I am now able to think again. It cooled off over night quite nicely but I have a feeling that this coolness is going to be short lived. Even though it is overcast this morning there is no rain in the forecast and there is no let up of these horribly high temperatures. Teapot and I have decided to buy a swim pass to our local pool since I think that is going to be the only reprieve from this heat. I never went to bed last night until 12:30 and Teapot and I ate supper around 11:00 p.m. It was just too flippin' hot to eat before that. The girls had had watermelon milkshakes, popcorn, and tuna for their supper (yes that is an interesting combination but then I'm only a Mom and I know nothing about teenage diets) earlier in the evening. Teapot and I were sitting out on the deck with my parents and there were storm clouds all around us with lightning and thunder but none of it hit our house and so we wait still for rain. It is so dry here, the grasshoppers are starting to take hold..... they love this heat and thrive on it so what grass that doesn't die fro lack of water will get nipped by the dirty little grasshoppers... then Teapot went to our local hay supplier yesterday to see if he could pick up a bail and our guy was in the middle of haying and he is not too optimistic that there will be a good supply of hay. That is not good since it will mean that we are going to have to pay top dollar for hay again. So once again I will have to downsize our flock. Teapot and I have made a list of the sheep we are going to keep and it is not a good feeling to line up the sheep and think about who will hit the chopping block but the decision has to be made. I will not be keeping any of the lambs from this year and Red and Kracker and Krunch will get x'ed. I think Sal is going to have to go.... she just eats too much and Palmer and Ipwitch will go. That will leave us with the two rams, Oscar and Xavier.... Greig the wither, Lulu who is a Cotswold/merino x, Fanny who is a Shetland/merino x, Nellie who has an awesome fleece and is Cotswold/merino x and Winnie who is an I don't know what but has a fading gene. 7 sheep. That's enough when hay is so expensive. I can't afford to keep a big flock when hay has doubled in price.
So these are the decisions that have to be made. I feel like crap when some of those sheep have become friends.
I managed to finish two of my t.p.i. questions along with my novelty yarns, yesterday. That made me very happy. The 4 t.p.i. is my natural default yarn that I spin for relaxation so it was not a hard sample to do but I was so tired after I finished it that I couldn't get the write up for it done. I will finish that this morning and go on to the next question. I also want to spin fibre for the dye retreat that will be held here in a couple of weeks. I always have a dye retreat for the ladies from my guild and we sit out on the deck and we get crock pots and rice steamers and baggies in the microwave and hotplates going and the deck is a mass of cooking dye. It always happens the second last weekend in July.... let me tell you it is awesome. There's colour everywhere and the ladies have big bright smiles on their faces as we set to and lose all caution to the dyeing mania. I really want to do my 25 shades of Logwood which is similar to the Madder dyeing that I did in my level 3. I also have to redo the percentage dying that I had to do in level 4. I will need 51 skeins of wool in all. I must be nuts to think that I might get that done in that short amount of time, but I'm going to try. Meanwhile I will do a crowded pot of dye with fleece and I already have the fleece washed and ready to go. I will probably dye a little silk while I am at it and I might even dye some cocoons.... we'll see.... that is a pretty aggressive schedule for a weekend of dyeing but then where's the fun if you don't go for it.
So while it is cool I'm off to do a write up on the 4 t.p.i. skein and spin an skein at 8 t.p.i. I'll post pictures tomorrow of what I get done.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Level 3 and Oh My God It's Flippin' Hot
I've been up since quite early.... I worked this morning on my novelty yarns and I even managed to finish one of my t.p.i. questions. That means that I have three sections left to do... I am on the home run and can see the light at the end of the tunnel...But today is hot, hot, hotter. I am so warm that my brain is fried. It is 41 degrees and painfully hot. I think I am going to be ill it is so hot. Nobody wants to go out in this weather and we are all waiting for some kind of break.... rain would be great. Meanwhile my brain is so fried that I am not even sure that what I am writing for these yarn samples will sound right. Then there are the flies.... there are flies buzzing around my head and arms and a-- .... I am starting to feel like I'm living in Africa. Days like this I wish I had a lovely little air conditioner. Sucks to be me!
