Huh?... How Did That Happen

How do two days pass you by in a blinding rush... One day it was Friday and then all of a sudden it was Sunday night and I'm wondering how the heck I got here....

OK lets see... it has been a really busy weekend.... I'm planning a party for next weekend... it's a party for one of my guild members who is moving away and I'll probably never see her again..... waaaah!

I had service this morning at church and that came off very well considering that the organist was not able to be there.... we used taped music....

I spun and wrote and tabulated and respun and labeled all day yesterday on homework for the level 3 of the Master Spinners..... it's all going according to plan.... tonight I will have one third finished..... woo hoo... then it is back to the big j.c..... two weeks to finish it.

Then Hubby has been butchering and shearing lambs all weekend.... I sold the fleeces right away.... how did that happen you ask? Well I advertised them to my guild members.... and that was that, in three minutes flat.... I had my fleeces sold. I have one tucked away for moi..... The ewe and ram fleeces will be available later in the spring.... I'm hoping they will sell just as fast.... but then you never know... I still have a few of last years fleeces roaming around in the shed. But I'll keep them for the mill. I helped Hubby label and grade the fleeces too.

I finished a bracelet and necklace for myself which I have been wanting to do for a while I still have a necklace for myself to finish.... it has a pendant that has a blade for cutting thread or yarn. Then I have the bracelet for a choker and bracelet set done I just ran out of strand to finish the choker.... I'll get some next time I'm in town....

So as you can see it has been a busy two days... Hubby just left to go to work. He will be working until late tonight which is odd since Hubby is a teacher and usually he works by day. But this is report card week so he will be working late each day until he is done. Daughter #1 is catching Daughter #2's cold and Daughter #2 is studying for a test tomorrow that she missed last week while she was home from school.

Spring is definitely in the air... the deck is clear of snow and everything is turning to ice in the driveway. There is only 3 weeks left before the spring equinox...it soon will be planting time.

I planted cotton seeds a while ago but they never did grow. I was really hopeful that I had something growing when a green shoot popped through the ground but it turned out to be a weed... no cotton... : ( but then what did I expect... we do live far too North for cotton to grow. Speaking of cotton .... I had better go spin some... and weave the last of my silk for my distaff....
That is if I want to be at the 1/3 mark.....

The Well Being Of All

It has been a bad morning for Daughter #1. She had a great time yesterday on the ski slopes but today she is suffering. Daughter #1 went skiing with the work ethics honour group and this is something she has never done before. She used muscles that she normally doesn't use. She is moving very slowly and frankly she is having a hard time not crying because it hurts so bad. Red eyes an swollen nose and she's walking like a zombie. I think she's really wanting a day home with Mom.... she ain't getting it!

Daughter #2 is in bed.... she has a snarky cold. She also has a red nose and red eyes.... but for different reasons. It's going around the school so they tell me. She has been home for two days but hopefully will be able to go back to school on Monday.

Duffy has a sore eye. I took her to the vet two weeks ago and he put her on steroids... then her face swelled up and it got so bad that she couldn't get her eyes open.... we took her off the steroids and her face started to go back to normal.... but when her face stopped swelling there was a huge lump over the bad eye.... I was just going to call the vet for an appointment again when she broke it open and out came a lot of disgusting pus.... obviously a misdiagnosis. So we are putting peroxide on it in an effort to clear up what ever infection was there.

Tootsie is fine. In serious ball crisis... since we were so irritated with him staring at us to play ball with him that he got his ball taken away till the snow melt and he can play outdoors.

The animals are all fine. The ewes are starting to have that pregnant look. I am expecting the first lambs in just over a month. Ahhh lambing season.

The cats..... well they're their usual irritating selves....

Hubby is fine.

Me too.

This post is entirely for the folks home who read solely just to catch up on how we all are.....

Tomorrow I should have a post about silk.....and how to spin hankies. I'm dyeing a bunch of them today...... if I can just find the vinegar..... hmmm... what the heck did I do with that stuff...

Life Long Learning

Sometimes things just work out.... don't you love it when that happens. Yesterday I didn't write here because I was nowhere near a computer. Hubby just happened to be going into FSJ for a day of workshops and there just happened to be a spinning day at the house of one of he guild members. I took Hubby up on the drive to the home of my friend where we conferred about the level 3 homework.... (we did this before heading to the home of the guild member who was having the spinning day).....she is doing her Master Spinner certification too. It is great having someone with whom you can bounce ideas around. I think she may go on to do her Master Weaver certification while I'll probably go looking for further spinning certification..... maybe the Australian certification which I have looked into.... who knows. All I know is that I want to be the best that I can be at spinning... that doesn't make me any better or any worse than anyone else it just makes me want to excel as much as I can in what I do. It's not that I want to be famous like Judith MacKensie McCuin, (although that wouldn't hurt) but I just want to feel like what I do is the best... so I strive and sometimes it is a kick in the pants when you finish a question and you know it can be better but you don't have time to go back and fool with it anymore. When I finished my level 1 homework I still felt that I could have worked on it some more to get it right. The same thing happened when I finished my level 2 homework.... and that one really ate at me since my mark was a .5 less than my low goal.... it truly frustrates when you work really hard and you don't even make your low goal.

