A Long Day In November

The wind is blowing once again. The clouds have been amassing for another onslaught, and while the temperatures are unseasonably warm (+8 degrees) those swirling clouds in the mountains remind me that only last week we had the ground covered in snow. Once again the onslaught of winter is encroaching. Now that Halloween is over, Christmas is making itself known in ways that squeeze my heart with fear.  I have done a little online shopping, but for all intents and purposes the bulk of Christmas shopping lays ahead in the dim and hazy future.

Daughter #1 has been home for the last two days as she tries to get over some illness that is making the rounds in our community. She has been sleeping a lot and so I have been trying to stay quiet in an effort to not disturb her. I have been beading, (working on Christmas gifts) I have been washing fleece and I have been purchasing cashmere. Plans are going ahead for my 150 hour project for the level 4 homework. My plan is to make this....

 I am using a combination of cashmere, silk and merino wool, and my plan is to use percentage dyeing to get the effect of fading from yellow in the centre of the back to peach at the outer ends. I must be nuts to try this. Meanwhile I have to finish the level 4 homework. Even though it is a summer pattern and is shown in a lovely cotton yarn I felt that it would be awesome as a wrap for a black pants and top combo.... thus the cashmere/silk/wool blend. I think that the effect will be lovely. Stand by on that project.

Also, I have been washing fibre for the Logwood baby blanket that has been in the planning stages since back in the summer. I thought I would have a little trial with Logwood since I have never dyed with Logwood before. So the first thing I did was go to the Maiwa site and see what they had to say about Logwood and dying. Then I went to my trusty scarf drawer and found a plain white cotton scarf. First it needed to be washed and scalded, according to the Maiwa instructions. Then it needed to be subjected to a mordant. Then last but not least it needed to be dyed in a Logwood dye bath. I am at the scalding stage. Meanwhile I have a sink full of wool from Fanny (one of my sheep who happens to be a Shetland/Merino x). I will spin the water out of it on the spin cycle in my washing machine as soon as I have all the grease and suent out of it and then I will pick and card it. Once I get it to that stage then I will spin yarn from it, fairly finely, I think, but not lace weight as that is too fine for my pin looms. Then I will skein it, wash it, and prep it for the dye pot and then I will follow the directions for the 25 shades of Logwood. I'm truly looking forward to that. But meanwhile life is all about level 4 right now. I'm still waiting for the Bison to come from the states and if it doesn't come soon I will begin spinning my samples that I need for the cashmere section.

With all the work I have done today with beading... washing wool.... scalding scarves.... and planning projects, and knowing that I woke in the night last night feeling queezy, and knowing that I might end up with what seems to be affecting Daughter #1, has left me feeling not overly energetic. It has been a long day.... and all this wind seems to be zapping me of my energy too.

A long day in November?!....
But it feels good to get things accomplished....

A Trilogy Of Celebrations

I'm feelin' it. All Hallows Eve is over, and what a celebration!

We don't usually do much on Halloween. Teapot and I always took the girls out on Halloween and walked all over town with them as they trick and treated with hundreds of other kids. In the last few years we would pass Halloween at my parents house as our older children walked the streets themselves. Since we live outside of town nobody ever comes to our house on the evening of Halloween so we have not decorated our home for a long time. But this year Daughter #1 felt that she had outgrown this trick or treating and even though her friends were heading out she had decided to stay home and watch movies. We were going to watch Bram Stoker's Dracula... the 1992 (4?) version with Winona Ryder, but in the end I couldn't get it in time for us to watch it so we hit the local movie rental place in an effort to find something that would similarly scare the poop out of us. We hit on Van Helsing.... which was not as scary as we thought, and Constantine which was a little scarier. We had dinner on the couch as Daughter #2 and Teapot headed off to town for the annual foray into trick or treat land. Teapot decided in the end to come home and join us on the couch for dinner and a movie. At 7:45 p.m. we headed off to pick up Daughter #2 who was to meat us at the school with her friend. we picked her up and headed off to the airstrip north of HH where each year the volunteer firefighters put off a really cool fireworks display in an effort to raise funds for Cystic Fibrosis. We got there just in time to watch the fireworks display and let me say that for a small town of approximate 1100 population, it was awesome.