Last evening after it got cool, Teapot and I decided to shear one of the poor sheep which we didn't get to in the spring. We sheared Oscar the ram.... he's black and was panting heavily so we did the job on him. We decided to try something different. We cut his wool with scissors! Yes you read right. We hauled the fellow over to the shearing table and rolled him on to his side which let me tell you, he hated. Then we proceeded to use the pack of cheap scissors that I had bought for other purposes. His fleece came off clean except for a little straw that he had gotten on him in our struggle to get him on his side. A lovely BFL/Merino fleece in black with a little grey on the hips. Quite lovely actually..... I think we'll work on another sheep this evening, if it ever cools down!
Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of the novelty yarns I have finished and my 1 tpi skein.....
The novelty on the left is a Turkish knot yarn and the novelty yarn on the right is a cabled yarn with a commercial thread as a binding thread.
This novelty yarn is a 3 ply using sari ribbon as one of the plies....
This is a 1 twist per inch (t.p.i) skein of yarn.... it looks so fat and luscious.... Yum!
I think I will go join the girls in the living room and have a bowl of ice cream for supper... and then a nice cold shower wouldn't go astray. Maybe then my brain will work a little better... we'll see.
Last evening after it got cool, Teapot and I decided to shear one of the poor sheep which we didn't get to in the spring. We sheared Oscar the ram.... he's black and was panting heavily so we did the job on him. We decided to try something different. We cut his wool with scissors! Yes you read right. We hauled the fellow over to the shearing table and rolled him on to his side which let me tell you, he hated. Then we proceeded to use the pack of cheap scissors that I had bought for other purposes. His fleece came off clean except for a little straw that he had gotten on him in our struggle to get him on his side. A lovely BFL/Merino fleece in black with a little grey on the hips. Quite lovely actually..... I think we'll work on another sheep this evening, if it ever cools down!
Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of the novelty yarns I have finished and my 1 tpi skein.....
The novelty on the left is a Turkish knot yarn and the novelty yarn on the right is a cabled yarn with a commercial thread as a binding thread.
This novelty yarn is a 3 ply using sari ribbon as one of the plies....
This is a 1 twist per inch (t.p.i) skein of yarn.... it looks so fat and luscious.... Yum!
I think I will go join the girls in the living room and have a bowl of ice cream for supper... and then a nice cold shower wouldn't go astray. Maybe then my brain will work a little better... we'll see.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Useless (Well Not Entirely)
I can't get anything done..... arggghhh! I feel so useless. It's too hot.... it's not fair and there is no rain in sight. Our grass is dried up and everything is looking mildly dead! If we don't get rain soon nothing will survive.... including me....
Ok so now that I have whined a bit I thought that while the going is good I would post some pictures of the vest that I made while I was in Olds..... this will be the only opportunity I have to prove to everyone that I actually do finish projects. This one I started last year when I got back from Olds. We had been challenged by our instructor to use the yarn that we had dyed with madder and gotten 25 different shades by using different modifiers and mordants (it was a pretty awesome experiment and I want to try it again but with Logwood) anyway I came up with the idea of making a vest.... there wasn't a whole lot of yarn and so the vest does not fit me.... I would have to say that it is a good medium.... I started weaving on my 4"x6" Weavette and each colour did exactly one rectangle except a couple which I found another colour to match it as closely as I could to finish it.... once I had all the rectangles woven I put them away and began to work on the Big j.c. Of course, you all know what happened after that..... no time except for the Big j.c. All year those rectangles would call to me and all along I knew what I wanted to do with them.... I started sewing them together one day when I had to take Dad to the doctor and had to wile away an hour or so waiting for him.... I used the loom waste from the Big j.c. to sew everything together and hauled out some nylon fabric to make the back. It was while I was in Olds this year that I managed to finish the sucker and hang it up with a smile on my face as a job well done.
So here it is in all it's glory and because the pictures don't do it justice.... I'll tell you what is on the back.... I used every last scrap of my madder dyed yarn weaving but with only a little left over I had enough to embroider a dragon on the back of the vest. By the way the buttons are Cocobolo wood....
Here it is....
Oh and by the way I'm not entirely useless.....
