Another bit of W.A.W.O.W.

Ta Da! All finished.

W.A.W.O.W.

This has been What A Week Of Work thus the W.A.W.O.W. I have been busy all week. I haven't been out through the door. Now you may think that is terrible since the weather has turned milder. You might think its a chance to be lazy but for me it meant a week of catching up on my level 2 homework. I am not caught up, but I am making progress. I am not reading, and I am not watching T.V., (we don't have that anyway), I haven't been wasting my time on the internet. No, indeed, I've been spinning and I have pictures to prove it.

I started out the week with the very good intentions of getting the section of questions on mohair finished but then I got caught in another power outage. I couldn't weigh my blended fibre as I have an electric weigh scales and so I looked through my questions to see what I could work on that didn't require a blend. Ah ha! I found a question regarding needlework. The question said to spin a yarn (wool so no blending) appropriate for needlework and finish a small needlework sampler with your yarn. I began by reading what was considered a good yarn for needlework and decided on duplicating a three ply called Persian. I copied that as best I could in yellow, wine, and blue. I spun a ten yard skein in each colour to include as my samples along with enough to finish the sampler. Then I dug out a needle appropriate for needlework (not all of them are you know... go figure!) and began to investigate which stitches I would be using.

I had taken out a library book some time ago on the stitches used for needlework in which there are over 200. Sheesh! Deciding which stitches to use was not going to be easy. I started in on the stitching and what do you know..... I Iike needlework! I can see how this could become addictive. I am just about finished and as usual I can't wait to show it off.

Meanwhile once the lights came back on there was all the mohair I had been working on lying all over the living room. so in between finishing the yarn for the needlework and actually doing the needlework I have been carding, combing and spinning mohair and mohair blends. I also was trying to get everything that I had done in my book with labels and commentaries and everything that needed to be done to meet the requirements for my homework. I have accomplished a lot I think. Have a look.

This is llama spun and in my book with a 3"x3" sample for a vest.



This is a sample of a knitted shawl in alpaca.



These are yarn samples I have spun this week. The three top ones in wine, blue, and yellow are the samples for the needlework.



This is my needlework sample.



This last sample is a blend of mohair, wool, and silk which I will use for my mohair with texture sample. I can't wait to spin it!



So there you have it.... W.A.W.O.W.

Crude, Rude and Socially Unacceptable

Please excuse the crude, rude and socially unacceptable vocabulary used in the previous post. My excuse is that I was in this state....

Actually this pic was taken a few years ago and I can't drink wine any more since I have developed my most inconvenient allergy to alcohol. I would have liked to have been in that state however, I was more in this state.....

In The Dark

We lost the power today. Late afternoon came and Hubby and the Daughters came home from school. I went out to help Hubby feed the animals and when I came back in the lights were out. Those of you who live in a city or at least a town where water is supplied by the powers that be, won't understand that when your water comes from a cistern that means that you can't use the sh-t-er. So for a few hours you turn red, and squeeze your legs together in the hopes that you won't be the first to leave a deposit that just won't go away. Worse still, once there has been a deposit you really don't want to be the next to have to lift the toilet seat and have to smell the deposit while you add to it. Cisterns mean pumps, pumps mean electricity, electricity means power, no power no flushing. Yuck!

Another negative is that when the power goes off in the winter there is no way to cook in this house. We don't even have a propane barbeque on which we can heat something. Hubby did go out and brave the cold and warm some IMPs on a Coleman stove. Thank God for Mr. Coleman. We as Canadian Rangers leaders have on hand at any given time enough food to keep us through any state of emergency for a week. IMPs are the army's way of feeding soldiers in the field. IMP stands for Individual Meal Packet. These are not the worst thing in life to have to expose yourself to and some of the meals are downright tolerable, but to have to live on them for any length of time is to put yourself through meal monotony. They all have a packaged taste that ruins any other effect that might make them good. They also have a bad effect in that the amount of dietary fibre is just not sufficient to do the job. Not to mention the amount of calories that are meant to enable a soldier to live in strenuous conditions and would pile on the weight for any average joe. A week of IMPs and you wouldn't be able to walk because you would be stuck in the chair since your a-- would be permanently jammed into it from the extra unnecessary fat added. For tonight when the power was off though, IMPs meant full tummies on a cold night.