This year my goal is to make 86 as my low goal and 95 my high goal.... and I already blew the high goal when I got a 88% in my classroom exam. My friend got 100% her first year to my 97% then she got 97% to my 89% in level 2 (I should have gotten higher than this but blew two questions with less than the 10 metre skeins required.... Mine were 8 and 9.5 metres respectively. It was my own fault because I should have remeasured my skeins after they were washed... as a result I got a big fat 0 for those two questions just because I handed in less than the required amount.... regardless of the fact that I should have gotten marks for the written part of the question) and we'll see what happens in level 3... hmmm... but 88% for the classroom test was not a good beginning. I hate knowing I lost marks due to some stupid mistake on my part. (On my test I had a brain freeze and said that 9 x 5 is 36 instead of 9 x 4 is 36.... see.... dumb eh?) Every time I lose marks it's because of stupid mistakes. That's why the other night I looked at my knitted sample and felt it wasn't good enough.... so I raveled it out and did a different sample.... I can't show pictures though since Hubby seems to have hidden his camera and mine had the batteries just die. The new knitted sample is awesome. I may redo my woven sample too.... I'm just not satisfied with it!

Spinning is like that..... you can spend an entire lifetime trying to make one sample perfect. But in the end time is the issue..... that is why I'm disappointed to say that after level 6 in the Olds Master Spinner program I will not be able to go further unless I go to some other spinning program. I really wish there was a Doctorate to earn in spinning.... I'd do it in an instant..... then I would be a Spin Doctor (har har... pun intended.... ). Really life long learning is cool and my thing is learning spinning.

The Olds program is awesome.... but the Olds program is finite. There are only 6 levels in the Master certification program..... I'm already at level 3, and 4 is looming.... yes I use the word looming not because I'm dreading it.... (although I study flax and linen this year and that is a little scary) but I'm dreading it because I am one step closer to being finished. (Boo hiss hiss!) Maybe I'll just register again for level 1 under a different name and go through the whole process again..... think they'll notice?!!

I think I could have been a permanent student..... My motto should be..... "Life Long Learning.... Boom Chakalakalaka!"

Anyway, as a result of yesterday's spinning day.... I've turned some people on to silk hankies which I was spinning. I will be spinning more today... and then I'm weaving them for a distaff.... It is looking..... well quite frankly WOW! I can't wait to finish it. And hopefully I'll have located the charger, charged my batteries and be able to post some pics here. Now what did I do with the silk hankies I pre-drafted last night.

Short Post

Today will be a short post as I really want to get some things done on my level 3 homework. Yesterday it took me all morning and part of the afternoon to get all the pictures from the weekend uploaded and on the blog. I am on dial up and it takes forever to upload pictures. So even though, I did get some work done on the level 3 homework, it's not as much as I wanted. I did some writing up for some of the questions that I have finished and I did some washing of my samples, so now I want to mount them and get on with two other questions that are in a bit of a limbo but would take very little work to finish them and I could have them done this week. The nice thing is that I surprisingly discovered that by the end of the week, with all my write ups done I will have 1/3 of my questions finished. And I thought I was getting nothing done! How quickly it all adds up. Next week though I will have to get back to the big j.c. Time creeps onward and there is no doubt that I want the Big j.c. done by the time mid March rolls around and the lady who commissioned it is back from South Africa. I screwed up the date the first time and I sure don't want to do that again. I also don't want to feel that kind of pressure ever again.

It is a foggy and very icky day today so a good day to stay in and work, work, work..... which is what I am off to do now.... Pops might come by later for a cup of tea so I had better get down to it....

Awesome Retreat

I am back from the Blueberry! What a great weekend..... I got lots done.... of course I didn't sleep hardly at all.... about 4 hours a night.... but that's ok because I had a blast!! I finished my mawata.... (I'll tell you all about that)... I finished my silk/cotton sample... (I'll tell you all about that)... I did a little toward my cotton on the Charkha sample.... (I'll tell you all about that).... and I started on my cabled yarn for my wrist distaff.... (I'll tell you all about that too)! Quite a bit of the work I did was for my level 3 homework, and I am starting to feel a whole lot better about that. The food was awesome and I was a little worried that I had gone easy in organizing the food and not had people bring enough...... yeah! right! like that is likely! These ladies never bring too little food. We eat like sheiks and we wouldn't do better aboard a cruise ship! We even had 4 cakes...(one was a birthday cake). You can't beat that! It was sunny and beautiful with excellent roads for traveling and I even sat out on the deck in short sleeves and NO SOCKS on Saturday and spun for a while. Except last year, (when I went to Victoria for a conference) I've been going to the Blueberry retreat for seven years. I love our annual Blueberry retreat.

I started work as soon as I got there hemming a shawl that I had woven last summer which I showed you pics of a while back. That didn't take long and so I then started working on my commercial silk hankies which are colourful and bright and a whole lot of fun to spin. I spun about six of them and then plied them, and then they were so fine that I thought a cabled yarn would be nice..... so I re-plied them so that there would be lots of energy in the yarn and then cabled them..... (this is probably too technical for you non-spinners but bare with me and I'll be talking about normal stuff in a little bit). I loved the cabled yarn from silk hankies
and suddenly I thought this would be great for my cabled yarn question for my level 3 homework...... I will talk some more about this in a little while.... One of the ladies who was at the retreat has been learning Chi Gong and so she took us all into the other room and taught us a little Chi Gong.... exercises are good when you eat lots and sit lots... laughing is good exercise.... but Chi Gong gets you up and moving. : )

I went to my room and pitched my sleeping bag and crashed with the full intention of sleeping well..... but..... that didn't happen.... by 4:48 a.m. I was wide awake and dying of thirst. Heat control is an issue at the Blueberry. The people who run the Blueberry lodge decided a few years ago to put in one of those huge wood heat systems where the fire box is in its own building and wow... can that produce heat. I have learned not to bring long sleeve anything with me because I just about die from the heat..... and drink..... I suck back huge quantities of water while there in an effort to stave off dehydration. I still come home with my lips chapped and skin itchy from dryness. Anyway.... in the middle of the night I had to go visit the water cooler and ended up drinking almost a litre of water. I did go back to sleep but not for very long before I heard people up and moving around so I got up too. There was a lady downstairs making coffee and boy was that stuff strong. Even with milk in it, it looked like tar..... but that wasn't a bad thing... after a night with very little sleep good strong coffee perks you up.