After that we came home and watched the rest of Constantine.

Today is All Saint's day, a day that the Roman Catholic church in the celtic regions of Europe, concocted in an effort to combat the pagan celebration of Samhain. Tomorrow is All Soul's Day and it too was included to get those pagans of old under control. I don't really care what the reason was for these celebrations but it marks the passing of the summer... it marks the passing of the sun. We are now well and truly into the second season..... the season of the dark, and I for one am certainly feelin' it. This is the time of year that I truly dislike. It is the time of the year when I feel the full moon so much more strongly... and I feel the dark afternoons so much more poignantly. And I don't mean this is a mental thing. It is that for sure but my body responds to the lack of light too. I begin to lose my energy, I begin to sleep harder, deeper, and longer, and I begin to gain weight. (I also start to really panic about Christmas but we won't go there). Life, as I enjoy it in the summer, changes now and I really don't start to feel good until the return of the sun in the spring. (Usually around the end of February)!

Today is a day of getting work done. I need to finish a couple of pieces of jewelry.... for Christmas gifts. I need to dye some yarn for socks. I need to take care of Daughter #1 who is home today from school with a stomach flu. (I'm thinking she might have had too much junk and candy yesterday.) Either way, the year moves on and so must I.

Happy All Saints Day.

Halloween Crazies

Teapot left an hour ago while it was still quite dark. He is off for a day of hunting in the back country. This will be his last opportunity to hunt moose since the moose season closes on Monday. I worry about him when he goes hunting alone but he does have the SAT phone and so does call in on a regular basis to let me know he is alright. Still, where he is going there are a number of Grizzlies around and grizzlies are very smart. You can call them in with a gunshot because they know there will be a fresh kill with a gun shot. I am hoping he will be fine. He is very careful so that is a bonus.

I finished my clock yesterday and and am quite pleased with the results.

I am not dyslexic... the number are painted on right it just this computer camera that I'm using.

 Teapot has taken the camera with him so I must rely on the camera that is a part of this computer. It is not nearly as good and must be fiddled with (cropped and stuff) to make it look good, so I apologize for the pictures that are somewhat pathetic. Meanwhile the work in Teapot's and my bedroom continues. It is looking better all the time. There is still quite a bit of work to be done but I'm doing it a little every day. I do not want to hurt my back so I really am careful at how much reaching, lifting, shoving, and the like that I allow myself to do. In between, I headed off to the grocery store yesterday. This doesn't seem all that exciting and not really worth mentioning here except that with Halloween coming up Daughter #1, (who was with me), and I had some good laughs. There were witches costumes and odd hats, there were masks of all sorts and best of all were the jelly candy. So we had to make a couple of purchases... When we got home we had some really good laughs. The jelly candy were body parts.... and a hat was perfect....

I give you fair warning..... Daughter #1 was too shy to try this in the public.... but not me!!!!

First we'd thought we'd try some teeth and a red eye...

Then a new nose.. but I couldn't get the eye to stick...

Then Daughter #1 thought the blue eye would be interesting.....

Then all hell broke loose when I tried to get two eyes with the teeth my eyes kept popping out and we just started to laugh......

Daughter #2 thought we were too undignified for words and just kept reading her book especially when I tried to take a picture of the jelly finger up my n... well, I'm sure you catch my drift.... that's her in the background. But suffice it to say that the hilarity may continue for a while..... mostly because I absolutely refuse dignity at my age. It's always fun till someone loses an eye!

So Halloween  is tomorrow and Daughter #2 is going out as a spider queen trick or treating until it is time to head off for the fire works. Daughter #1 and I are going to stay home and watch Dracula. That should scare the poop out of us!


But for today the Daughters and I are going to have a quiet day at home. I will probably carry on with the bedroom renovation as I have a mirror and a shelf to hang... I also have a few boards to cut and nail in place. Meanwhile we will wait patiently for Teapot to come home and hopefully bring some meat.

Happy Halloween!!!

Lambs And Stuff

Teapot has been working on the front step.

