Clean-up

The renovation Gods do not like Hubby and I. We have come to the conclusion that they hate us. Hubby is cursing loudly because he is putting a panel in our bathroom and for some reason he cannot cut a piece of paneling without making a mistake. Measuring seems to be the problem. He says there is something wrong with his measuring tape. I am hiding because I'm afraid that I might get hit with a randomly flying measuring tape or hammer or something.

I'm afraid it is all my fault.... that and Scrooge's fault. It is my fault because I got it into my stupid head this past spring that putting up a 4' x 8' piece of paneling would be easier than cutting a whole pile of tongue and groove boards. This, by all the cursing that's going on, is not true. I am really wishing that back in the spring when we decided on what we wanted on the walls I had stuck with the tried and true tongue and groove wood. It is Scrooge's fault because Christmas is coming and that's always a threat to Hubby because he knows that I will want stuff done to the house to make it look nice for the most dreadful season of the year. Did I say that? Naaaa couldn't be me putting Christmas down!

I didn't go to Knit Night. I pulled out my back moving furniture around... (see above regarding Christmas preparations)! I'm most disgusted because for the next few days I will have to take all kinds of meds to get rid of my bad back while I could be spinning in my newly neatened and tidied studio. Argh! That's not fair... whine, whine, whine...

It was a day to clean up in the office/studio/dining room.

It looks much better now and I can find everything.

I was spinning more cotton... I've really enjoyed spinning on my charkha. I actually have a little ball of ginned cotton done. It is full of stuff like husks and sticks but still it was fun. Now I am working on organic cotton in a natural beige. Lovely. I like to get my hands on some of that lovely green organic cotton and then some say you can get a natural blue cotton... I guess I will have to do an internet search on cottons.

It's snowing again (see the eight inches of snow on the table on "My Deck"??)
and while we had a couple of days to enjoy the winter sunshine, I think this time we will not only get the snow, but the reason that I hate winter so much, that would be the horribly cold temperatures. When it gets to -20 degrees C I want to crawl into a warm bed and hibernate. It is definitely a wintery day here with a wind chill of -18 degrees. Brrr! I'd be perfectly happy with winter days if we could have snow and temperatures of +5 degrees C. But with icicles hanging from the eves on the house and near white out conditions I am happy to be home thinking up things to do for Hubby over the weekend..... maybe I can get him cursing again on the paneling!

Spinning Cotton

I started spinning on my Bosworth Charka today. I was spinning ginned cotton. I can't wait till I get my cotton cards because I want to try spinning carded cotton... I'm sure it will be a whole lot easier to spin ginned cotton if it has been combed into punis (long tubes of cotton carded and then rolled into little tubes). My charka, which I bought last year for my birthday gift (yes I bought my own birthday gift.... Hubby would never have gotten me a charka), has been staring at me all week making me want to spin cotton on it. I finally got my wool off the Navajo spindle and frankly I think my first sample is the best sample. Anyway... I digress again... I have spun a nice amount of ginned cotton on the charka this afternoon and honestly I'm fairly pleased with the results. I had to use a park and draft method to spin the cotton and pick out tons of sticks and husks and bits of stuff and the results are somewhat slubby but considering that I didn't card the cotton at all I'm very pleased that I was able to spin the fibre at all. The ginned cotton was cotton that I got last year at Olds College. A gentleman in the next level was giving ginned cotton away and how could I turn down a freeby. It is nicer than the cotton that our instructor gave us though as I said full of "stuff". I managed to fill a spool... mind you the spools on the charka are not all that big though I think they are meant for finer spinning than mine. The stuff I spun would probably be equal to a single of a medium weight crochet cotton so I thought that was not too shabby considering that I really haven't spun much on the charka and certainly not cotton.

Last year after I bought my charka I gave it a whirl with a small sample of cotton that came with the machine. I didn't really enjoy it so I thought in order to get used to the machine first, I would try something in protein fibre with a short staple. I had a bag of Yak and so began a little trial and error with that fibre. When I had spun two spools, I set it aside and really didn't pick it up again till this afternoon. So considering my lack of experience I think I am doing ok. I can see that spinning on the charka could become a very relaxing pass time. I sat at the table, which is now in the south facing sunroom, and spun while the afternoon sun sunk lower and lower into the sky. With all the snow that is outside my window, and the setting sun it was quite spectacular. All purple and blue and pink. Who would think that a gal in the north would be sitting spinning cotton, a plant that thrives in heat.