Speaking of cold.... losing the power here means putting on sweaters and praying that the power comes on again before the pipes freeze. I was just starting to feel chilled when the power came on and the furnace blasted into life again. I can safely say I breathed a sigh of relief.

Also, losing the power means Hubby or I have to take the girls to my parents place for showers so that in the morning they don't look and feel fousty. (Fousty is a Newfy term which you will just have to look up). Tonight Hubby was cajoled into doing that, which meant he had to sit with his in-laws for a period of time. This can or cannot be good depending on whether he is enlisted to fix something. Fixing things irritates Hubby no matter who asks.

All I know is, losing the power is an opportunity to take pleasure in knowing that next year when the renovations are complete and we have a wood stove that heats, cooks, lights, and gives joy to those who need to use the facilities, we won't have to rely on IMPs to take away the need.

Meandering Mind

I'm sitting here after a very busy and tiring day, (I spent the day cleaning my house... no small feat let me assure you) and I am listening to some music in an effort to relax. My mind keeps wandering to different topics and ideas. It is actually quite relaxing to listen to music and to let your mind wander all over the place. You are in for a very weird experience since I thought that it might be cool to just write about what ever pops into my mind.

I am listening to Since You've Been Gone by Theory Of A Deadman..... seriously depressing words.... lovely music. Wonderful harmonizing. I can't believe that there is more modern music that I actually like. Most of the music these days has warbling girls who can't sing for beans. They warble all over the place and you have to wonder who actually told them that they could sing.

Hubby and I like to listen to Randy Bachman on Vinyl Cafe on CBC radio on Saturday nights. He usually has good music and gives you a lot of information that you would likely never know, unless you did a lot of research. A few months ago I sent an email and they actually read it out loud.

Hubby keeps distracting me by talking to me and here I am trying to write this and listen to my music and then he keeps talking to me which means I have to pull the head phones out of my ears and he tells me something interesting that Randy just said on the radio which means I'm not getting to listen a whole lot to my music.

My living room looks nice again and I changed the furniture around.... I figure I might as well change the furniture if I am going to have to pull out the furniture to vaccuum under it anyway. A change is as good as a rest they say and I tend to agree. The fact is that the woolies from spinning so much this week was starting to get away from me. The whole house had dust bunnies that were growling when you passed them... they were starting to escape the dark corners and chase us around. Scarey!

I know when the dust bunnies get out of hand that I have been remiss in my housewifely duties. Hubby doesn't see dirt and the kids know that if they complain they will be enlisted to help, so they tend to keep quiet too. I know when they do start to complain that I have really gone too long with out vaccuuming and dusting.

Duff is the culprit. She is so hairy and big and when she sheds hair its just nasty. Tootsie is a non-shedding dog and I like that. Do yourself a fovour and if you get a dog get one that doesn't shed.

I have never been the kind of person who puts housework at the front of priorities.... it is something that gets done when I have no choice but to be swallowed alive by nuclear dust bunnies or the kitchen floor can't support any more sticky stuff. I know that maybe the house needs some attention when there is a shower of stuff that comes down off the steps when someone walks down over them. When the logs in our house start to look grey instead of golden then it is time to vaccuum them too. There are just too many better things to spend my time on. You know. Family, spinning, friends, knitting, strangers, weaving, dogs, felting, farm, writing, spining, spinning and spinning some more. There's just not enough time to sweat the dust and dirt.... I try to get over it and clean when it gets out of hand. I figure I only have 70 odd or 80 odd years to live and I'm not going to spend any more time cleaning than necessary.

Well I had better go to bed and sleep because I need a clear mind for the Church AGM tomorrow...
Does your mind meander too?

The Trials Of A Wannabe Master

It warmed up... that's my excuse for not writing here for a while. I hauled new hay in for the animals. I hauled water. I shoveled pathways. I caught up on outside things to do. Then it started to get colder and it started to snow and that's when I panicked. With thoughts of spring in my mind the previous week, and knowing how much the cold temps have made me want spring in a terrible way, I knew I had better get started working on my level 2 homework while the cold temps kept me housebound. I haven't even let myself knit. All because it warmed up to a balmy plus 7 degrees.