We had our first snow this last week. The snow hung on for a full week without melting but now temperatures are beginning to warm so the snow has been sliding off the roof with loud thumps and great crashes. Tootsie, who is an old hand at hearing these noises, ignores them for the most part, but the new wee kitty and Jiggs stare at the ceiling every time a great pile of snow comes crashing down. In the end, now that the snow is melting it is looking like Teapot will get the steps outside to the front veranda finished before the real snow comes that's the snow that stays all winter.

Poor Teapot.  He is working hard in an effort to get everything done before the snow falls... I don't think he is going to get the tin on the roof of the electrical shed though. The steps are looking awesome but the electrical shed is still sitting with the twenty year old cedar shingles rotting on it. The tin is cut, the tin is sitting on the ground.... but it is not on the roof and that is one job I had hoped to have finished before autumn came, let alone, winter. This weekend will be another weekend of butchering sheep which means that the shed will have to wait once again. We have a lamb for Pops that should have been butchered a while ago. We have another two lambs that another friend wants for a party coming up.  One lamb he wants halfed and the other that he wants whole since he will be cooking it on a spit. So that will be three more of our lambs gone.... which leaves more hay for the horse and sheep.

I still do not have enough hay. I have not been able to find anyone I can hire to bring in hay by truck for me from so far away. This means that if I don't get more hay soon, I will have to supplement the animals diet with feed from the feed store which is an expensive prospect for sure. We will see. I thought for a while that I was going to be alright with the amount of hay that I had verbally secured but it has definitely been a problem. I do not want to go through this again. I will slaughter every sheep I own if I have to, I will find a home for the wandering llama, and I will just keep the alpacas and the horse if necessary. That's the problem with not having enough land of your own to grow your own feed.

Meanwhile hunting season for deer begins on Monday. I will go and get my hunting license for the season. Teapot already has his license as he has been looking for moose and elk this year as well. He hasn't had much opportunity to hunt though with so many other jobs to do. Deer, however, is a pleasure to hunt since they walk around here on a regular basis. It means getting up early early in the morning and tramping through the bush quietly. It means standing for ages in the cold and damp. Also, it also means a lot of processing but the end result is great. Teapot and I are avid lovers of venison meat. We learned from the natives when we lived among them that hanging and aging your meat is totally unnecessary with deer. Teapot butchers the meat right away, saving the best roasts for the freezer, then everything else gets cut up and processed into bottles with a little pork fat. Preserved deer meat is delicious and makes for a great meal and very quick to cook too. Just open the top of the Mason jar, warm in a fry pan with a little teriyaki sauce or Hp sauce or whatever your favorite sauce is and serve over a bed of rice or with oven roast potatoes, some salad on the side and voila: a quick delicious meal. Of course, Teapot likes to set aside a little deer meat for jerky too. And it feels really good to look into the pantry and see rows of deer meat in neat bottles ready for the winter supply, and a freezer with neat packages full of jerky and wrapped roasts.

We only hunt for meat.... we do not hunt trophies. Trophy hunting is not our bag. I don't get that at all. Sorry if anyone reading this is into hunting for the joy of the kill, that's not us. Hunting is completely practical in this house. Recently, I have had to keep a vigilant eye on the hay bales since wandering deer seem to feel that hay bales are great for them too.

There are 6and 1/2 bales left of the 12 I bought, in August.... and there's the electrical shed in the background with the old shingles still on it.

But I do not pay premium price for hay so that my animals will starve and the wild ones will eat! I'm sure our neighbour must think I'm nuts as I spent last Saturday morning out chasing off a deer from the bales. She really didn't want to take no for an answer and so I was going back and forth with a stick in an effort to run her off. I had a few choice swear words for her too and then I started yelling at her (this was my way of being a dreadful apponent... she wasn't getting it though). I kept saying I have a hunting license and I know how to use it..... this didn't seem to phase her at all! Hmmm.... that's when Teapot showed up with the dog. HA HA!  That got the bu--er up and running. She hasn't been back... but it is a full time job keeping the deer away from the bales especially as the cold weather gets more severe. I don't think it will be hard to hunt a deer this year. Of course, we're not allowed to hunt near dwellings so we have to get the deer moving and usually we hunt in the forest that is adjacent to our property.

Well, I'm off, I'm still working on the bedroom from hell. I have a clock to put together and paint this morning...