Ok so now that I have whined a bit I thought that while the going is good I would post some pictures of the vest that I made while I was in Olds..... this will be the only opportunity I have to prove to everyone that I actually do finish projects. This one I started last year when I got back from Olds. We had been challenged by our instructor to use the yarn that we had dyed with madder and gotten 25 different shades by using different modifiers and mordants (it was a pretty awesome experiment and I want to try it again but with Logwood) anyway I came up with the idea of making a vest.... there wasn't a whole lot of yarn and so the vest does not fit me.... I would have to say that it is a good medium.... I started weaving on my 4"x6" Weavette and each colour did exactly one rectangle except a couple which I found another colour to match it as closely as I could to finish it.... once I had all the rectangles woven I put them away and began to work on the Big j.c. Of course, you all know what happened after that..... no time except for the Big j.c. All year those rectangles would call to me and all along I knew what I wanted to do with them.... I started sewing them together one day when I had to take Dad to the doctor and had to wile away an hour or so waiting for him.... I used the loom waste from the Big j.c. to sew everything together and hauled out some nylon fabric to make the back. It was while I was in Olds this year that I managed to finish the sucker and hang it up with a smile on my face as a job well done.
So here it is in all it's glory and because the pictures don't do it justice.... I'll tell you what is on the back.... I used every last scrap of my madder dyed yarn weaving but with only a little left over I had enough to embroider a dragon on the back of the vest. By the way the buttons are Cocobolo wood....
Here it is....
Oh and by the way I'm not entirely useless.....
Fast And Furious
Wooooaaaa, Nellie! We've bought a new computer and it is big.... add to that the new wireless connection that we have and it's fast. I can upload pictures to my blog in like lightning speed. No more sitting around for half a day while my pictures upload and downloads are awesome! We have a wireless mouse and a wireless keyboard and it's all just too much for me..... I mean poor old Beulah (the old computer) sitting in the corner waiting to be emptied of all her information is just too sad. I will pass her on to my Dad and he can join the 21st century..... More and more in the last year we had been finding that we were having trouble with things on Beulah..... she wouldn't open up the disc thingy and lets us burn discs any more and she hadn't been letting us play movies or cd's on her for over a year. Once that happened Teapot got nervous about trying to upgrade our software since we could very well lose every darn picture there is and we have over 6000. (In my estimation that is a lot but then some of you out there probably have way more!)
So here I sit with this nifty new computer and I am in awe of what it can do and how fast it is at doing it. It will take me a while to sort everything out but already I feel like I'm going to be on a big learning curve.... first of all, my old word processing package is gone and I have to learn a new one. And there are strange things that mean nothing to me yet like a little chair icon that I'm afraid to click on.
We have changed our email since we are no longer with Telus so that is a biggy. I have spent half the morning trying to get things switched over to our new email address. It is quite irritating.
For the last few days it has been hot, hot, hot! I can't do anything past 10:30 a.m. and so the whole day is a complete washout, until about 8:30 in the evening. Teapot and I are supposed to be going down river this weekend but I'm not holding my breath because I don't know if either one of us can handle this God awful heat. It has been +32 degrees and is supposed to be higher than that as the weekend approaches..... argh!
So now that is severely hot I should go and get to work and clean up the dining room table that's in the sunroom
and the couch,
which is still covered in fibre from the Olds trip, then do a little spinning for level 3..... today it will be a spiral yarn and at least that isn't as fast and furious as this new computer..... a little more relaxing..... see ya tomorrow with hopefully some pictures.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Olds College and Fibre Week Continued
The weather has turned extremely hot and muggy. We had a day of rain on Sunday but we need about three or four days of rain non stop to combat the terrible drought that we find ourselves in. The poor animals are suffering in this dreadful heat and I can't think of them without wondering how they survive with woolly coats on them. I expect the weather will not break for quite a while. This weekend is our annual Paddle For The Peace trip where hundred of boaters gather here in HH for a trip down the Peace River to protest the Site C damn. I am not sure that these trips actually do anything to turn off the great political powers that commit themselves to these mega projects but at least we celebrate the river while we still have it. Teapot and I are thinking we will make a two or three day trip of it and try to go all the way from our home down the river to the house of a friend who lives in Old Fort. We will be glad to do this trip again after two years of wanting to and not being able to find the time to do it.
