I Live On Earth

WOW! I think we should be glad to live somewhere so beautiful. Now if we could just take care of it !

Technology Is Like A Sloth

I volunteer. Quite a bit. I volunteer at the local church as a lay reader. I volunteer as the chair person for the Junior Canadian Rangers here in our town. I volunteer a the local spinning and weaving guild as the the president. I volunteer at the spinning and weaving guild in a nearby city as the secretary and I volunteer with the regional guild as the newsletter editor. Beside keeping two of my own blogs I keep a blog for the NPSW and soon I will be keeping a blog/newsletter for the PCSW. I'm helping my two children to sporadically keep their own blogs and I'm starting a blog for the youth group at the church. I do quite a bit of writing all in all. I spend a lot of time on the computer. People are starting to get upset that they can never reach me by phone because I'm still on dial up and what should take minutes sometimes takes hours.... I want high speed internet and I'm starting to get p---- off that high speed is really really expensive in my neck of the woods.

I mean internet has been around for quite a while now and you would think that after all theses years the techy companies that provide internet service would get it together enough to make a killing in the backwoods. NOOOOOO that is not the way. When I moved to this wonderful little town not quite 13 years ago they still had party lines..... like if that is not the dark ages I don't know what is. I only had to dial the last four digits in any number and I could call anyone in this town. Then about eight years ago out went the party lines and in came the regular lines then about seven years ago they made it mandatory to dial all seven digits and then about two years ago they made it mandatory to dial all ten digits. Meanwhile we linger in this lovely part of the country with antiquated technology. I mean you can get cell service in and around this little town but go 15 miles to the east or west and poof!!! no cell service. So Hubby and I are debating.... do we drop our land line and stick with cell and then get satelite service for the computer? Or do we tough it out with the tried and true dial up...... hmmmm!

What would you do?

Sunrise

This morning I woke late. It was almost 8:30 a.m. when I finally opened my eyes. It is still dark where I live at 8:30 a.m. in the morning. But it is just starting to get light. I got up and came downstairs and looked out my window and had a cup of tea. While I was checking out the daily news online, I watched the approach of the sun as it lightened the sky and eventually came over the horizon. What a beautiful scene that lay before me. I had the presence of thought to jump up and grab the camera.



This is one of the reasons why I love to live in the North country. There is a different light here. In summer, when daylight lasts almost 24 hours, the light is rich with colour. It is like things are more brilliant.... like colour is trying to embed itself in our memories and it only has so much time. But as summer fades into fall and fall fades into winter, the colours are more subtle. Shades of grey are enhanced by soft pastel hues. The further south I go, the more intense colour is in the fall and winter and the less brilliant those colours are in the summer. I think it is addictive. The longer I live in the North, the more I want to live in the North. The longer that I've been away from the south the less I want to live in the south.

I believe that it was in Pride and Prejudice that Jane Austen coined the words "wildness and artifice are captured in the North country". I believe this to be true. My first experience of the North was a trip to the Yukon with Hubby before the Daughters were born some 15 yrs ago. We drove the Deace/Casier highway. I had never experienced such a wild unpopulated region of the earth in my life. If only there could be a part of the planet that has not known man. If only you could look up at the skies and not see the vapour trail of an airplane. If only you could walk the face of this planet and see no signs of people.

If I could choose anywhere on the earth to take a trip I would not choose the warmer climated regions of this planet I would pick the unconventional North. Further up and further in, as C. S. Lewis said. That to me is the place to be. Away where no one can see me and better still where I can see no one. Where I have unlimited time and opportunity to see raw nature. What a breath of fresh air.

But for the time being the pastel sky from my deck on a pleasant Sunday morning will have to do.

Evening

The sun has just set and the crescent moon is beautiful. I thought I should take a picture of what I can see from my window. It is a beautiful sky this evening and I would have to say that if I could capture this moment with the sky yellow on the horizon fading out to a greenish blue and then blue and then dark blue with that beautiful yellow crescent dangling above the edge of the horizon and put it in a bottle, I wouldn't mind being a genie. The snow is a royal blue too with all the dark trees standing quietly with their branches laden with blue snow. It looks like I am looking through a blue wine bottle and all the world has become Picasso's blue period. Lovely and sad and cold all at the same time.

There is beauty to be found almost everywhere you go. Even the most desolate places on earth will portray a certain sense of beauty... you just have to be open to looking at things with an clear eye. I look out my window every day as I sit here writing, and I can always find at least one beautiful thing. I am lucky to live in a world where beauty is so abundant that it is often taken for granted. I walk in the forest to the west of my house and am pleased to find mushroom of such astounding beauty that it could make you cry at the thought of such delicacy. At lichens that are so fragile that one bootstep can destroy it for 100 years. There are so many exquisite things to look at in this life that there is hardly time to enjoy it all.

The sky always has something of interest to look at. Next time you have the opportunity to look at a raging tempest sky, or a peaceful puffy cloud sky, or an blue winter crescent moon sky, do so, I guarantee that you won't be sorry. All you have to do is look up and you can see the glorious beauty of a boundless sky displayed in its awesome splendor. What's even nicer is that you can even see the beauty of the sky in a city.

For those of us who have the privilege of living in the country, it is not only the sky that grants us the wonderful pleasure of a glorious display, but the feather formations of frost, the golden hues of leaves and grasses in the fall, the chartreuse green of the early spring buds, the velvety softness of a caterpillar crawling along the ground. I can go on and on because luckily there is no end to the beauty that I find daily just living right where I do. How lucky I am....

The sun has set and still that crescent moon shines down from the now dark sky. I wonder if you see it where you are.

Random

So I need to whine a little more. I'm allergic to my puffer. My tongue hurts. I'm wheezing in the chest. I have a bad back. And I broke my mouse.

I thought mice were quiet and non-troublesome creaatures. Seems not these days at Nicholsville West Farm. My mouse is broken... well sort of. My mouse fell on the floor yesterday when I was moving furniture and a large piece of wood fell on it and so now it only works when I hold it up in the air a squeeze it. I can get the curser to move on the screen normally but it won't click on anything without me having to squeeze it. (Ha I bet you thought I was talking about a real mouse.) So here I sit move and lift and squeeze every time I want to do anything. And let me tell you it is not easy to click and drag something from one place to another. I want a new mooouuussseee!

My tongue hurts because I am having a reaction to my puffer.... at least I think that is the problem.... Hubby says my tongue is hurting because I talk too much! I think he is just miffed because he wants to hunt and I want my house fixed up before the dreaded event (that would be Christmas)! Meanwhile my tongue is severely limited in what it can do (like taste anything)! Get your mind out of the gutter people!!!

I went upstairs a little while ago to lie down for my get over H1N1 nap and while I was lying there I kept hearing an odd wheezing sound.... I thought it might be the cat that has taken to sleeping in my closet. (It gives new meaning to 'coming out of the closet") So I went to investigate however, the wheezing stopped. So then I went to lie down again and the wheezing started up again. It was me wheezing!!! Oh no! I can't go on medication again. My tongue is too sore. So I will take over the counter cough syrop to combat this cough which I thought I was almost over... but nooooo.... its going to linger a little longer. Try coughing with a sore tongue and a bad back... no picnic I assure you.

OK I'm done whining now.

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.