Well traveled

A number of weeks ago, I received a tentative e-mail asking if I had found a wee package in the mail. I could only reply "nope".

I had sent my sister a package with some handmade soap, a CD, and a few other small items for Christmas one year. It never arrived. Around the middle of March, I had visions of some postal worker with sweet smelling hands listening to "the Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald". I thought that the same fate had happened to the wee package from Scotland.
Imagine my surprise (and glee) when I looked in the mail box today and saw a wee package!

And what a package! Books, people! Books!

The first was a book about weavings of the southwest and their inspiration. I read all the Tony Hillerman books that I could get my hands on. I loved the descriptions of the Navajo way of life and the incredible beauty of their surroundings. The book is full of photos of the landscape as well as weavings and trading posts.

The second book is one written by a very special Hobbit. The world renown and widely read T.
You can read interviews with her, here and here.
I just finished the book that I was reading last night and I am starting on A La Carte as soon as I am in bed. Wahooo!

Thank you very much for your thoughtfulness, my friendly Hobbits. I will treasure both books for a long time to come. I'll even let Mira read A La Carte when I am done.

And the reason that the books were so long in coming? They took the long route from Scotland to Canada.

I think that I feel a little jealous

red handspun

New red handspun scarf. You can see a bit of a purple silk one peeking out from the corner trying to steal the show but it will get showcased later.
I am loving doing the handspun scarves. And not only because I love the spinning part. Once the yarn is made, the rest of the weaving process is rather quick. I use a fine weft so that the beauty of the warp is not lost. I love the way the colours subtly change and flow.

On the loom

Actually, as of this afternoon, off the loom.

These are cotton chenille scarves in colour and weave. I bought a lot of chenille yarn a few years ago and I have been slowly working my way through it. Along with making "stash scarves", the other best use that I have found for chenille is the colour and weave scarves.

One warp (this one, two white, two dark blue, and one blue/gray) and by altering the colour of the weft you can get different patterns.

The first one is a weft of two white, two blue/gray.

The second, one white, three dark blue.
The third, two white, one dark blue.

I'm not sure what I am putting on the loom next. I have three warps to chose from. Another colour and weave chenille warp, one dyed cotton, and one dyed fine wool.

Hmmm.

Hump Day

Skeins that have been dyed by me within that last couple of weeks. Some I like, some, not so much. But that is the way that is goes sometimes. And one thing that I have learned from selling my wares, is that different people have different tastes.

While I was at the lake this summer, we actually spent most of the time there just as me, Bill, and the kids. Uncle Sandy spent about 50% of the time with us, but the rest of the time it was just us. For the first time.

One of the things that happened was that I felt that it was OK to do a little bit of exploring in the recipe drawer. I has seen some old cookbooks when I was exploring in a gentle sort of way, but I am not sure how Grandma would feel about me laughing and snapping photos of some of the recipes in these cook books.

As you can see, the Coronation Cook Book was indeed tried and tested as well as well used. Check out the date. This book was Bill's Paternal Grandmothers.

And this was his mothers when she was a young woman
As you can see, another well used cook book. I am always suspicious when I see a cookbook that is pristine. Either the cook had one of those cook book shields, or the book was never used! Not so in this case.

I had quite a a good time looking at the various recipes. Some of which I snapped am image of for future reference, some of which I thought were funny or odd.

The chili recipe falls into the odd category. What I find odd about it is that it says it serves 12! And there is no chili powder. In a chili! Nor any other seasonings. I don't know about you, but when I make chili, there are all kinds of veggies in there along with the traditional beans and meat. And Chili Powder galore!
I also got a chuckle at the last line in the dressing recipe above the chili recipe.

Tomorrow.... Whats on the loom!