Saturday I decided to leave off spinning silk hankies.... I already had a nice bit done and I really wanted to work on my silk and cotton sample. I had chosen to use Supima combed cotton rovings and Bombyx silk rovings for my blend. Both of these fibres are the supreme top quality preparations, I think, for their fibre types. I was looking for a cotton yarn with and sheen almost like mercerized cotton. Well this took a little fiddling since when you blend, staple length is an issue and cotton is way shorter than Bombyx silk so with scissors in hand I cut the silk..... (believe me I had to cringe each time I snipped!) Then I weighed it and measured it to get a 50/50% blend. Then I tried combing it but that didn't work so I carded it with my Ashford all purpose/cotton cards.... and made punis.... (sorry to you folks who have no clue what I am talking about) I spun it with a point of contact drafting method and by the end of the day I had a fairly consistent 3 ply yarn.... which disappointingly had less sheen than I wanted.... that is, till the sun shone on it the next morning. This isn't a very god picture...

It is quite nice. Meanwhile while this was going on I cooked a ham for supper in the kitchen and made a blue mawata. One of my fellow Master Spinners students who is in level 3, had decided we should make a mawata while at the Blueberry and I was all for having company for this dastardly job. A mawata is a way of preparing silk from a cocoon for spinning. You have to boil water with washing soda and soap in it and then soak your silk cocoons until they soften and then pick out the worm and poop and then stretch the cocoon out over a square frame into a shape that looks like a hankie. My cocoons had been previously dyed blue in a mason jar on my deck in the summer sun a few years ago. So I have a blue mawata.
The whole process is a nasty job and though generally I'm not squeamish this is one job that totally disgusts me. The worm is bad enough but the poop is just plain gross! Anyway, I now have that done too. Once it was rinsed in water and vinegar I left it to dry.

After not sleeping much on Friday night I got pretty tired along around mid afternoon so I went and crashed for twenty minutes.... not long but long enough. When I came back downstairs... some of the ladies had moved to the deck to spin so I did too. It was simply divine to sit out in the sun after a long cold winter and spin and chat with no socks... it reminded me that I am so lucky to live in Northern Canada, and it reminded me that spring is coming, and it reminded me how good it is to have friends that you enjoy being with, and it reminded me of how nice bare feet are! There was a dog hanging out at the Blueberry..... I think he belonged to the caretaker and there was something so casual and satisfying about spinning in the sun... friends to chat with and dog by my side with a gorgeous view out over the valley, some might call it contentment.

Sunday started very early. I woke at 5 a.m. and remembered that I hadn't washed the shawl that I had hemmed on Friday night. I figured I had better do that. So I got up and washed a shawl long before anyone woke up and then I hung it out on the rail on the deck to drip.... the dog was there so we bonded for a few minutes and then I asked him not to lift his leg against my shawl... no worries there since he is a very well mannered dog. Later, I was showing my Charkha to anyone interested, when I realized that I had enough cotton spun in singles that I could use it for the sample I have to do on a Charkha or quill wheel. I just have to ply it today and I'm done.
For the rest of Sunday I spun jewel toned commercial silk hankies so I just need to finish that today as well, and do some writing... label it all and then mount it in my binder. I feel very satisfied that I worked well at the retreat and got lots done.

I really could have stayed another day but that was not to be..... when I got home I realized that the only person I never got pics of was the gal I traveled with.... how dumb.

So here are some pics from the weekend.....

We spun....

in the sun....



We wove....




We felted....


We knit and we chatted....

And worked....


We cooked....


We ate...




We partied..... and some of us were surprised......




And when all was said and done.... we left.... sadly.... to wait for another year.

Spring Is In The Air

I think, at least it seems to be mind you there are no flowers yet..... but the snow on the roof goes drip, drip, drip, everyday and I am starting to walk around during the day fully dressed without socks...... now that really says spring to me.

Yesterday I picked myself up again and had a lovely afternoon sitting here in the sunshine with a movie on (The Da Vinci Code) and some silk for spinning. The silk that I dragged out of my stash turned out not to be green undulating to purple but two separate batches of rovings.... green undulating to gold and purple undulating to beige..... I chose the purple and it turned out lovely though not quite as colourful as I thought. I finished my knitted sample last night and am now washing and blocking it. The skein is labeled and ready to go in the book. I am also setting in my book the woven sample from a few weeks ago...


I have the write up done but I didn't print it and actually put it into my binder so that will be one of my many jobs to do today. I also want to card rolags today with Bombyx silk and Pima cotton for the silk/cotton sample... I would like to do that sample over the weekend at the retreat.

Ah yes... the retreat...... Tomorrow I am headed off to the Blueberry for a short retreat. I will be spending the weekend in a log lodge north of FSJ overlooking a river (frozen) and spinning and laughing etc.... I am taking black alpaca for spinning for the big j.c., the Bombyx and Pima rolags if I can finish it today and silk coccoons for a mawatta. I will also take those damn lace gloves that I have been working on since Judas was in diapers. Who knows.... I might even get some of it done!