The one thing that I have noticed about my spinning this week is that I can't spin for beans. Grist is certainly an issue. (That's the thickness of the singles for you lay people.) Not one of my skeins meets my idea of good spinning. But it is going off to the instructor anyway, I don't have time to fool with it to make it perfect. I know that I am not going to get the great mark that I did last year but I had hoped that it would be better than just ok. Thing is I have left it too long to be finicky about it now. It is almost February. Being so relaxed for so long has made me definitely notice that my spinning has deteriorated over the months.

I have a problem.... because it is almost February and I have a trip in Feb as well as a trip in April, I know I am down to the wire on this homework. There is no time to lose. If I do one section a week every week (except the ones I am away) I will finish my homework in June. This is not good. I would like to have my homework finished before that so that I could have a month of reprieve before I am back at it again. Arrrggghhh!

Well, if I'm going to finish a section today I had better get back at it. WAAAAAAGGHHH! I suck as a master spinner. : {

I Just Can't Help It! Hmmmm!

I had to go to the wool shop today. This is not a safe thing to do for me. I actually went because the wool store that I frequent is also a beading store and I needed supplies to make stitch markers. I am getting a parcel ready for a friend in Newfoundland. I thought I would include some nifty stitch markers made with semi prescious beads. Problem is that when I went in to the store the balls of yarn nicely displayed at the back of the store called to me and so I couldn't help but go have a look. Hmmmm!

I knew that time was of the essence as Hubby and the girls were sitting in the truck waiting outside the store in the vehicle. I had told them that I would only be a few minutes and I would be right back. Hmmmm!

No one was looking so I grabbed two balls of sock yarn that is self-striping and took it to the cash register along with my beading needs and paid for it without a second glance. I snuck into the truck with my purchases camoflauged beneath my arm so that Hubby would not ask what was in the bag so bulky besides beading supplies. Hmmmm!

I haven't looked into the bag yet because someone might ask unnecessary questions. Problem is that I really am not sure what I bought. I grabbed it so quickly that I didn't really look. I know it was among the sock yarn. I know it was pastel. I know it had the word 'wool' on it, other than that I really don't know what I bought. Hmmmm!

I know that I had better not look because I have a few more rows on another project (next post or the one after I will show you). If I look now I may get distracted from the other project that I have been trying to finish for ages..... I'll want to start my new socks. I know that the wool I purchased will be good with the Leyburn sock pattern (check out Yarn Harlot's blog, Jan 13, 2009 post). Hmmmm!

Ok..... I just can't wait to look.......

75% superwash
25% polyamid (what's that?)
blue, yellow, orange,
green, purple, (interesting)
I hope this works! Hmmmm!

Ok, forget that other project for now. Hmmmm!

True confessions of a compulsive sock knitter.... Hmmmm!

The Llama Came Back The Very Next Day... or Four Months Later

Honeydew is our Llama. When I started writing this blog I did not mention that we had a llama because at that time we didn't..... well sort of. Here is the tale of Honeydew.

When I agreed to buy sheep from my friend who was going out of the business as it were, I also agreed to take in a llama who was known to be 'high spirited'. This did not concern me as I was an idiot and had no clue what a llama can do. Llamas are highly intelligent animals and they are capable of feats of amazing..... well they can clear a fence that is 6 or 7 feet high with out a backward glance. They are large weighing up to 350 - 500 lbs in a grown animal. They have eyes as big as saucers and can see things miles off. They learn very quickly..... and most important they don't trust humans..... at least Honeydew doesn't.

Honeydew likes our sheep and watches over them as if they were her friends, which, I suppose in some sense, is true. Along about September, when we were weaning our lambs, Jelly my Romney ewe got anxious about her lamb who was in another paddock and so she pushed her way through the fence. The llama, who was in the pen with the mother sheep, saw her chance and made a break for it. She meandered out to the road in front of our house and proceeded to nibble the green grass along the edges of said road. The sheep thought this was great and so the whole flock proceeded to follow her.

Meanwhile I was in the house unaware of what was happening. I happened to glance out of the window and noticed that the alpacas in their pen were watching with great interest as my flock of sheep and the llama made a break for it down the road.