End of a season

Yesterday was the day that we hauled out the garden. It was a beautiful calm sunny day and so onto our bikes we hopped and pedaled our way out to the garden.
Along the way we heard several flocks of geese doing their annual migration. A couple of groups stopped on the river to have a rest (and maybe a snack). They were quite far away and my telephoto will only do so much, so sorry for the less than crisp photos.
While we were pulling dead tomatoes, peppers, and beans (not to mention a lot of very much alive weeds) out of the garden plot, we heard more geese calling and I ran to grab my camera. They were flying onto the sun when I snapped this, so I will admit that I am quite happy that I managed to get them at all!
Along with the weeds, there was one Very Large Radish. As we pulled up the creeping charlie encrusted carpets, and dug out the remaining pea fences (darn you deer!), I came across a small radish patch that Mira had wanted to let go to seed. She is very much a gatherer type of person, and had wanted to grow and save seeds from radishes so that she could plant them next year. The radish had indeed grown a few seed pods (OK, a LOT of seed pods) but they were no where near mature. It was decided that we would pull the radish patch. Imagine my surprise when that patch turned out to be ONE PLANT!
Here is another view of that bad boy. Bad girl actually, seeing as it was silly with seed pods.
Most everything is out of the garden now (except for a few leftover weeds and the two million seeds that they produced) so the gardening season is at a close. And I am glad.

It will start up again in January when the new seed catalogue comes out and I can dream big for a couple of months before paring my order back to things that we can fit into the garden.

Post Cards from the Selv-edge

The October Edition.....
It seems that we are back on track as far as postcards go. I have three left to go. As the postcards have passed from hand to hand, I thought that they would be harder and harder to work on. In fact the reverse has happened. Maybe I have become less precious with each one, or maybe other peoples ideas and sensibilities don't jive with mine. In the last few there has been something that has "bothered" me. In this one, I found a few things in the last few days that I had hidden around my house that needed to be added.

Here is the front "before" shot. I didn't do anything to the front this time but add a couple of extra stamps to the stamp to the pocket that has the stamps. Before, there were stamps from Canada and the US. I added three. One from Australia, one from India, and one from the UK.
Here is the back.

I added a long length of organza and sandwiched in between the original organza and the new piece, I enclosed a poem that came out of a heart shaped bath bomb from Lush. ( Which, it seems, they do not make any more). I'm not quite sure why I wanted the long piece of cloth hanging from this one, but it seemed important.

Detail of the enclosed poem. I almost feel that I should keep it for a few more days and add some words to the banner. It is due to go out tomorrow.

Hmmm. Decisions, decisions.

Mom's Clan

This is my mothers family. It was taken at the reception after my Grandfathers funeral. My Grandmother is in the center in the gray sweater.
17 kids. What a family!

dyeing to spin

When I dyed some yarn the other day, I also picked up some alpaca roving as well as a bag of mohair roving. They are now all dry and ready to spin. As soon as I clean off some bobbins.
But first, I have to get my next silk warp on the loom and woven off. There are only 3.5 weeks left before my first big show and I am feeling like I need to have more stock.
And I meant to show you what the silk scarves looked like before they are washed out and pressed. Sort of ugly, eh?

New Product

Silk scarves. I am taking a class at the school to get to know the Fabric Surface studio and learn about what happens in there. For the past couple of weeks, we have been learning about the Fiber Reactive dye process and a resist method called Shibori.
After learning how to do an even dye bath of one colour, we started on various folding and binding techniques as well as learning about "The Five Day Method". Sorry about the capitals, but that was just the way that the instructor presented it. All Capitals. Each word stressed.
I did 17 samples of different various folding, knotting, chaining, clamping, and tyeing and then applied a few different colours of dyes. And then you have to wait for Five Days for the dye to "cure".
That was the hardest part. The waiting. But as it turned out, it was worth the wait! Opening my samples felt like Christmas morning!

So I purchased some scarves and got busy right away. And these are the results form my first batch of dyeing. I have 7 more scarves sitting for their Five Days. Right now, we are on Day Two. Far too soon to open my "presents". This last one didn't at all turn out like I though that it would, but I like it none the less and have an idea for an art piece using this technique.
But that may have to wait until later. Right now I am all about producing for Christmas sales. And I am hopeful that with the economy doing a nose dive that people will still be interested in buying local for Christmas.

Update

My Grandfather passed away on Wednesday morning. Out of his 17 children, 16 were there. The only one missing is an RCMP officer in Ottawa who had been there earlier, but was called back to work.
The funeral was today.

And my Grandmother's operation was suppose to be on Wednesday but has been postponed until Monday or Tuesday.