I have been in charge of food for the Blueberry retreat this year and am going to have to do some cooking today. Pub night on Friday night and no we won't be drinking.... just eating pub style food..... Breakfast is a whatever you can drum up affair.... Saturday lunch is soups and buns..... Saturday night is ham and scalloped potatoes..... Sunday is always a "must go" day..... The log lodge is a great place to have a retreat because they have individual rooms, showers ( a must), and a huge room in which to set up your spinning and weaving junk and spread out completely.

So I guess I had better get to it.

Silk And A Little Something

I started spinning Tussah silk a while ago for my silk knitted sample but last night I was tired of a colourless life after the last few weeks of black, and so I dug through my stash and found some nice green silk that undulates into a purple and I thought that's just the ticket. So this morning I got out my spinning wheel and got everything together for a day of spinning with colour (and shiny colour too)!

About five years ago I started having odd dizzy spells that really made me tired. I'd get them for two or three days and then it would clear up and leave me feeling a little tired but not really any the worse for wear.... after a while I was getting them so frequently that I thought a trip to the doctor was in order. He said that it wasn't anything serious, that it was an inbalance of fluid in my inner ear, and that there was nothing to do but wait them out and go on with life. Sunday morning I woke with my balance all screwed up and so I lay low for the day..... Monday wasn't a whole lot better..... Tuesday was better but not much.... today I am finally starting to feel a little better.... but at times like this I generally stay close to home and and don't stray far since driving with things spinning around you is not a great idea. So a day home with some silk to spin is just what I'm looking forward to.... if it gets sunny I will pick off the pocket on the big j.c. since black thread on a woolen fabric is not easy to see..... (a sign that I'm getting older ; 0)

Down time is what I have needed after beating myself out and up last week. I have been doing a little reading in the last few days... funny.... Daughter #2 has been reading youth books by an author of the name Sarah Dessen so in the interests of checking up on what the Daughters are reading these days, I picked up one of her books and read it. Actually it was quite good. A basic teen romance/find yourself kind of book..... typical of the books I got into when I was the same age. But even for an old gal (I've been feeling pretty old the last little while) these books have something to say (although the author does tend to put parents in a bad light generally)... it reminds you of how very difficult it is to find your place in the world and accept that you are not a princess and may never be famous..... and that is ok. After I read the first one I thought maybe I'll read another.... and that one was good too.... same message just in a different package. It's kind of nice to have a reminder that you can fall down and it is ok just so long as you pick yourself right back up and keep on going....

I'd forgotten that...

So silk today and who knows what tomorrow will bring....

Play

Sometimes it is just fun to play and relax. Sometimes you need to do that.... it's called rejuvenation.

It is good.

Going Forward

Hi! I'm back after a day of relaxation yesterday.... a nice lunch out with my Hubby for Valentine's day and back home for a really long snooze..... I think the stress of the last few weeks finally caught up with me. Today I wasn't able to get my body out of bed.... my back gave out on me... go figure. Spending 15 hours a day over a loom, spinning wheel, or sewing machine will do that to your back. I'm trying really hard to get my train back on its tracks after the derailment of the weekend. It's hard. I'm pretty hard on myself generally and look upon my failures as just that.... failures... but like a Pheonix I always raise up from the ashes... not always better but at least up and running. I have a bunch of fleece washed for spinning for the sleeves that I screwed up and tonight, if my back can hold up I am going to spin a little silk for my knitted sample for my level 3 homework. I also need to do the write up for the silk woven sample which turned out to be a study of two different spinning techniques. I'm pretty happy with that actually.

We had an awesome day today, weatherwise. The temperatures soared. At one point the water was dripping off the eaves and snow was falling from the roof in clumps. Even now as it heads for 7 p.m. the sky is a lovely shade of blue and it really lifts the heart. It gives me such pleasure to know that we are having a lovely lull in the cold temperatures of winter. I've been watching the birds that have been visiting our bird feeders and I am really enjoying their antics. One day I watched a bunch of Red Polls on the snowy roof of our shed.... they were playing chase in the snow and it was really cute to watch.

It's been a strange few days though, as Hubby, being a wonderful man, has stepped in to allow me plenty of time to work on the big j.c. It's hard coming down off the ride and getting back to the schedule of a normal household, but indeed that is what has to happen and at the same time I cannot let the big j.c. go yet... I still have work to do.... I still am having trouble trying to get my pictures up and posted.... I just don't have the heart to look at them yet but maybe tomorrow. I think a little positive work on the big j.c. might spur me to have a better feeling about it all.... Hubby says baby steps, so baby steps it will be.... wash fleece that's a start.... I have to take off one pocket and resew it as I am not happy with it's placement.... it is slightly askew and while most people wouldn't notice I do and I am not happy with that.... so I will do that and of course I still love spinning so that is always something to enjoy. When you fall off the horse..... get back on and keep riding.... so I guess that's what I will do.... I guess I just need to wear a helmet!

The Big j.c. Saga

Arggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Damn.... are you getting the drift on whether I finished or not???!!! Yup... my friend who commissioned the big j.c. is winging her way to South Africa less one jacket. I can't think of it without feeling like a total failure. I worked so hard and about 8 p.m. last night everything was coming together nicely and then I went to full the sleeves. I had already fulled the fabric for the rest of the jacket and it had turned out really well. Now I'll be honest... I have not got a lot of experience with weaving.... I keep saying that I am not a weaver and that I have tons to learn about weaving so with that in mind I hope you will read my tale of woe with an open mind, and not judge me harshly.