I just planted my cotton seeds and I hope they will germinate here in my sunroom. We will see how this experiment works. It is quite a nice warm room and has lovely sunshine all day. But then there is very little light as the days get shorter. Right now I am receiving about eight hours of light a day and there is still a month before the shortest day. The cotton may not do well in these conditions.... oh well I guess it is worth a try. The soil is free and so were the seeds.

I have decided to buy two sets of cotton cards in the end. The first set of cotton cards that I bought are Ashford cards and I will use them for blending cotton and the second set of cards are from the Woolery they are made by the Howard Brush Company. The Ashford cards will be here hopefully by the end of the week but the Howard Brush cards won't be here for another couple of weeks. I may keep the Howard Brush cards for Christmas.Hubby never kows what to buy for me so I buy and he wraps. For now though I spinning cotton uncarded... so there.

Silent Sentinels

There must be a full moon somewhere close by. I'm awake.... and nobody else is. Like what's that all about? As I was coming downstairs I happened to look out the window. It's been snowing a lot in the last couple of days and the trees are loaded with snow. Right now the street light, that lights the road out in front of our house, is shining on the trees and it really does look like a scene from a Christmas card. All the trees are white. I thought I would call this blog post Silent Sentinels because that is what the trees look like out there.

There have been some exciting developments. First, we are getting new furniture! Hubby and I sat down last night and had a look at our house and decided that it was time to buy a sofa! I was given a second hand couch last year and you can see the results of the reupholstery job I did here and here and here, but when Mudder and Fadder's couch died on them, just before Christmas, I gave them my new old couch on permanent loan. Since that time we haven't really had the need for a sofa since it was only a few months later that Hubby and I started the "Big R" and the house became a complete disaster zone. But things are starting to look better and so it is time to think about Christmas decorating... which means we need a couch. I went online to our handy dandy website for our local furniture stores and started perusing... we found this.
It will match our nice red floor (har har!) Since we are buying a couch we have decided that we had better move things around... (how do you know I'm on the mend????... I start moving furniture!) We now have the office moved over in the sunroom taking up some of my studio space and we have moved the dining room table into where the office was. I would put some pictures here but my camera's batteries need charging and I can't find the charger. I'll try to get on that later.

In addition to that exciting news, we are losing June the chicken.... I couldn't see her so lonely and so we have a friend who will come and take her to their chicken coop to live among the other chickens and roosters..... I think I've had it with chickens. I can think of much better uses for our chicken coop. Hubby suggested that we use the coop for an outhouse.... I'm thinking that might not be such a bad idea. You can never go wrong with a two holer!

The next exciting news, (well... it is to me) Hubby has lost his boot. The snow has become deep enough that it is time to bring out our winter boots and jackets. Hubby went looking for his and can only find one boot in the heep in the shed. He has gone through pretty much everything and can't find the second of his pair. I'm thinking it might be time to buy him a new pair anyway. He has managed to clean up a huge pile of junk in the shed. He will take the pile to the dump but meanwhile where is his boot? I know, just know, that if I buy him new ones he will find the old one the day after. It's Murphy's law you know.

Ok.... I'm getting cold and it is almost 5 a.m. and I'm starting to yawn. I think I've pretty much covered everything anyway so ta ta, I'm off back to bed to warm up and catch a few last zzzzzzzz.

And The Snow Comes Down

It's still snowing and it is hard to tell the sky from the ground. The animals are not happy though they have a barn to hide away in. Instead of going in out of the snow they stand there or lie there and stare at the sky like they have never seen this stuff before. I too look out the window and am astounded at this constant snowfall. It is a lovely day to stay indoors and just read a book. Or weave.... which is what I am doing... I'm weaving on the tri loom today... the small tri loom with the child's poncho. It is looking lovely.

June, the chicken, still lives in the chicken coop but she is all alone and I think she pines for friends. I will probably give her to one of our friends who already has chickens. I hate to see her so lonely. She never lays any eggs.... so sad....

In the house two cats and two dogs snore incessantly... they are happy to have a nice cozy house to sleep in with all this snow. The young cat looks out the window in disgust and heads back upstairs to sleep on Daughter #1's bed, and there he stays till his bladder calls him to go out. But let me tell you it is not long before he is back meowing to come in.

There's a huge chunk of snow about to fall off the roof right past the window that I'm sitting by. I wonder if it will fall soon or just hang there.....

Have a happy wintery day...

Reprieve

Today is a day of reprieve. Here I sit with the lovely white grandeur of snow outside my window. Our company left early this morning and Hubby and the Daughters are back in school. So I am having a peaceful reprieve. I've even written some more poetry which you can read here. With a fairly heavy snowfall accumulating outside it is a good day to think and just be. No one to cook for, no one to appease, all my own, a day of reprieve. The wind is not blowing at least not enough to notice and everything looks quiet and pristine. The sheep and alpacas are bedded down in the quiet too.