Bad Week

In this past week, I have received word that both of my mothers parent's are in a bad way. My Grandfather has suffered an aneurysm and is not expected to live more than a few days and my Grandmother has been diagnosed with both stomach and lung cancer.
My Grandparents live about 3 hours away and I am sad to say that I really don't know either of them very well. First, there is the distance issue and then there is the language issue. I speak English and very little French, and they speak French and very little English.
When I was a child, my family would go up yearly for at least a week to visit. Even though we couldn't speak very much, the language of love always came through very strong. I remember being engulfed in hugs and the smell of fresh baked bread. Memere Roy could bake bread in her sleep and as a mother of 17, probably did quite often.
My mother has gone to be with her parent and siblings for a while. The hospital had to move Memere Roy into a larger room because she has been having so many visitors. I guess that they waived the "no more than two visitors at a time" rule for her. I couldn't see all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins putting up with that for very long anyway.

To answer a few questions

Mamoo: The pickles are on the shelf in the kitchen. For those of you who have never been in my kitchen, the shelf is a shelf made specifically for holding your canning jars. It was a cast off of a friend and I was happy to take it. What doesn't fit on the shelf, gets put back in the boxes that the jars came in and they are tucked under the bed. Some people have sweaters under their bed. I have pickles.

Teyani: Thanks! And yes we do use them all winter and spring and summer until they are gone. The banana/ crimson hot mix is so delicious that they sometimes get snacked right out of the jar. Sometimes they get placed on a slice of cheese before being devoured. They also make appearances in hamburgers and sandwiches of all types. The juice gets used up for marinades and salad dressings.
The kids around a jar of dill's is reminiscent of lions around a downed zebra. Actually it is more like piranhas around the proverbial cow. They even eat the dill and peppercorns. And can do it in about 15 minutes flat.

The hot pepper recipe is the same basic recipe that I use for dills.

3 cups vinegar
3 cups water
1/3 cup pickling salt

bring to a gentle boil and scoop in a couple of cups of sliced hot peppers of your choice. Let heat for about 1 minute and transfer with a slotted spoon to jars. The reason that I do this is to soften the peppers a bit so that they will pack more efficiently. They will settle a bit and you can top them up with pepper rings until the peppers are about 1/2 inch from the top. Continue until you have enough full jars for a batch. Ladle the pickling liquid into the jars. I usually use a sieve to catch the excess seeds. Wipe rims. Put on softened snap lids. Apply screw bands.Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Christine: Most ripe crimson hots were made into pickled peppers. We used to freeze some and make a wonderful hot sauce, but we have found that the hot sauce wasn't getting eaten as much as it used to be, so we stopped. There are still some in the freezer from last year. A lot of the peppers that were in the pepper cookies were green crimson hots as well as the smaller and unripe bananas.
And I have found that the chopped peppers take up a lot less space!

I would also like to note that not all of my produce is in my possession anymore. When I ran out of jars, I put out a call at work asking for mason jars. I offered one jar of pickles for 6 empty jars. I actually had quite a few responses. One woman also offered to buy her pickles from me instead of the lady that she had been buying them from. Which lead to one of her neighbours wanting some Lady Ashburnhams too. Some have also been gifted out. And more will be going out the door at Christmas time. But most of the dills will be staying to be consumed by the children.

Done Done Done Done Finished

Did I mention that we were done? As in ALL DONE with the canning, pickling, and preserving.
The last to go was the peppers.
One of the things that I do with the smaller peppers is make what I call "pepper cookies". I'm sure you all know of the frozen cookies that come in a roll and when you want to make them, you haul them out of the freezer hack off a few and chuck them in the oven. I make rolls of peppers that are the same concept. First they get chopped in the food processor and laid out on wax paper.
Then they are rolled into a cylinder with the ends tucked in to try and prevent spillage.
Then the tray gets put in the freezer and when solid, put in a ziplock bag. Any time that I want to use some hot peppers in soup, sauce, chili, whatever, I just hack some off and drop it in. It slices surprisingly easy for something that is frozen.

And now a note from Bill......


The Ants are Done

Well, Flick and Atta were at it again this weekend. The last of the pickling is over for the year, and I'm glad to see the end of it.