Yesterday afternoon I started cutting the fabric I had spun and woven for this great project..... I stared sewing and it was looking great. I had been weaving the last little bit of fabric all morning.... but I felt I needed to full the woven fabric first.... I mean lets face it all the great weavers say it is not fabric until it is fulled.... Fulling is a process of washing the fabric so that the individual warp and weft threads will bite together and actually cling so that the fabric has more of a face, with that in mind I called my friend in FSJ who has way more experience than I do.... and she said..... (this is important)..... "when you full you have to stand by the washer and check it carefully and often because in a matter of a few seconds it can go from being fulled to a felted mess in no time, make sure you watch it really carefully!".... are you getting the idea yet..... no...... well let me enlighten you...

So I am almost finished putting the jacket together last night and all I needed to do was full the fabric for the sleeves.... the sleeves, that was it.... I checked it after four minutes and it was looking good but not quite as nice as the body of the jacket, which had been fulled earlier in the day. It needed a little more fulling. I popped it into the washer and went to pee...... just pee (which I was really needing to do).... that's all.... I came back and checked to see the progress and just like that .... felt! I now had no sleeves and no more fabric to finish them.... yup..... pee ruined my jacket. Just like that I was out of the running to meet my deadline. I wanted to jump off the nearest cliff. Six weeks for a vest and a lump of felt, instead of a beautiful jacket. I called my friend to tell her the bad news. She was so gracious about it and I even woke her up.... double whammy. As a result I have one month to finish the sleeves so that when she gets back from South Africa she can send her Mom a jacket with sleeves for the South African winter, instead of taking it with her...... And I have to wash more fleece, card more fleece, spin more fleece into yarn.... and then weave sleeves for the said jacket....

I have loads of pictures to show but I just don't have the heart today to post them..... I'm just going to post one.... and that's the one of my sleeveless jacket so that she can show her Mom what she will be getting some time in April... here it is.... I think I'll go cry some more, while you have a look.....

I'm Having My Doubts

Ok I'm in a crunch.... I shouldn't even be taking the time to write this but here I am... I have terrible shoulder pain from leaning over the damn loom.... oops I not supposed to say that but I am so tired I don't care....

I was working on the big j.c. last night till 11:30 and back at it again at 6 a.m. this morning.... I have a lot of weaving to do today but it is looking good....really good! I spent the day spinning yesterday and setting up the warp on the other eight harness loom. This morning I started weaving and so far so good.... but I'm down to the wire on time and it will take all of my skill and effort to get this done. I am listening to The Book Of Negroes on CBC podcasts..... while I work and it really does help me concentrate on what I am doing.

I must say though that if anything goes wrong today .... and I mean anything.... even a phone call at a bad time will screw up any hopes of getting this done. So I am off to work and listen to my Book Of Negroes podcast and turn off the radio because I am sick of listening to Olympic stuff.... Blah!

Wish me luck.... I'll need it!

Onward And Upward With The Big j.c.

"Kick the dark till it bleeds daylight." I love that line. The only way it could be better is if I said, kick the dark till it bleeds sunshine. It is from one of the Bare Naked Ladies tunes. I'm starting to think that I should have been an Egyptian.... I would have worshiped Ra the sun god. Ah well.... only a few weeks and we will be into the spring.... woo hoo!

So here it stands.... I'm taking the three bottom panels off the loom today. (Actually I just did.) I just finished them last night and 11:30 p.m. after working like a demon all day.
Can you tell that I was really tired... I felt rather like a blob! It looks awesome though. I am putting the warp on the other loom today for the sleeves and shoulders. If I can get the bottom fulled and sewn today and with the warp on the other loom and a little weaving done, then I might have a fighting chance at getting this done. I've run out of weft and fleece to spin more and so I just washed a bunch.... it's still soaking. I'll leave it to soak for a half hour and then rinse a few times, before dropping it on the furnace vent. It should be dry by noon. If I can get all the rest of the above done by lunch time..... I'll be a zombie.... I mean happy. : ) The afternoon will have to be devoted to spinning the last of the weft.

I'm like the Little Red Engine..... "I think I can, I think I can... huff, puff..." I might have to pull an all-nighter yet to get this done.... but I am determined...

I think Hubby is thinking that I am demented! Totally and completely! Perhaps.... We will see.

In the meantime.... I just can't get over how nasty is an alpaca fleece. Alpacas roll in the dirt.. they love it and do it a lot and because they don't have grease they are really hard to shear. They go through blades like two per animal.... so when I went to wash out some more fleece today, I thought I should show how much dirt is in the wash water to my blog followers..... so here are a few pictures of fleece water after the fleece came out of the first wash water,
and then there is a bunch of dirt down in the bottom of the sink that looks like this....
..... this picture just does not do justice to it at all.... and the finally this is the little bit of waste that came off the loom after my panels came off last night. This, among most spinners and weavers, would be considered really good, only a very small amount of waste however it really chokes me to know that the waste on the floor is the stuff that I spent hours spinning and washing etc.... argh.... The nice thing is though, that I will be doing a short seminar next month on creative recycling for the spinner and weaver. So I am going to scoop up that stuff on the floor and put it in my waste bag and save it for the day when I get a chance to recycle. Cool!

So there you have it.... the sky is light, the dog is wanting in, my tea is gone, the fleece is soaked and it is time to get down to it baby!.... sorry... that "baby" part was really not cool... o.k... I'm off to work! How's that better? I thought I was reverting there for a moment to the 70's... scary thought indeed!