Hubby managed to finish putting in the sink in the bathroom downstairs over the weekend and I am wood burning one of my poems onto our bedroom door. It is a poem that I wrote to Hubby a few years back and somehow seems appropriate for our bedroom door. So things are once again progressing on the renovation. It is somewhat slow and maybe even painfully slow, but at least it is progress.

This day of no demands is such a gift. For weeks I have been fighting ear infections and bronchitis and H1N1 and it has taken it's toll. I still am tired all the time but it does seem to be getting better. I do more every day and I am not coughing nearly as much... I think that it's due to the steroids and anti-biotics that I am on the mend. I will stay in much of this week in an effort to get rid of any lingering illness and hopefully that will put me back to my old healthy self. Still a little knitting, spinning and weaving won't hurt and while my motivation to do these things is sadly lacking, I think it is just that I need to do it to be motivated. So for now it is wood burning and poetry but tomorrow it's spinning and weaving.

I never thought I'd say it but thank heavens for this snow.... it's quiet fall to the ground forces me to have this lovely day of reprieve.... there was no twisting my arm I assure you.

Basic Black

Boom Boom.. out go the lights.... Last night with all that wind we lost the power. We had just finished dinner and whamo everything went black. Out came the candles and the kerosene lamps and we sat around gabbing till 10 p.m. then I think there wasn't much point in staying up and so we all headed for bed. 1:45 a.m. the lights came back on. It was a quiet night here in the house but outside the wind continued to rage until the wee small hours of the morning at which time everything finally settled down and peace was once more restored in the form of a gentle rain..... well except that the rain was freezing rain. Still after all that wind it was a nice quiet reprieve.

Hubby has been hunting but with no luck. The company has picked up a buffalo and are in the shed gutting and cleaning and quartering the meat for the early drive home tomorrow morning. It has been a pleasant chance to catch up with our company and enjoy a bit of a reunion.

Today the weather is just as drab and grey as it has been and some sun would give a much needed lift to the spirits but the forecast is calling for more of the same as this in the next few days so I expect it will be dull for a few days yet. Sunday afternoon is turning out quiet and peaceful which is good I think. I am needing this peaceful day.

I have been back at the triangle loom and working on the child's poncho. It was a welcome diversion and is getting back into wanting to create. I am also thinking about getting those cards out for round 2 with the jacket commission maybe later tonight I will do that.

Right now I'm off for a lazy Sunday snooze!

Wind And Ice

Today as I look out the window here at Nicholsville West Farm, the sky is grey and the wind is blowing a gale. The trees are wavering back and forth and somehow everything looks dull and drab. Hubby is off hunting with the "company", Daughter #1 is in the kitchen making cookies for the craft sale next week and Daughter #2 has a friend here for the afternoon. I'm just going to sit here a while and fool around on the computer. I'm not really in any mood to do anything artsie. I think it is the wind.

For days now the wind has been blowing steady and while generally, I don't mind wind, today somehow it seems to be disturbing my peace of mind. Sometimes it sounds like the roof is going to lift off. I remember growing up in Newfoundland, wind was a constant and in those days I would cuddle in my bed at night grateful for a roof over my head and a safe place to hide away from the howling gales that swept the shores of that province. I didn't mind it and listened to the sounds of those gales and passed peacefully into sleep listening to its lullaby.

Now, I hear nothing of those dulcet tones that rocked me to sleep in my youth. Now I hear the constant drone of the wind and think about how I hate to go out in this stormy blast. I wait for the wind to die so that peace of this lovely farm and valley returns once again. I look out the window and see that the wind has swept over the lingering snow and turned everything into a hard packed surface of ice. I dread going out in it because the one thing that I don't like about living here is that the snow is never shoveled to the ground surface below. We also have an unanticipated problem... the snow that falls off the roof falls right into the path that leads from the driveway to the steps. Just this afternoon I went out to pick up Daughter #1 from a horseback riding lesson and when I came home I walked across the uneven ice that has formed on the path and down I went skinning out my knee and ruining a perfectly good pair of jeans! Harrumph!

I would much prefer the soft lovely flakes of snow drifting lazily to the ground on a peaceful hot cocoa day. I could sit and watch those flakes in their hypnotic fall as I knit on my lace gloves or card rolags for my jacket commission. But here I sit with neither hot chocolate, gloves, or hand carders. I just stare at the hard grey sky with thoughts of happier times, and wish for a moment of peace.