Anyway I didn't get a chance to finish uploading all the pictures to my blog yesterday from my trip to Olds. So here I go again.....
My instructor was a man this year so I was quite taken with the idea that there are a few men out there who take my craft seriously.... here he is preparing to spin flax.....
Here he is again teaching us the art of spinning cotton on the Takli.....
On Tuesday evening we had a fashion show with all the hand made things of the participants of Fibre Week from the last year..... here is a lovely shawl that if I recall correctly was made with angora and wool blended...... isn't it lovely.....
This is my vest that I made with all the wool I dyed in level 3 with Madder..... it was quite a project and I worked on it the first three or four days I was at Fibre Week.... It's not the greatest shot but I will show you better pics later..... by the way that's not me modeling.... : )
This felted beret was beautiful.... but then I love owls and any kind of bird....
This felted shawl looked like a stained glass window.....
This funky yarn was knit into an interesting shawl..... I love the yarn but I'm afraid that I don't like open work like this too well.....
Another madder project from one of my class mates.... she had knit a scarf with all that madder dyed yarn..... and she spun hers too..... awesome.....
This shawl was a real piece of work .... I loved it and there were two other shawls using the same pattern but unfortunately my camera conked out and I didn't get pictures of them......
The lady who felted the beautiful beret with owl also felted this hat as a protest against global warming. It was really lovely.... but then polar bears are such spectacular animals.... what about the pine trees that are taking the onslaught of global warming with the increase in the pine beetle.... anyway don't get me started.... I could go on and on.... come and see my grass if you want an eye opener on global warming....
So my couch is covered in fibre and I am slowly sifting through the mess and putting away things as needs be. I did buy three new spindles, a Navajo (that's the one I traded for), a Takli for cotton and believe it or not I am getting on to that even though I have no thumb on my right hand.... and last of all I bought a beautiful Forrester which I am spinning silk on for embroidery. I bought a new pair of scissors with a wooden container.... and more fibre than I'll ever use..... well maybe not... I mean you have to stock up for the lean years you know.....!
So there you have it another year to wait before I can head off to Olds again.... it's a wonderful thing to look forward to and who knows I might even get to go to the Twist of Fate fall retreat. Meanwhile in a couple of weeks I will be hosting the HH summer dyeing retreat in just a few weeks .... if your interested in coming to that one you can contact me at mflsnich@telus.net....
I'm off to spin.... and languor in this horrible heat....
Anyway I didn't get a chance to finish uploading all the pictures to my blog yesterday from my trip to Olds. So here I go again.....
My instructor was a man this year so I was quite taken with the idea that there are a few men out there who take my craft seriously.... here he is preparing to spin flax.....
Here he is again teaching us the art of spinning cotton on the Takli.....
On Tuesday evening we had a fashion show with all the hand made things of the participants of Fibre Week from the last year..... here is a lovely shawl that if I recall correctly was made with angora and wool blended...... isn't it lovely.....
This is my vest that I made with all the wool I dyed in level 3 with Madder..... it was quite a project and I worked on it the first three or four days I was at Fibre Week.... It's not the greatest shot but I will show you better pics later..... by the way that's not me modeling.... : )
This felted beret was beautiful.... but then I love owls and any kind of bird....
This felted shawl looked like a stained glass window.....
This funky yarn was knit into an interesting shawl..... I love the yarn but I'm afraid that I don't like open work like this too well.....
Another madder project from one of my class mates.... she had knit a scarf with all that madder dyed yarn..... and she spun hers too..... awesome.....
This shawl was a real piece of work .... I loved it and there were two other shawls using the same pattern but unfortunately my camera conked out and I didn't get pictures of them......
The lady who felted the beautiful beret with owl also felted this hat as a protest against global warming. It was really lovely.... but then polar bears are such spectacular animals.... what about the pine trees that are taking the onslaught of global warming with the increase in the pine beetle.... anyway don't get me started.... I could go on and on.... come and see my grass if you want an eye opener on global warming....