See ya'll tomorrow.....

Groundhog Day

A week ago Canada had it's annual groundhog day. While the official Groundhog Day is on the 2nd of February, Groundhog Day in this house was just yesterday.... and I'm the groundhog.

You see the sun came out yesterday and a welcome bit of light it was.... I was spinning away for the big j.c. and I suddenly had the desire to check out the temperature. But instead of walking over to the window where we have the thermometre I decided to step out on my deck... I looked out the window and saw that the snow that Hubby had shoveled off the deck was glistening like it might actually be melting in the noonish sunshine. I carefully opened the door and bravely stepped out on the deck. Hmm I thought... then the cold penetrated and I quickly reopened the door and stepped back into my nice warm kitchen..... I think I will stay here for another six weeks!

It's Morning?!! Already?!

I've come to the conclusion that a comfortable mattress might not be such a good thing. The story of our mattress is long and, as with most things in this house, a convoluted one.... and when you hear it you will think we are saints, I'm sure.

Four years ago Hubby and I took a wonderful trip down the river here in our valley. We spent a day packing and getting everything ready to go. Packing for a canoe trip is not easy as you have to make sure that things are packed as small as you can make it and you only take the things that are truly necessary. We had things all over the floor of our living room and it was quite a confused mess here for a while... but eventually we got everything packed and we were ready to go. Pops came to pick us up as the Daughters were staying with them while we were away, and his vehicle was easier to pack up for our trip. We made sure the cat was out (at that time we only had one), and that the dogs were with us. With the back of his van loaded down with tent, water, sleeping bags, food, dishes, paddles and life jackets and with canoe brightly sitting on top in all its yellowness... we headed off to our push-off place at the Landing.

It was a lovely day during an awesome summer of sun and heat.... we packed the canoe once it was in the water, and settled the two dogs in their places, and pushed off, stepping into the canoe as it drifted out into the current. We turned to wave goodbye to the Daughters and Pops and began what was to become one of the most idyllic times of our marriage. It was like a second honeymoon.

It was only after we had paddled about 15 minutes that I realized that I had left my drop spindle and fibre home on the couch and that I would be spending the next three days with nothing to do while Hubby was fishing in the evenings... argh! Hubby was gracious though and since we had to pass by the road that lead to our house he suggested that we could pull in off the river for a half hour while he climbed the hill and headed up the road to our house to retrieve the spindle and fibre for me. Of course I was going to take him up on that!

I sat there enjoying the sun and shortly Hubby returned.... spindle and fibre in hand. We pushed off again and the rest of the three day trip was truly wonderful.

What does this all have to do with our mattress you ask?.... Well, that fateful walk up the hill to the house was more fateful than you can imagine..... while Hubby and I were having our idyllic trip, the cat that we thought was out, had slipped between Hubby's feet when he opened the door and had hid away to an unknowing Hubby. A cat in a house with food and water and no way to get out for three days is not a good thing. As you all know cats like to dig a hole before defecating and we don't use litter.... (I'm allergic to it).... and so it was that after our three day idyll, we opened the door to our very hot house.... (we had plus thirty degrees the whole time we were away).... to smell.... OMG, What A Smell!!!! Plugging my nose I searched the house looking for the terrible mess..... and there it was... poop on our bed.... !

Suffice it to say... three day old poop on a mattress is not conducive to keeping said mattress.... the smell had penetrated.... there was no point in trying to clean it.... we would have had to rip the mattress open to do so. As a result, the mattress made a one way trip to the dump. Hubby and I slept on an air mattress for a couple of nights and then when my back was in terrible anguish I went to the tent trailer and pulled out the foam mattress there.

Surprise surprise the foam mattress from the trailer was more comfortable to sleep on than the one that we had just taken to the dump which was not a cheap mattress by any stretch of the imagination. Well, being summer, and with Hubby a teacher, and pay not being regular, we decided that we could manage on the foam mattress from the trailer until we could afford a new one.

That was four years ago.... and it was only this sumer past that we shelled out the money for a new mattress. When we finally went looking for a mattress we went looking for one of those memory foam ones.... it was not cheap.... but it was well worth the money. My back, which is really sensitive to what I am sleeping on, as is Hubby's (remember last winter?... see previous posts) is really happy with this mattress. Memory foam.... ra ra ra!

Getting up this morning was not easy.... the bed was warm.... the bed was comfortable... the bed was attached to me.... the bed was not letting me go..... Hubby had to give me the boot!

"Waaaah, it's not fair... it can't be morning already......!!!"

Sigh! and so my day begins while all the time, upstairs the mattress has my name on it.... I just want to sleep in occasionally.... well ok maybe every day.....

The Big j.c. (cont.)

It's all I think about anymore. I eat, sleep, and drink the big j.c. I wake up and think about carding fibre for the big j.c. I go to sleep and dream about spinning fibre for the big j.c. I nod off in my chair (from not sleeping well because I'm thinking about the big j.c.) while weaving and it is all about the big j.c. I am starting to picture the big j.c. in its final metamorphous. I'm sure it will look awesome.

The weaving has come along fairly well. I have the bottom panel just about done (I have about 1 inch left) and am working on spinning the weft for the next panel. The warp is still not on the second loom as I have been getting too many interruptions but I will probably get time to do that today.

I think the whole house is sitting with baited breath.... will she or won't she....I'm determined to meet my deadline.

Feb. 13th.... hmmmm....

Bets please!