Needless to say my heart began to pound as panic set in. I was home alone with no one to help me get my animals back. I quickly ran to the shed and grabbed a bucket of oats and proceeded to run to the end of my driveway in an effort to 'head off' the animals from wandering further down the road.

Getting the attention of sheep is not the easiest when all you have is a bucket of oats and they are head-down in foot long green grass. I knew my best bet was to get Jelly's attention since she can't turn up oats at all, and also the others follow her as she is kind of their leader..... it worked. The sheep followed me quite placidly back to the fold where they proceeded to munch oats as I fixed up the busted up gate. Meanwhile Honeydew took one look at the bucket of oats and decided the green grass was her best bet. For the rest of the afternoon I spent my time trying to coax her to come with me because I had oats and she didn't.

We live on a road that has a turn-around at the end of it. There is a lovely little community forest at the end of that road with walking/skiing trails. There is approximately 200 acres of forest and bordering the forest on two sides is some lovely fenced pasture. I knew that if Honeydew found the trail head that comes out at the end of our road that would be the end of her. She did.

After Hubby and the Daughters spent all afternoon, after they returned from school, trying to chase Honeydew back into the paddock and scaring the freaking wits out of her, she finally bolted off down the nearest trail. I put out a PSA (community service announcement) to let people know she was on the loose. I spent the next few days trying to locate her which I eventually did. She spent the majority of the fall in a pasture of one of our neighbours where she fed voraciously on grass and alfalfa. She had no need to return and every time I tried to coax her to take oats she completely ignored me. Hubby and I even spent an afternoon chasing her back and forth the pasture just about bursting our lungs in the process. Trying to outrun a llama is a completely pointless activity, we discovered. They can run very fast.

She continued to thwart our every effort at recapture. Then finally when the snow came, she decided to move on. We had reports of sightings in various fields over the next few weeks and meanwhile we were getting closer to Christmas. Then finally just before Christmas break the llama was caught by one of Hubby's students..... he wanted to keep her. Considering that we were seriously thinking of turning her into jerky, we felt that if he wanted her and his parents were ok with it, that we were too.

I finally put the llama situation to rest and forgot about her. Then the fateful day came when we got a call from the family who had "wanted" her, to tell us that they had set her free and she was not welcome at their place as she scared their horses. Hm!

Now why they couldn't keep her so that we could come pick her up I don't know. Setting her free was the worst case scenario that I could think of. We were back to square one.

Then, praises be, we got a call from the local rodeo arena that she was getting into hay at their facility and could we please come and do something about it. Hubby and I went to have a look as it was cold..... really cold and snowing to beat the bands. She was hungry and though Hubby couldn't do much with his back in a shambles I proceeded to try my hand at capture. I was able to lead her into a small paddock and that is where she stayed for the rest of the week while Hubby took priority in my mind with his back ailment. Then Friday past I was able to line up some friends with a trailer and some other friends who had experience with llamas and we managed to catch her and bring her home.

It was four months pretty much to the day that the llama was on the loose. She is home now and acts as if it were all our fault that she was able to lose as much weight as she did. She is quite content to be back with her friends. You have no idea how relieved I am to have her home and not causing problems among the members of the community...... However, Hubby is ticked. He says that if she gets out again then the only thing following her will be a bullet! I'm not quite sure how I feel. I certainly look at her with a different feeling than I used to have. I don't think she is cool anymore. I think she is a big pain in the.... well you know. But still, when she looks at me with those big brown eyes..... I kind of feel that she is sorry she made so much trouble for us as she did, that she is glad to be home, that she likes me... a little.

By the way, the one thing about llamas that I didn't tell you is that they are the most coniving stinkers you will ever come across. How dare she make me like her again.....

Unlikely Love Affair

I have been knitting for thirty-five years now and I could never understand why anyone would want to spend their time knitting sox. Why knit something that you can go to the store and buy so cheaply? Recently Daughter #1 and Daughter #2 have grown to the point where their feet are the same size as mine. Now that their feet are as large as mine I cannot keep sox in my drawer.

I have never been hard on footware and so a pair of shoes or even a pair of sox would last forever. I have been known to wear sox for years before they wear out. But since the Daughters have caught up with me in foot size they have begun to wear out their sox like normal people and so I find myself in the distressful situation where my sock drawer gets raided regularly. Theirs have holes in them and so "Mom always has sox, lets go get hers," seems to be the new norm.

