begun. I still had to cook it, but the thinking part was done. Note: "the thinking part was done". Apparently it was really finished for the evening.
I decided to steam some carrots, put rice on, and make a onions-mushrooms-red pepper concoction. Sounds good? Hmmmm.
So I put the carrots on to steam. Turn the oven on to preheat. Move the glass dish that the chicken has been marinating in to the stove so I can pop it into the oven as soon as it gets up to temp.
Have I mentioned that we got a new stove a few months ago?
On my old stove, the top dials were the back burner and the bottom dials were the front. Makes a bit of sense. Right? On the new stove the dials are reversed. You would think that by now, I would be able to get it right. But no. I apparently turned the chicken in the glass pan on to steam, while the carrots sat there cold. I heard a "plip,plip,plip" and thought "that doesn't sound right". And sure enough, there was the chicken, in the glass pan, on a red hot burner, boiling. Oops. "No worries", thought I. And I popped it into the almost up to temp oven.
So far so good. And then.....
About 5 minutes later, I heard a loud shattering sound. Followed by hissing. Picture if you will screaming Jackie running to the oven, opening the door to make sure that it really is what I think it was ( duhhh, what else could it have been?) shutting the kitchen door, opening the back shed door to let out a bit of the smoke. And then proceeded to laugh my fool ass off. Have I mentioned how cold it has been lately? Well last night was no exception. After the smoke cleared a bit, I looked back in the oven to find the chicken, high and moist, sitting on the rack, while the marinade and a whole lot of glass sat on the bottom. What to do.
Well, in the end I did what any frugal person would have done. 6 chicken breasts does not come cheap, so I washed them, checked for broken glass, put them in a stainless steal pan, and cooked them on the stove top while I cleaned out the now cooled down oven.
Thankfully when Pyrex breaks, it doesn't break into shards, but shatters into chunks. And even more thankfully, it was in a contained space. Can you imagine the mess that it could have caused? And if any of the kids had been standing around, the results could have been much different.
It was delicious, by the way. And now my oven is clean. Sort of.
Have a happy weekend. I hope the sun is shining where you are.

So what else is new?

It's cold here in the great white north. Well below freezing in fact. Tonight's low is -23C (-9F) with wind chill -34C (-28F). So to those of you who have flowers in your back yard, could you keep it to yourself for a few more weeks? I'm having a bad case of envy of some of you who live in a more, shall we say moderate climate. We should be over the worst of this in a week or two. I hope.

On the craft front, I have decided to frog the two socks that I have started and that have been sitting in my basket not being worked on. The first is some hot pink/blue/purple ones that I though that I liked, but I guess that I really don't. The others are the (sigh) lorna's laces. Again. You see, I am really a weaver and although I want to be a knitter, I don't know that I will ever progress beyond simple knit and purl socks. Well, I do know the ssk stitch that you use to make heels but beyond that.....? I have tried several different sock patterns, beautiful sock patterns, lacy, textural, cabled (mock of course) sock patterns and I'm struggling with them. And between you, me, and the gate post, right now I have enough struggles that I really don't feel the need to struggle with socks. Maybe some day in the future when things are less demanding I will haul out the lacy sock patterns again (they are sexy!), but for now, I am going to knit only from sock patterns that I have had success with. And thankfully I have a pattern for fine socks and two for heavy socks. Having said that , I have started a new pair of socks. These are from some muted purply pink merino yarn that I had dyed to sell at market before Christmas and I have two skeins left! I am about three inches down the cuff of the first one. So far, it is all good.

I have put a crackleweave warp on an 8 harness loom at the college, and so far I haven't liked any of the samples that I have woven. This may be because it isn't a true crackleweave, but more like a progressive point twill (even though it was called a crackle weave on handweaving.net). In any case I am cutting and rethreading to a traditional type crackle. I think that the pattern that I have on now would look beautiful if I were to use single coloured warp and single coloured weft, but I am working with a painted warp and the results are less than stellar.


I really haven't had much luck with my work in January. Even some of the dying that I did turned out crap. No luck at all. Except for spinning. Spinning is going really well. So well in fact that I am soon going to have to get myself some new roving. I just keep spinning and spinning and spinning. I'm glad that something went right in January. But now it is February and I have a few new things to try. But more about that later.

And the last "new" thing? No camera so no pictures of re-balled wool, crappy not-crackleweave or the couple of new skeins of hand spun. With the exception of the handspun, your not missing much. Oops, almost forgot my sock cuff, but I'm sure that you can use your imagination.

Just 'cause

What is that strange pink thing?
Why, Nicole of course, modeling her new dress-up thing.

A poem

For blogger (silent) poetry reading found on Grace's Poppies

Hug O' War

I will not play at tug o' war
I'd rather play at hug o' war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And evertone wins.

Shel Silverstein - 1974ish

Small Pleasures

A few weeks ago, the carafe for my small (4 cup) old (about 11 years) coffee maker slipped from my hand and broke in the sink. "Ah Ha!" I thought. "A sign!" The Co-op that we belong to was having a sale of in stock small appliances. "Another sign!" So off Nicole and I trek to the Co-op. There were several choices of coffee makers ranging from the kind that will give you a foot rub while you drink (read waaaaayyyyy out of my price range) to the basic no frills. And a little ways up from no frills was the no frills programmable. I'm loving it! I set it up at night, push the "auto" button and when the alarm goes off at 6:30, there, ready and waiting is coffee. How bloody civilized. I know that some of you have had this technology for years, but in my house it is new and pure bliss.

Oh, and I am still spinning like a mad woman. I am glad that I can dye my own roving or by now I may have resorted to spinning the dryer lint.