The Great Big Suck

Teenagers suck! Deer suck! Arguing sucks! Sox suck! Teaching sucks! Snow definitely sucks! Being tired and falling asleep while your watching a movie during a two minute break from weaving sucks! Cold sucks! Sore throats suck! Hay bails that are well wrapped and still tantalize the deer suck! White on the ground and everywhere sucks! Iron grey skies suck! Stinky horsey Daughter #1's suck! Flippant can't tell anything to Daughter #2 suck! Bossy husbands suck! Cats that get under your feet and trip you up suck! Waking earlier than you wanted sucks!

I think I'm ready for a retreat.....
Ahhhh.... the Blueberry Lodge.... coming on a weekend soon.... I'll be one happy spinner and weaver....

Visiting My Blog

I never realized how many people look at pictures of old people doing crazy things.

Since I have my stat counter on the right I am able to check out how many people are visiting Ye Olde Batt and what it is they are looking at.... I have quite a few people who are regular followers and read my blog posts daily. But I also get hits from all around the world with people who are doing Google searches and happen to hit the blog because of some key word. For a while I was getting lots of hits because of the Howard Brush Company Cotton cards that I had done a write up on. The recently I've been getting hits from people who are interested in my article on Argyle socks. But in the last few days I am amazed at how many people want to look at the picture at the bottom of this page of the two old folks sitting on their lawn chairs in quite an interesting situation. I knew when I saw that picture on the web that it was hilarious and I wanted to incorporate it into my blog somehow, even if it is only for a little while. My idea is to change that picture every few months and show some new bizarre picture that reflects my life or what I would like to aim for in my life..... mostly because I like a little bizarre-ness in my life. What would life be if everything were plain and normal. You see I love to laugh. Not just a hoo ha but a belly-wrenching, bend-over-and-touch-your-nose-to-your-knees, gasp-for-breath-after-falling-on-the-floor, laugh!

A few months ago I had a picture in that spot of three ladies obviously three different generations with boob scarves on and I loved that picture too. But when I saw the one of the two old folks sitting in their chairs with such interesting aprons I thought this is great! Somehow it just seems to be the right amount irreverence to life.... who wants to be serious when life is so short.

Anyway there are several people from all over the world who are visiting my blog just because of that picture. They are from Sweden, England (three or four from England), Moscow, New York, India, and nearest I can figure is someone on a boat in the gulf of Guinea or possibly an island that's in the gulf of Guinea (that's near Nigeria for those of you who don't know).

Anyway, if you like that picture on the blog keep watching because I am going to make this a regular part of the blog.... every two or three months I will go looking for a very funny or odd picture and put it there..... you never know what you are going to find!

Meanwhile thank you to all of my regulars who are coming to read about what I am doing, thinking and saying. It makes me feel like it is all worthwhile.

The Big j.c. Is Moving Right Along

It's pitch black out. I can't see for looking. My alpacas and sheep could be mauled by coyotes for all I know. I would be blissfully ignorant. Actually it is not pitch black it just looks that way with all the lights on in the house at this hour of the morning. There's actually a very small amount of light in the sky because the sky is not black anymore but a very inky blue. I like to watch the sky this time of the year because you get to see all the shades of blue that come in the sky as it lightens.

Yesterday was a really busy day.... I worked on the j.c. all day.... 9 p.m. last night I was pooped. My shoulders were very sore and so I went to bed done for the day. I spun quite a bit of weft and I have Trudy (the loom) warped and ready to go.... today I will be setting up Gertrude with its warp. And hopefully I will get a chance to actually weave.

Hey! Look at that.... the sky is now a confederate army uniform blue/grey. The alpacas have not been mauled, the sheep are up and eating (what else is new) and all seems well.

This is me in the midst of warping yesterday.....

The Big j.c.

Today I begin to weave.... today I begin to get nervous... The big j.c. looms ahead (no pun intended). I have two looms out today. I am using a Rigid Heddle loom for the lower portion of the body and I am using an eight harness table loom for the arms/shoulders. I had to go to FSJ on Monday to pick up Gertrude.... Gertrude is the eight harness loom. You see I name my looms.

The eight harness loom that I just picked up is Gertrude. My big Rigid Heddle loom is Gerty and my small Rigid Heddle loom is called Trudy. I have a number of pin looms too and I have named them as well. There's big Mert, which is a 7' tri loom, Merty the 3' tri loom, (he's a boy) and the babies Insy, Winsy, Tinsy, all Hazel Rose Looms in various shapes and sizes, and lastly there are my two Weavettes, Mini and Maxi. I have also named my spinning wheels... I have several. My Little Gem is called... what else.... Gem and sometimes Gemma. My old saxony style wheel is called Gene (after my Grandmother whose name was Genevra and a very old fashioned name it is like the wheel). And then my black wheel is called Aunt Jemima even though she is funky with poetry painted on her and lady bugs glued to her. Then last year I bought a Charkha which I promptly named Ghandi.

Anyway, I am using Gertrude and Trudy for the big j.c. Yesterday was a day of interruptions so I am not as far along with the big j.c. as I had hoped but today is "the day" ! Da, da, da, da! So a day of work ahead...

I want to write more but really I shouldn't spare time... so seeing how I do today, then maybe I can post some pics tomorrow.

I'm off to ply some weft and then weave, weave, weave.....

Blog Interference

Due to ongoing interference in the form of trips to the veterinarian, scrabbling to complete deadlines on the big j.c. (that's jacket commission not Jesus Christ), and finishing things for volunteer positions I hold (I may soon lose those positions if I don't catch up on the work soon)there will be no blog post today.