So my couch is covered in fibre and I am slowly sifting through the mess and putting away things as needs be. I did buy three new spindles, a Navajo (that's the one I traded for), a Takli for cotton and believe it or not I am getting on to that even though I have no thumb on my right hand.... and last of all I bought a beautiful Forrester which I am spinning silk on for embroidery. I bought a new pair of scissors with a wooden container.... and more fibre than I'll ever use..... well maybe not... I mean you have to stock up for the lean years you know.....!
So there you have it another year to wait before I can head off to Olds again.... it's a wonderful thing to look forward to and who knows I might even get to go to the Twist of Fate fall retreat. Meanwhile in a couple of weeks I will be hosting the HH summer dyeing retreat in just a few weeks .... if your interested in coming to that one you can contact me at mflsnich@telus.net....
I'm off to spin.... and languor in this horrible heat....
Monday, July 5, 2010
Olds and Sad News
It just seems like I never get a chance to get over one thing before I am on to the next. Upon arriving home I discovered that a good friend and mentor who is an octogenarian is not expected to live much longer. It has become incumbent on those who are her friends to help out until family can care for her or she is placed in palliative care. So no sooner than I come home from Olds than I have to turn off the brain from spinning and turn on the brain to home care. This friend has been a great chum in my spinning world for many years and we have spent many an autumn day stirring pots of woad on her front deck as we experiment with natural dyes. She and I have started a spinning group and demonstrated at Fall Fairs, have taken our craft to schools and traveled the Peace region for workshops on spinning and dyeing. It has been hard to watch her health unravel over the last two years in a struggle to combat Cancer. She will not survive it.... this I know, and so my partner in spinning and dyeing needs a friend right now. I will do what needs to be done and when her time here ends I will miss her companionship greatly as my experiments with colour and wool continue on.
Meanwhile it is hard to turn your mind from one thing (Olds) in an about face, and on to another thing (the care of a friend in her last days). But I will give it a try.
In the meantime, and as promised, here are some pictures.... some of the highlights of my trip to Olds College.
This is the Land Sciences building where all my classes are held.
Another picture in front of the Land Sciences building....
This is the Rose Garden in front of the Land Sciences building.
This was taken just to the left of the Rose Garden in front of the Land Sciences Building. There is a Lili Garden here though the lilies were not in bloom yet.
Lilacs were blooming a plenty.....
Meanwhile, before I left for Olds I was working on a bag for a fellow who was trading a Navajo spindle with me.... this is it before it was finished. (I did finish it and it looked great with a blue cabled handle.)
We hit the road on Thursday morning and we hit all kinds of weather on the way.... this was the sky just past Rocky Mountain House.... just above the trees there is a terrible look to the clouds..... I wasn't overly sure that we wouldn't get a tornado.... but we didn't.
We stopped along the way and my traveling companion managed to have a few moments where she returned to her childhood.
My first class was a dyeing cotton class.... this is raw cotton that is being dyed. A little blue....
A little red.....
Then we washed some cotton rovings.....
And dyed them too.... here we are with our dyed rovings.....
But of course the rovings needed to be washed..... so we washed... the instructor Joan Ruane is on the right....
In the evenings there was no shortage of things to do.... socials... spin ins, and fashions shows....
I missed the social this year as I was determined to finish my Madder vest in time for the fashion show. But here we are in the next 3 pictures spinning away on drop spindles and spinning wheels in an attempt to finish a cashmere spider and web in just over three hours... we did it. Here's MW.... one of my class/room mates....
And JM who is a shepherd supreme.... and a lady who I bought some of my sheep from....
And then there is RG who I traveled with, roomed with, did my classes with....
Now Olds College is pretty particular, being an agricultural college, about picking things from their gardens.... it is basically frowned upon.... seriously....you can be thrown off campus for picking things or destroying things and so when we decided to make a spider web for the spin in and realized that we would need a branch.... well finding said branch was not for the faint of heart. So it was with trepidation on the day of the spin in, that saw two of our team climbing behind bushes while the other acted as a distraction from any that might see the breaking of a branch. What was funny was that just as the team member with the ability to extract the branch from said bush was climbing out back onto the walkway a car alarm started up for for a split moment she thought she had been caught red handed... thank heavens it was only someone's car alarm going off.... and the branch was put to good use holding our web and spider of cashmere that very night at the spin in. So here is our entry in the spin in..... we didn't win.... we didn't even place.... but I think the contest was stacked.... there were 81 students and 130 votes.....obviously some voted more than once..... (I'm just a little choked that we didn't win) but our spider was donated to the Cashmere Association to help with the promotion of their product.