And I think we surpassed last year's count by a wide margin. Here's the tally for the season's efforts.

Pickles

Beets 6 jars
Dill 105 jars
Bread & Butter 22 jars
Lady Ashburnham 39 jars
Jalapeño Peppers 21 jars
Banana Peppers 41 jars

Salsa 5 jars
Green Tomato Relish 7 jars

Jams

Blueberry 8 jars
Elderberry 16 jars
Strawberry 11 jars
Carrot Cake 12 jars
Peach 5 jars

The grand total is 298 jars. Those are the ones that "snapped". There were a few that didn't snap properly after processing and they were consigned to the fridge and eaten straight away, so the "real" total would be over 300. And we will run out of some of these things rather quickly, especially the peach, blueberry and strawberry jams. Next year we'll be more organized and it's likely to climb even higher as more fruit jams get added to the mix.

And this says nothing of the sun dried tomatoes and sauce we made and are making still. We have about 6 one-litre jars of sun dried tomatoes, and a bit of well reduced seedless tomato sauce, and I think we'll have to make more of the sauce because there are still two big boxes of tomatoes ripening in the kitchen. There are some other vegetables too, but more of them are eaten fresh.

It's a big effort to put all of this food down, but it does taste good in the winter. Especially the banana pepper rings. The commercial ones aren't cored so you get lots of slices with hard bits of stem and core in them. We core ours. I think they put pectinase in theirs too, because our juice is viscous while theirs is watery. We use every drop of our pepper juice as marinade for chicken, which gives it a wonderful flavour, especially when barbecued.

on the loom

Silk noil scarves. The slightly different coloured stripes are silk noil boucle. One scarf has already been cut off, one woven (you can see it wound around the front beam) and the final one getting ready to be woven.
I have been immersed in garden life lately and have been ignoring all of the crafterly things that I have been up to, and seeing as I started this blog as a "fiber arts" blog, I'm thinking that now that the canning has slowed down, it is time to get back to my "creative" side. And sharing that creative side with you. All three of you.

Change my name to Peter

As in .....Peter piper picked a peck
(including jalapeno,
crimson hot, and banana peppers)
of pickled peppers.
This is of course a small sampling of the jars and jars that we pickled last week. First we did the crimson hots and banana peppers and the I switched to jalapeno. And you can see from the middle jar that the switch over happened mid jar. And there are more to come.

For those of you who are interested in pickling your own hot peppers.....

3 cups vinegar
3 cups water
1/3 cup pickling salt

bring to just boiling point
spoon sliced peppers (Bill does all of ours by hand, but if I have to do them, I do them in the food slicer) and let simmer 1 minute
scoop out of pickling liquid with slotted spoon into clean jars and pack lightly
ladle pickling liquid to within 1/2 inch from top of jar
wipe rim and apply snap lid and screw bands
put in boiling water bath for 10 minutes
let cool on counter on towels
remove screw bands and wipe jars

Post Cards from the Selv-edge

As with the last postcard, there was something that bothered me about this one. Can you guess what it is?

Here is the back. It was pretty bland.
Now the new front. There is one slight change. It bothered me (heaven knows why!) that the fish was in a can while in his watery environment. So I cut him a little window so that he could see. Now he is wearing a "costume". A little strange perhaps, but with Halloween coming and his tale and bottom fin sticking out from behind the can, I thought that it would work.
On the back is where I did most of the work. I laid some gold paper that I had over the whole back and then glued down the "message".

When I was working as a gallery assistant one summer back in my student days, one of the things that I had to do was some typing. There was a computer of a very basic sort and I was much more familiar with the typewriter and so most of the time used that. It was one of those typewriters that had a corrector ribbon that would pick up the letters that you had hit by mistake. At one point during the summer, the ribbon that was in the machine became full and instead of throwing it out, I put it into my pocket and brought it home. Where I put it in a bin or drawer or container of some sort that was labeled " neat stuff". I thought that maybe I could weave with it.

Fast forward about 20 years and this little spool surfaces a couple of months ago when I was looking for something completely unrelated. I set it down on my dresser (handy horizontal surface that acts as a catch all) and when this postcard came in in all of its matt board stiffness, I knew that the letters (and some words) would be perfect for the back.