Finding myself without sox on a regular basis has created a necessity to knit sox that are different from store bought ones so that I know when the Daughters are sneaking off with mine. I bought the wool, I bought the needles and started to check out patterns. I believe I've told you about N who brought her sox that she was knitting to Knit Night. Her plum lovelies actually started me looking for sock patterns. Then locking my keys and knitting in my truck on a weekend away necessitated that I purchase a new project to knit. What better time to take up the knitting of sox.

I have enjoyed the knitting of my first pair of sox far more than I ever expected, and turning a heal was far easier than I ever expected too. I have enjoyed a stimulating discussion regarding sock knitting on the popular spinning group Canspin. I've downloaded more sock patterns than I will ever knit. As a result, I find I have become caught in some sock vortex and so has begun a love affair with the lowly sock. I look forward to picking up my socks each day and knitting a few more rows. I look on them on the table by my chair with pride. I pick them up regularly and look over the portion I have finished and smile a gratified smile of pride and joy. If this is not a love affair with sox I don't know what is.

I keep wondering if it is the real thing and that my love affair will bloom into a lifetime love or whether the initial joy will burn away and I will discover the flaws of sock knitting thereby ending a beautiful love affair.

In the meantime here is my first pair.....

Crashed and Burnt

I last wrote on Wednesday before the fall..... Hubby was pretty good at that time and was iimpressive about going to bed. I was quite pleased when he managed to get himself there on his own. I made my way to bed shortly after for a long winter's nap. Ah but that was not to be. At three in the morning Hubby tried to roll over and couldn't. He had overdone it during the day and his back went into severe spasms and there was nothing I could do to help him. I rubbed his back..... I got pillows for him.... I tried to give him pain killers but nothing worked. And so at 4:15 a.m. he said I should call the ambulance. This scared me.... when Hubby says get the ambulance I know it is bad. The one and only time before this occasion that I was allowed to call for help, he had acute appendicitis.

Twenty minutes later, I was showing the ambulance attendants to the bed where Hubby was groaning in agony. I had managed to get him from near nakedness to decency in PJ bottoms but it almost killed him. At 5:30 a.m. in the morning with the two Daughters crying in fear, the ambulance left for the nearest hospital an hour and a half drive away. I reassured the girls that everything was going to be alright and then proceeded to doubt myself the truth of these words. There was nothing we could do till he was assessed in several hour's time and then a decision would have to be made as to whether I would be driving to the small city where they took Hubby. We went back to bed having only slept a few hours before our rest had been greatly interupted. Facing a drive on three hours of sleep is not my idea of fun and to my surprise I did sleep... some.....

At 8:30 a.m. I called the hospital only to be told that Hubby was being released after having received medication in the form of pain killers, muscle relaxants and anti-inflammatories. With the Daughters not getting a lot of sleep, I decided they could stay home from school and so together we drove to the hospital to pick up Hubby.

He is home and hopefully staying that way. He sleeps a lot, having tons of medication in him. He seems to be getting around ok but there is still a nagging pain in one hip. Hopefully a week of bedrest and the pain killers will get him on his feet again, enough to get him back to work.

It has been a worry and not to mention a great endurance for all of us as well. The freezing cold temperatures have not let up and I am frankly tired of freezing my buns off. I have hauled water, fed animals, hauled more water, fed more animals all with great difficulty and planning in order to make it all work. I have not got the physical strength that Hubby had and so I have had to figure out ways of doing things that he would do without a thought. I can not lift and carry the way he can and so I am compensating. So far I have been successful in all that I have done. I only haul water in the middle of the day when it is warmest that way the hose on the tank doesn't freeze. A frozen hose would be a major catastrophe let me tell you. It would involve lifting a 200lb tank out of the back of the truck which I am pretty incapable of doing. Feeding animals is an ongoing battle. To fork hay over fenses is never easy.

My greatest success to this point though was bringing home our lost llama. Honeydew the llama got out of our paddock in September and has been, dispite our best efforts, avoiding capture for nearly 4 months. On Friday I was able to bring her home. That's a story onto itself, which I will probably write about in a day or two.