For your viewing pleasure ..... does anyone remember what these are?

Oozle The Knob

I’m sure you’re all wondering what in the world is Oozle the Knob. The Daughters and I, on the way to town yesterday for a day of shopping, were discussing “THE BLOG” and we all thought that a very good topic for a post would be Oozle the Knob. I’m sure you are aware that we, as a collective family, like animals and we have several that we care for, those in the barnyard and those which have a closer relationship with us.

Recently, that is, within the last two years, Daughter #1 who is a cat-lover-supreme decided the old fat cat named Midnight was not satisfying her cat needs anymore and so convinced/bamboozled her father and I into taking a kitten which her riding instructor’s cat had birthed under their barn. Said cat was quite wild and needing convincing to even come out from under the barn in the form of dishes of food strategically laid around the base of the barn. Eventually they were able to catch the kitten and called us to tell us that said Satan... I mean kitten was ready to be picked up. Daughter #1 and I drove over to collect said kitten and arrived to see the cutest kittens all hiding in the back of a kennel and said mother outside very anxious about what was happening to her babies.

The instructor pulled out the wee thing she had allotted for us and Daughter #1 fell in love. Well the wee thing looked rather pitiful and so I, in my wisdom, decided to bring it home as Daughter#1 would be dreadfully depressed now if I didn’t. So home came a very happy Daughter, a very tiny but obviously upset kitten, and a worried mom (that being me). You see we had never tamed a wild kitten before. All kittens that we had had previous to this one were well handled and therefore quite comfortable around humans. This one was not.

We brought it in the house as this would be its territory for the first few weeks until it became familiar with us. We felt we should make it familiar with our other pets and so a serious sniff fest was the result. The kitten, who is orangish, and had by now been named Pinecone, was not impressed with the sniff fest apparently, because when Daughter #1 finally put it on the floor to let it get familiar with the place it sought the nearest dark corner which happened to be behind the upright washer and dryer which at the time was in the bathroom. We spent the next 48 hours trying to convince the kitten to come out.

Finally after 48 hours of frantic worry on the part of Daughter #1 thinking it might die from starvation and thirst, we decided to pull out the washer and dryer which is no easy task I assure you. Hubby got to it and by the time he had the washer and dryer out there was no sign of the kitten. He had disappeared under the framing of the shower stall in which there was a hole just big enough for him to get into. Clearly this wasn’t going well. Another 24 hours and still no success. Hubby was threatening to let it die and Daughter #1 was on the verge of making herself sick with fear and trepidation.

And so it was that night time came, and finally peace descended on the house, and there I lay in my bed, awake, trying to figure out a way of luring the blighter out from under the shower. It was only after some time of lying that way that I heard stealthy movement from the lower portion of the house. Clearly something was on the move! It was then that Eureka hit in its fullness of bloom.

Pinecone was sneaking out at night and eating the dog food!

Well this would not do. Earlier in the night I had dropped a pile of laundry on the floor of the bathroom with the idea that perhaps the sound of the washing machine in the morning would scare the little blighter out from under the shower and out from behind the washer. This pile of laundry would become my saving grace.... and the kitten’s.


I headed downstairs and of course the kitten dove behind the washer as soon as he heard me, once again threatening to dive under the shower if needs be with my debut. So I boldly walked into the bathroom and sat down among the laundry and proceeded to bury myself in the pile. I draped dirty shirts over my head and piled damp towels over my lap and generally surrounded myself with smelly stinking laundry with only my eyes clear. And then I sat..... and waited.

Sure enough after about 15 minutes the little blighter stuck his nose out and sniffed the air with the thought of dog food on his mind. But I think he was kind of aware that something had changed. Hmmm... the pile of laundry was bigger than it had been. 15 more minutes of watching the kitten inch along the floor with ever suspicious glances at the pile of laundry, brought me to the point where he was past me but not out the door. It was only after he was out the door of the bathroom that I managed to withdraw an arm from the stinking moray I was in, swing the door shut, and stuff up the space between the wall and the washer and dryer to prevent the animal tucking back behind the washer again. The washer and dryer stayed like that for three months until he was too big to squeeze back in there again. For days, as a result of this drama, the kitten spent his time under the couch but finally started coming out occasionally for Daughter #1.

Since then Pinecone has become a fixture in this house. he sleeps on Daughter#1’s bed all day long and lord only knows where he goes at night. We have taken to calling him Oozle too. He has developed some weird habits the weirdest of which is oozing out of your arms like limp silly putty when ever you pick him up. He is a terrible mouser and to my knowledge has never caught anything more difficult than a dust ball (though mine are quite fearsome) thus we call him a knob! He paws at the window each morning to get to his bowl of crunchies
and pees in my flower beds with the look of utmost pleasure. He is a mooch supreme but only for junk food like cheesies, (which he loves) chips, or popcorn. He likes to freak out the Alpacas by walking up to them at a sedate and quiet pace until he gets quite close and then streaks away from them like greased lightening in an effort to startle them to the point of submission. The sheep love him and let him sleep in the barn with them and his favorite place to snooze outside the house or barn is in the old fowsty hay bails from last year. Daughter #1 is the only one who can pick him up without having to chase him all over the house first. And though I have never tried it, I expect catnip would send him to the moon.



Why do we keep him you ask? Because he is the cat with the most personality ever and because each day there is always something to watch him do..... besides I would never, without him, had the chance to act as a pile of laundry.... Mr. Bean... watchout!