We have here a tapestry based on Van Gogh's wonderful painting done by my level 4 instructor... I thought about all the hours that went into this and the beautiful colours of all the hand spun and hand dyed and then hand woven threads and I stand in awe of his amazing work. He's definitely an artist.
Once Monday rolled around I began the level 4 class and right off the bat we were spinning fibre like bison, camel down, and cashmere. Our second day we were learning about reeling silk which you can see us doing in the next few pictures.....
I'm pooped as I have been uploading pictures all day.... so I will end here and carry on with some more pictures from my awesome trip to Olds.....
In the meantime think of me and maybe say a prayer for me as I try to help an old friend and mentor tomorrow morning.....
Meanwhile it is hard to turn your mind from one thing (Olds) in an about face, and on to another thing (the care of a friend in her last days). But I will give it a try.
In the meantime, and as promised, here are some pictures.... some of the highlights of my trip to Olds College.
This is the Land Sciences building where all my classes are held.
Another picture in front of the Land Sciences building....
This is the Rose Garden in front of the Land Sciences building.
This was taken just to the left of the Rose Garden in front of the Land Sciences Building. There is a Lili Garden here though the lilies were not in bloom yet.
Lilacs were blooming a plenty.....
Meanwhile, before I left for Olds I was working on a bag for a fellow who was trading a Navajo spindle with me.... this is it before it was finished. (I did finish it and it looked great with a blue cabled handle.)
We hit the road on Thursday morning and we hit all kinds of weather on the way.... this was the sky just past Rocky Mountain House.... just above the trees there is a terrible look to the clouds..... I wasn't overly sure that we wouldn't get a tornado.... but we didn't.
We stopped along the way and my traveling companion managed to have a few moments where she returned to her childhood.
My first class was a dyeing cotton class.... this is raw cotton that is being dyed. A little blue....
A little red.....
Then we washed some cotton rovings.....
And dyed them too.... here we are with our dyed rovings.....
But of course the rovings needed to be washed..... so we washed... the instructor Joan Ruane is on the right....
In the evenings there was no shortage of things to do.... socials... spin ins, and fashions shows....I missed the social this year as I was determined to finish my Madder vest in time for the fashion show. But here we are in the next 3 pictures spinning away on drop spindles and spinning wheels in an attempt to finish a cashmere spider and web in just over three hours... we did it. Here's MW.... one of my class/room mates....
And JM who is a shepherd supreme.... and a lady who I bought some of my sheep from....
And then there is RG who I traveled with, roomed with, did my classes with....
Now Olds College is pretty particular, being an agricultural college, about picking things from their gardens.... it is basically frowned upon.... seriously....you can be thrown off campus for picking things or destroying things and so when we decided to make a spider web for the spin in and realized that we would need a branch.... well finding said branch was not for the faint of heart. So it was with trepidation on the day of the spin in, that saw two of our team climbing behind bushes while the other acted as a distraction from any that might see the breaking of a branch. What was funny was that just as the team member with the ability to extract the branch from said bush was climbing out back onto the walkway a car alarm started up for for a split moment she thought she had been caught red handed... thank heavens it was only someone's car alarm going off.... and the branch was put to good use holding our web and spider of cashmere that very night at the spin in. So here is our entry in the spin in..... we didn't win.... we didn't even place.... but I think the contest was stacked.... there were 81 students and 130 votes.....obviously some voted more than once..... (I'm just a little choked that we didn't win) but our spider was donated to the Cashmere Association to help with the promotion of their product.
We have here a tapestry based on Van Gogh's wonderful painting done by my level 4 instructor... I thought about all the hours that went into this and the beautiful colours of all the hand spun and hand dyed and then hand woven threads and I stand in awe of his amazing work. He's definitely an artist.
Once Monday rolled around I began the level 4 class and right off the bat we were spinning fibre like bison, camel down, and cashmere. Our second day we were learning about reeling silk which you can see us doing in the next few pictures.....