A Little New

I'm dyeing sock yarn... it's commercial but I wanted to add a little more colour so it's in the pot as I'm writing.

I also added projects that I'm working on down and to the right.

Check it out.

A Little Silk Please ..... And Halloween

Halloween is coming up and today there is a dance at the school. Daughter #2 is going because, and I quote, "Dee and I are going so we can look at all the people and who's trying to go out with who!" Dee is her best friend. Daughter #2 is not the most coordinated person on the face of the earth and so dancing is like falling into sh-- well, you get my drift. At 13, she's very awkward and self conscious. But just the fact that she is going is good enough for me. At least she is making an effort. Daughter #1, on the other hand is not going. When asked why, she told me that the best thing about the dances at the school is the wealth of food that gets laid out. "Nobody ever asks you to dance", she said. How I have raised two such jaded girls is beyond me. At 13 and 14 (almost 15) the two Daughters should be having the time of their lives. This really bothers me. Ok, so they are not the most popular girls at the school... I get that.... I also know that having their dad work at the school that they attend is also a deterrent... and actually I'm glad that they are not the most popular kids in school since usually that indicates that they are up to something they shouldn't be. But this jaded attitude in them so young is not good either. Perhaps embracing mediocrity is something they get from me.... oh sh--, what am I thinking?!.... like they are going to look to me as a roll model?! I'm just their mother for God's sake!

Meanwhile I was doing some research yesterday on silk embroidery and came across a website that was deadly.  I ended up wasting a whole lot of time there as it really had no relevance to the research I was doing but ooohhhh it was lovely and I just couldn't tear myself away..... Have a look....

This is my favorite...

Even the men have gorgeous silk to wear.....

This guy's shirt is too die for... I would wear that... forget him.

This clothes.... is gorgeous... and even though it comes from a different culture than my own... gosh I can't get enough of looking at it. I have to say that it makes me want to wear it too... besides it would cover a wealth of bulges.... : \

Anyway it's just a thought.

Well the ongoing saga of Halloween continues to amuse..... Daughter #2 is calling Dee in an effort to get her to wear black.... costumes are being figured out....

The dance is this evening and even though Daughter #1 doesn't want to go she is wearing a costume to school tomorrow...

Daughter #1 is going as the wicked witch of the west with stolen red shoes...
Daughter #2 is going as a spider queen....
Dee who is coming here to get dressed is going as a escaped convict.....
Me?!... I'm just glad I don't teach... maybe I should dress up as a teacher.... what the heck am I thinking... nobody ever comes here for Halloween!

Christmas Preparations.... 2 Months Away Now

Pops was here yesterday.... he came for a wee visit as he does most days. He always comes for a cup of tea and a bun or cookie if there is one around. It was while he was here that he mentioned that we were two months away from boxing day.... !!!!! 00
Ack!                                                   ~

Now it only feels like yesterday that I was blogging about Christmas being three months away. This sent jitters of panic through my blood stream. But I put it out of my head and carried on with our visit. I have noticed lately that Christmas is rearing its ugly head in my mind. I am beginning to have nesting instincts..... that is where I begin to look around my disaster house and feel the need to improve. The Contractor's Helper or TCH  (that's the fellow who helped our contractor for the house reno and if rights be known did most of the construction itself) is supposed to come by this week or next to have a look at getting some of the unfinished construction work done. We are seriously looking at finishing the downstairs, which will be very nice since for a year and a half I've lived in a minor construction zone. There have been wires sproinging from the walls,

They're dead wires so don't worry that we are going to get electrocuted!

there have been walls that are covered in nothing more than tuck tape and plastic,

Tuck tape and plastic in office

The downstairs bathroom didn't even get that feature.... this is an interior wall by the way.

there are floors that sport nothing more than sub-flooring

Living room floor meets kitchen floor

Bathroom floor where the plugged hole for the toilet is still visible. I'm waiting for the walls to be finished before I lay the flooring.

and there are light fixtures that dangle at very bad angles....

We won't even mention the upstairs and the stairwell. So TCH has said he would come and give me a price to finish the work that Teapot and I were supposed to finish. I should have seen the writing on the wall last summer (that's not this summer past, but the one before) and realized that Teapot is just not a builder and that I can't do it on my own. So we are looking at getting our house in order before Christmas. This will mean a few days of inconvenience. It will mean being offline for a few days as once again my office will be emptied of all officey things and the construction begins again.