I unrolled the whole thing to look for what may act as a message and found some words and a lot of gibberish. But there are enough words that are recognizable that I am happy. I was very happy to find Fredericton amongst the gibberish and was able to put an address. Sort of. And I have to admit, that is one long postal code. ( As usual you can click on any photos to see a little larger version)

Over dinner....

Liam found a very interesting rock this summer. To me it looked like a volcanic rock. Several other people made other predictions as to its origins. Bill brought it up to a geologist at the university today and he said that it was most likely a volcanic rock. But that it might be a meteorite ( very unlikely, but possible) and if it was a meteorite, it might be worth a few dollars. Which, of course, got the kids speculating over how to spend this unexpected wealth.
Liam wanted to have a mansion and have a remote control that controlled everything. (That boy has big dreams)
Simon was undecided.
Mira said " I would make a little building to keep my bones so that they could rot undisturbed. I would paint it red and call it "Little Red Rotting Hut" "

Speaking of Little Red......

Has any one seen "Hoodwinked"?

Please do. Even after 16 times, I still pause and watch certain scenes.

Lake critters

The lake is out in the quiet countryside. Quiet, if you don't count the loons, crickets, mosquitoes, and the occasional duck begging for a hand out.

After sorting through the photos that I took while at the lake, I realized that I had a lot of critter photos and though that I would share with you the wildlife sightings from those fine, fun, relaxing weeks.

The first is a white spider. This was found on one of our walks to take mushroom photos. You have to look closely to see her. Or him. I didn't ask.
And just outside the cottage is an old birch that has been being visited by some rather small, quiet woodpeckers. Again, you have to look closely to see it. Out of the 20 or so photos that I took, this was the best one. The little fellow is right in the middle.

Mira also found an interesting bug.

She took a picture from a different angle. I rather like the look of this little guy. I'm also glad that I am rather larger than he. Click on this one to see him larger. Please do.

One of the walks that we went on was to a place that the kids call Slow Lentement. (pronounced (by the kids) len-ta-ment) Lentement, as some of you may know is French for "slow". We live in a bilingual province (or so we have been told) and all of the road signs are in both French and English. I don't know if Mira knew this when , a number of years ago, she named the walk, but the name has stuck. In any case, at the end of a small road, there is a bit of a pond that contains some frogs.

They are just little fellows and they can hide very well. They come out of the water to sun themselves on the edge of the pond and when someone, or something, comes by, they all hop back into the water and all but disappear. I had to go away and come back a few minutes later to watch them hop away and keep an eye on where they landed in order to get a picture.

There are also a crazy number of bugs. This moth is about two inches from nose to wingtip. It wouldn't have been spotted if it hadn't decided to land on the part of the tree that had the pruning paint sprayed on it to protect the tree from burrowing insects. Talk about good camouflage.

Yet again, Mira's eagle eye spotted this little fellow on the way back from a walk one evening. It is actually not uncommon to spot snakes on the road, but usually they are a lot less lively than this one. And they usually have at least one flat part. This guy hung around long enough for me to run and get the camera and I was able to snap off a few decent pictures before he (or she) decided to head for the bushes.

And a few feet from the snake was this lucky slug. Lucky because he was also heading for home and was not destined to be a bedtime snack for the snake. This fellow was a good size for a slug. Stretched out he was probably between 1.5 and 2 inches. They can travel over a mile in one night.

I don't really care all that much for slugs. But the kids say that the fish like them. I guess that fish don't have much taste.

So there you have it. Apparently there are bears, fox, moose, deer, lynx, and bobcats around. But we didn't see any of these. I am OK with that. There was also, on the Sunday before we left, the reported sighting of a Sasquatch. Four people in two separate cars said that they saw something that looked hairy and over 8 feet tall cross the road in front of the cars. It was reported about in the local paper and people were wondering. But it turned out to be someone in a gorilla suit that was playing a joke on a friend and by chance crossed the road in front of the cars.

And to think that the lake could have been world famous. Oh well. I'm glad that it will still remain the quiet lake. So long as you don't count the loons.