Friends have been so helpful and we appreciate all that everyone has done to help us. It is what makes living in a small town so wonderful..... people help others when they are in a pinch. We have had our share of help. We have our share of friends.

Hubby is getting frustrated with staying in bed but stay there he will until I allow him to go see the doctor in a week's time. If the doctor says he can go back to school then he can go but not before. Until then I will keep on doing what I do best and that is managing, and he will just have to suck it up Buttercup....

Upright Again

Hubby is on his feet. This is good. He is upright like a vaccuum cleaner again. He actually crawled downstairs so that he could have a change of atmosphere. But since then he has actually made it across the living room on his feet. Like I said, this is good. Hubby is the kind of person who finds sitting indoors for more than a day is a horror. He likes to get out doors and shovel snow. He likes to do things and doing them out doors is all the better. Laying in bed for two days is just about killing him. I know because he is figeting and he read Pride and Prejudice. This is a major indicator that he is bored.

I'm don't care. When you watch your husband slither across the floor because he can't stand up no matter how many jokes he cracks, it is a scarey thing. I don't care if it takes two or three or four weeks just as long as he is able to function again. Crawling is scarey slithering is scarier. Upright is good! Now all we have to do is get him past turtle speed. Bed rest is good, obviously I'm going to have to get him some books. Oh well, knit night is tomorrow night... maybe I can get him some books then..... it is held in the reading room of the library.

By the way Dad has his chair. Electric wiz... way cool as Daughter #2 said.

2009 Starts With Bang... I'm Dead

So remember the post yesterday of the glum faced Husband standing upright.... you know like a vacuum cleaner? If you can't remember have a quick look. Ok. So you've had a look and now you remember. Well here he is today. He can't stand up. Not only can he not stand up he cannot walk. He is now an invalid.

For the last two weeks Hubby has been fighting a problem with his back. He has a slipped disc and is supposed to have an appointment with a surgeon in April. This was fine until while horking hay on the 27th he hurt his back and decided that taking it easy might be the ticket. His back started to improve over the next few days and then he sneezed on New years Eve Day and really did it in. But he was still mobile. Last night his aching back died... and I mean died. He went upstairs and lay down before supper and when he got up to go to the bathroom his hips would not support him and he couldn't walk. Problem is he would not listen to his body and so proceeded to get half way down the stairs before his back totally died. I managed to get him to the bathroom with the help of my great grandfathers cane but that is where the buck stopped. He colapsed on the floor, flat on his stomach with his pants still around his knees. This was terrible as the Daughters would need therapy if they caught sight of his nether regions. I managed to get his pants and gaunchies off and his PJ bottoms on him with much laughter and groans of pain. Then with comments of how he was feeling very snake like today he slithered on his belly as far as the computer chair. Tootsie our small Shi-Tzu decided that this was some kind of game and proceeded to lick Hubby's face thoroughly. When he got to the computer chair he managed to get to his hands and knees. Then very carefully and very slowly he crawled to the bedroom. He has been there ever since.

Robaxacet is our friend and we are happy to have it come and stay with us for the next while. But Robaxacet can only help Hubby. I am now the sole farmer in the house. This is not necessarily a good thing since only five years ago I had surgery for a slipped disc myself. I know my limitations. Horking hay day after day in - 40 temps is not conducive to good health in my back either. Meanwhile Honeydew the runnawy llama is now caught but at the rodeo grounds where she is not welcome to stay. I have to get her home and I can't back a trailer for love or money. How this is going to happen I haven't quite gotten my mind around yet.

Then there is Dad, my Dad, who is requiring support too. Hubby and I bought him an electric recliner with a lift to help support him with his back and heart problems. The chair arrived at the local Sears outlet yesterday and so I have to figure out how to get that to their home without doing myself in. This should be interesting..... Stay tuned.....

Glum Faces

I might hate Christmas but I love Christmas break. With Hubby a teacher and the Daughters still in school the school year dictates how we live. Today is the first day of school after a two week Christmas vacation and no one is happy.
The morning started with the cat biting me when he decided to wake the girls up early. Something that is certainly not welcome. Then waking the girls at 7 a.m. was not pleasant. Daughter #2 got saucy with her Dad and had to be reprimanded and I had to make lunches. This is never a good thing. I hate making lunches.