I'm pooped as I have been uploading pictures all day.... so I will end here and carry on with some more pictures from my awesome trip to Olds.....
In the meantime think of me and maybe say a prayer for me as I try to help an old friend and mentor tomorrow morning.....
Saturday, July 3, 2010
10 Days And Boy Am I Tired!
Yup... it's all over for another year..... waaaa! I do have to say that I am exhausted. It will be an early night tonight since I have been on the go since 4:30 a.m. I'm totally wiped since I've hardly slept the whole time I was away. But WOW.... what a 10 days it was. I didn't know my brain could hold so much information. Information overload is in full effect. I'm totally wiped.
There have been all kinds of things happening while I was away and as with any jam packed trip, I didn't leave with peace of mind. The first thing to happen to fowl up my nice trip was an emergency trip to the vet with our little Tootsie. We weren't sure what was up but he wouldn't let anyone touch him.... at all. So with very little to go on, we convinced a vet to have a look at him. At first we were worried about a blockage but when the vet said no we didn't know what to say. She poked a prodded and soon came up with the diagnosis that our wee dog had a bad back. Go figure.... fist me, then Teapot, and now the dog. However, this was no ordinary bad back. The wee guy had some paralysis in his hind quarters and only had a little felling back there. So a night at the vet's with xrays and the like were the order of the day. That all happened on the day I left. The worst thing was that it took all but $25 of the money I made off the jacket commission.... so Frankie receiveth and and Frankie giveth away. Then while I was away Nellie the freak sheep decided to have a surprise lamb. Yes... after two years of sterility she drops a lamb in the middle of the hottest weather. After the vet called Tootsie came home with liquid anti inflammatories to take for two weeks. He seems fine though a little subdued.
Daughter #2 won an awesome award for her contribution to the school in art, not to mention Academic Honours and Work Ethic Honours. Meanwhile Daughter #1 got Academics and Work Ethic Honours, and an award for participating in the Rick Hansen Paraplegic Awareness Campaign, Top student in Socials 8, Most Improved in Math 8, and a special recognition for greatest contribution in Science 8. I'm a very proud Momma. I wish I could have been there.
As for me and my trip?... well, I'm just too tired to write about it right now. Check back tomorrow, preferably later in the day, since I will be snoring peacefully in my awesomely comfortable bed till noon! At that time I will post lots of pictures and you will get to see what I have been up to.
There have been all kinds of things happening while I was away and as with any jam packed trip, I didn't leave with peace of mind. The first thing to happen to fowl up my nice trip was an emergency trip to the vet with our little Tootsie. We weren't sure what was up but he wouldn't let anyone touch him.... at all. So with very little to go on, we convinced a vet to have a look at him. At first we were worried about a blockage but when the vet said no we didn't know what to say. She poked a prodded and soon came up with the diagnosis that our wee dog had a bad back. Go figure.... fist me, then Teapot, and now the dog. However, this was no ordinary bad back. The wee guy had some paralysis in his hind quarters and only had a little felling back there. So a night at the vet's with xrays and the like were the order of the day. That all happened on the day I left. The worst thing was that it took all but $25 of the money I made off the jacket commission.... so Frankie receiveth and and Frankie giveth away. Then while I was away Nellie the freak sheep decided to have a surprise lamb. Yes... after two years of sterility she drops a lamb in the middle of the hottest weather. After the vet called Tootsie came home with liquid anti inflammatories to take for two weeks. He seems fine though a little subdued.
Daughter #2 won an awesome award for her contribution to the school in art, not to mention Academic Honours and Work Ethic Honours. Meanwhile Daughter #1 got Academics and Work Ethic Honours, and an award for participating in the Rick Hansen Paraplegic Awareness Campaign, Top student in Socials 8, Most Improved in Math 8, and a special recognition for greatest contribution in Science 8. I'm a very proud Momma. I wish I could have been there.
As for me and my trip?... well, I'm just too tired to write about it right now. Check back tomorrow, preferably later in the day, since I will be snoring peacefully in my awesomely comfortable bed till noon! At that time I will post lots of pictures and you will get to see what I have been up to.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)