In the meantime, Teapot's and my bedroom has been irking me. We have privacy.... well, some. The Daughters rooms for all intents and purposes are finished.  They just need trim boards in the corners and around the ceilings and Daughter #2 needs a shelf on a ledge cut, but otherwise they're good. But our room has been in a sad state of affairs ever since the first day of school last year. We have a finished ceiling which is great but we live in a log house and we have a cathedral type ceiling on the second floor (which I love). This is a difficult thing to deal with because Teapot is scared to make any kind of cut that is not at a 90 degree angle. So we have walls that are eight feet high and no higher.

That's weird... you can't see that difference in the colour of the paneling in the room, just in this picture.

Still I have entered our bedroom for a year and a half with trepidation and disgust. It is not a pretty sight. Last week my nesting urges came to the fore. I happened to be in a hardware store and got the brilliant idea that all the old paneling (which was supposed to be replaced with the new paneling) could stay, saving Teapot and I tons of work, if it was just painted. I purchased a gallon of paint on the spot. Monday, it began. Out came the paint brush and open came the lid. The result is quite nice actually and now I am having grandiose ideas of finishing the room on my own.... well sort of. I'm not sure I can cut those boards to fit up in the cathedral part of the ceiling but I certainly can build doors for our closet which at the moment look like this...

Doesn't this look hideous?! And there's another one just like it on the other side of the bathroom door.

I also want a bed..... at the time of the renovation we passed our double bed on to Daughter #1 and purchased a queen sized mattress and box spring for ourselves. We have two lovely pine chests of drawers so we are ok there. But it is high time that I get the two giant boxes full of WOOL out of our room.

Also pictured here are the plastic containers that I've been living out of for the last year. No they are not always this messy just since I started to paint. See that's the other hideous closet behind the mess of boxes and plastic containers.

Problem: one of the Pine Chests of drawers has been in the front porch holding all hats and mittens and gloves and scarves for many a long year. But as of today that will end. I have been living out of plastic containers long enough. I have purchased a chest of drawers at a garage sale last week and while it was bright blue and covered in fishy stickers, it was solid and in good enough shape to hold hats and mittens, and best of all the price was right..... $5. Last evening, I started to remove the stickers from the drawers. I then rummaged through my cans of paint in the shed and found a nice glossy chocolate brown. I proceeded to paint the chest of drawers and now it is sitting in the living room drying nicely and waiting for the second coat of paint. Once that is finished I shall remove the mits, hats and gloves from the nice pine chest of drawers, like the one already in our bedroom...

Excuse the dangling cords since I haven't plugged things back in since I painted.

and put them in the garage sale one. Then I will take the lovely pine chest of drawers up to the bedroom and there I will put my clothes leaving the plastic containers to be filled with the wool in the boxes and brought down to the sunroom/studio where all my other goodies are stored.

Ok so back to what  I started to say. Our bedroom is looking much better all the time. The paint is on the wall....

Actually this looks more grey than it really is.

and I have been perusing catalogues and furniture (I keep forgetting that Americans don't spell catalogues with ue on the end... check out this spelling comparison chart for different countries and how they spell different words... it always freaks me out when I spell a word like grey and then have to wonder why the spelling check says I'm wrong.... am I that bad a speller?! I think I'll put the spelling comparison chart in my list of favorites... oh right back to the topic at hand....) flyers to see if I can find a bed that grabs me and will look ok with our pine chests. We are pretty much down to these three...

I'm liking all three so not sure which one to choose. Please feel free to leave comments.... we could use some help. We are going with a garden theme since I chose a restive shade of green... I also want a bit of a romantic feel.... (who cares about Teapot.. all he cares about is if there is a blanket to keep him warm and a bedside table on which to keep his book).

Basically I'm tired of my bedroom being a craphole. I'm tired of my whole house being a craphole. So by Christmas.... my goal is to have a bedroom I want to walk into, a living room that says welcome to my guests,  a bathroom that is clean and neat, and an office that isn't buried alive.... well that last one may never happen!

But you get my drift..... the house is now my priority...

Stay tuned....