With the school dictating our year, we find that celebrating New Year's on Jan 1st with the rest of the world does not fire us up. We are more likely to have a celebration at the end of June than we are at the end of January. Our year begins in September, the Tuesday after Labour Day weekend. Our most wonderful vacation is summer vacation when we can give up the misery of waking early and making lunches and can fully particpate in life. We also enjoy spring break. Christmas is just a much needed rest after a fall of exhausting work, colds and stomach ailments, report cards, homework, and those dreaded lunches.... still it is a break and I for one am not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

So to all the teachers out there wo are heading back to school and to the kids who are their children and especially to the Mom's of those kids, the wives of those husbands..... we salute you! Just remember there are only 112 days of school left. Yeah!

Movies Galore

We are into the movie time of Christmas vacation. I love watching movies and with the temperatures making it unbearable to go out for any length of time, we have taken to glueing ourselves in front of the TV. In the last few days we have watched lots of movies. Hubby can only take movies so much before he starts to get a little on the loonie side so while it has been a marathon of movies it hasn't been our best marathon by any stretch of the imagination.

We watched 88 Minutes last night with Al Pacino. It was a fast paced murder mystery that I would say was high on tension and well done but the plot was nothing extraordinary. Before that we watched Raising Helen which was a light hearted transition movie. On a scale of 1 - 10 it rated about 6. Typical story of a person who goes through life changes and realizes that she likes the changes in the end.

We watched Dutchess which is a period piece with Kiera Knightly. Quite well done based on a true story. Before that was Grease 2 Bleck! But it passed the time and you need a good mix of things to entertain you. Before that was Pirates of the Caribean.... we've seen it about 30 times now. Before that was Vanity Fair with Reece Weatherspoon. Well done period piece again. How did those women back then ever put up with their slavery to men? Beats me. Then it was Girls Just Want To Have Fun which made me feel old because Helen Hunt was about fourteen years old in it as was Sarah Jessica Parker. Very corny movie super for teens. Before that was Hilary Duff in Raise Your Voice. The girls liked that one since it was a typical teeny bopper movie. Before that was Prince Caspian which strayed from the booksomewhat. I would think that it would make C.S. Lewis turn over in his grave but I liked it all the same. I'm a complete fan of the Narnia series of books. So today we are going to watch Leatherheads which is a story about Football in the thirties....

If you have suggestions for movies that you have watched let me know as I would love to get your opinion on good movies. Just leave your opinion in the comments area of this post.

Holy Sheep! It's cold!

I look out my kitchen window and cringe at the mercury dropping. It is a whopping -37 this morning and then I go to my living room window and look out at my poor sheep and alpacas who are suffering in these bitter temperatures. Hubby went out a few days ago and built the alpacas a windbreak with square bails of hail. They seem to quite like it. But they are cold. They are very cold. Even with those wonderfully warm blankets of wool covering their bodies they must still suffer from the cold. We feed them twice a day but sometimes food doesn't make you warm. The sheep are not interested in the barn at all which is what I figured. It will come in handy down the road in spring when we are lambing.

I'm sure humankind was not meant for these kind of temperatures. Like lizards we should know our place and stay in warmer climates. I could definitely relate to a lizard on a rock in some tropical locale with my back roasting in the sun. Open my lips and stick out my tongue and grab a bite as it flies by. Nourishment, warmth and relaxation all combine to make the perfect life. I'm sure my alpacas were trying to tell me the same thing this morning as I fed them their daily quota of clover.

I wonder if it is these extreme cold temperatures which we have to endure each year that makes spinners and weavers so in love with their woolies. I can't imagine how spinners and weavers in the southern climes can manage to justify their fixation on fleece when they don't have cold temps to use as an excuse. "Darling I need to knit myself a new alpaca bikini." just doesn't sound as good as, "Dear, think how lovely that alpaca hat with the ear flaps will feel when the temperature dips to -40 next winter."

I also want to know if Murphy came to visit your house this festive season too. I mean the kids have been off from school for two weeks and I am wondering why the week they finished school the temperatures dipped below -20 and stayed there the whole time they have been off from school. Monday the schedule gets back to normal and the kids will be back in school. I just checked the forecast and the temperatures are supposed to start rising again... back up to minus single digits. So the poor teachers are going to get wired kids that have not been out through the door for two weeks and have had lots of Christmas chocolate. Murphy is certainly not their best friend either.

The one thing I can safely say is.... thank God the days are getting longer. Hopefully January will pass quickly and the temps will come around to something a little happier.

By the way.... what do you think of the blue and yellow of my blog for these frigid days of winter?

Happy hibernating to all..... I'm off to work on my alpaca sox to keep my toesies warm.

A Nice Break

Well It has been a week since I last posted anything here and I'm starting to feel like I'm having DTs. Christmas has always been a trying time at best and to be honest I'm glad it is over. All the entertaining is done. And while I love to cook for my guests I always feel like a bulldozer has run over me when I'm finished.

By the way Happy New Year to all those who read this. Last night I entertained my last guests for the season. Eight of the Candian Rangers came to my house for supper on their way through to FSJ on a recce for a snowmobile trip that will happen in late January. Eight burly men with my family of four meant a very tight squeeze in my very tiny little house. It all went off well. I served Lake Trout in white wine and sauted veggies with the good old standard of mashed spuds for the main course. With Raisin, Cranberry, Bread Pudding with Bailey's in it for dessert, no belly felt empty afterwords. I think they enjoyed it and were most appreciative that they didn't have to eat sandwiches from a package that they got at a service station since there were no restaurants open on New Year's Eve in our little town. They were out the door by 9 p.m. which meant that my family was able to ring in the New Year with just ourselves. How perfect is that!

There has been a lot of entertaining here over the last week like most people, I'm sure. We had a open house on the 29th that started at 9 a.m. and ended at midnight. We entertained many of our friends that day. Hubby and I enjoyed our 17th anniversary in the last week too. While we didn't do anything spectacular (we will plan something great later in the spring) we did have a good day. Entertainment wise though, the day that stood out as the best was the 27th when a close friend of mine and her DH came for dinner and we had a lovely time with them. Before that there were wonderful gifts under the tree, though Hubby's still haven't arrived in the mail..... but that's a whole other post. Christmas dinner was held at my parents house as my father was not well enough to come to my house. We cooked the turkey and lugged the great big thing in to their house while they cooked the vegetables.

Hubby is off with the Canadian Rangers for FSJ today and I'm not sure if he will be back tonight but I'm taking the leftovers to the parents house to spend the afternoon with them. We have a couple of evenings out with friends at their house over the next few days and then we will celebrate Old Christmas Day on the 6th. That rounds out the festive season quite nicely. The tree will come down on the 6th as it always does. We will hang our antique stockings on the 5th so that we will have them to open before school. Then when everyone is home in the evening we will have Christmas carols on the stereo, a nice cooked pork roast with dessert for dinner, open our gifts and take down the tree and decorations. The house is put back to rights and Christmas is forgotten for another year. I actually have come to enjoy Old Christmas Day better than the 25th of December. It is much more peaceful. Probably because there is no pressure and no expectation. I always save some Christmas presents for that day and of course we open tiny stockings that have nothing other than sweets in them. The shopping is done before Christmas so no rushing in stores when you really don't want to be there.

We started this family tradition about two years ago when the daughters discovered that Santa had forgotten to remove the boxes with the bills still attached that their gifts had come in. "How could that be when Santa made the gifts at the North Pole?"

Let me tell you it is very difficult to watch the magic of Christmas crumble on your child's face when they find the boxes and receipts for the gifts Santa had supposedly brought. The truth came out and while Daughter #1 was ready for the truth at 11 yrs of age.... Daughter #2 was not at 9 yrs of age. Christmas had been ruined pretty much, and so we decided to make Old Christmas day magic, celebrating it as a more special day than the 25th, remembering that Santa was not what Christmas was truely about but the Baby Jesus and nobody really knows what day He was born on. Old Christmas day is also the same as Ukranian Christmas. I think it stems from the orthodox tradition. It is most commonly known as the 12th day of Christmas.

What ever your traditions are, I hope that you have enjoyed the celebrations and from my family to you, ALL THE BEST FOR 2009!