Winter Weather Has Struck In Earnest

I woke this morning to several inches of snow on the ground. And it's cold! Like freezing cold. -15 degrees this morning. Teapot headed into FSJ and I worry about him on the road. There have been several road  accidents this week one of which has seriously hurt a good friend's husband. He is in the hospital in Edmonton with a broken neck and is fighting for his life. We are praying fiercely for his recovery. It is a worry.

The Daughters have headed off to the bus stop this morning and I worry about them too since the wind chill is -30 degrees this morning since the wind is blowing and is quite gusty.

It is a strange morning this morning with snow swirling around and the sky looking deep blue as the sky is still quite dark. Yesterday morning was stranger still with the sky looking like this...

 It almost looked as if a forest fire was burning off in the distance... the old adage kept coming back to me... red sky in the morning shepherd's warning. Well, I'm a shepherd and I took warning. Somehow I knew that temperatures were going down and the snow was coming. Actually, most of BC is getting hit with stormy weather today.

The sheep are in the barn and the alpaca is lying down next to the barn. Honeydew is milling around the feeding boxes and the male alpacas are hunkered down by the side of their feeding mangers hiding out of the wind. Dreamer the horse doesn't seem to be minding the cold temperatures though we will haul out her blanket later today and get her settled too before the temperatures drop again. I wish we had a barn for her. I will just have to take tramp out to her paddock with a bucket of oats today and then I might have a look around the paddock for a likely place to build her a shelter of sorts.... something temporary at this point.

Teapot has just called to say that the road wasn't as bad as we expected and that he is safe at his workshop which is a great relief for me.

It is a good day to spin I think at least that is the plan. I have begun knitting again on my shawl and will continue to spin bison today. Later this evening I will get back to level 3 and pull out the charkha for cotton spinning. I am looking forward to getting the cotton spinning done and get on to the silk spinning. I have also received in the mail the fibre for my 150 hour project in the level 4 course. It is cashmere and you could smell it through the box... quite pungent! But then goat always is... It is going to be interesting keeping everything straight in my mind as I am working on two courses at the same time.... a fairly strange situation. But I am determined to do them both justice.

I have once again changed the look of the blog.... I thought snow for a background would be cool... but I'm staying with the theme of blue and spiders... just in a different way....

CBC radio is on right now and according to them the power has gone off in a number of places all through the province.... I hope we don't lose it here..... I'll be thankful when November moves on....

Before I go for the day I will add a few pictures here of what we are experiencing.....

So I'm off for a winter day.... quiet.... spinning.... knitting.... mmmmm some hot chocolate this morning I think...

Hope your winter day is lovely too....

Startitis Strikes Again

I have a major case of startitis.  I am working on a scarf, a third spool of bison, our bedroom and the poem, a shawl, and then right out of the blue (no pun intended) I got the idea that I should spin this...

Isn't it pretty?....

I love this fibre. It is merino.... well, it's called Optim which I think is merino that has been stretched using chemicals. This particular Optim has a little Tencel blended in for fun. It is turning out to be absolutely gorgeous when spun and looks like this.....

I think I will weave and I mean really weave a scarf with this stuff. I have a very fine heddle for my rigid heddle loom so I think that I will go that way... but then maybe Iwill rent a loom from the guild and use a 4 harness loom.

See what I mean by startitis. I see some lovely new fibre and that's all I've got in my mind..... suddenly all the other projects that I'm working on have drifted away across the universe and here I am with thought of divine blue.....

It all started with this....

I saw this picture on APOD the other day and have been dreaming blue ever since....

I even got out my beads and looked for some blue beads that would coordinate with this to make the blue scarf more appealing.... yeah.... serious staritis.

Why oh why can't I ever get finishitis!

All Over The Place.... Goes My Errant Mind

I seem to be having trouble these days concentrating on any one subject for more than a minute or two. Sometimes I wonder if that comes with age or if I was always like this.  Teapot and I have begun over the weekend to study Political Philosophy with courses on DVD. We sit each evening with one class and watch the course unfold before us and it has been quite interesting. (Daughter #2 calls words like "interesting" place holders.... I'm not really sure why, but it is a derogatory term evidently.) We (that is, Teapot and I) have done courses such as this once before with a group of friends where we would enjoy a "class" and then we would have an hour to sit and discuss the topic and how it applies to us. But even though I enjoyed the course, which was a look at The Physiology of Psychology, I found the discussion group really lame, so this time Teapot and I decided to study this course on our own.  We find that we speak about it more freely and are not as reserved in our comments, which is really good since you can make some pretty hilarious comments on a course that evaluates the pros and cons of cannibalism!

It has been an ideal day for the activity of listening to a professor ramble on.  Yup,  I think winter has finally hit. This week we are supposed to get temperatures down to -20 degrees. It has been grey and cold all day with light snow falling off and on. It has been dull outside and I'm not much better. Yet, I did have some friends come for a day of spinning. With a nice hot bowl of soup for lunch, it was a lovely chance to catch up on what they are doing too. We even had a bit of show and tell.  However, now outside the window the snow looks dreadfully cold. The sheep are huddling out in the paddocks and Dreamer (the horse) will require a blanket over her at the rate the temperatures are falling.So an evening of viewing a DVD is an ideal pass time.

It seemed like a good day for a little spinning too. Last week, I started on some Bison fibre for the level 4 requirements. It is coming along quite nicely. Still today I needed a little colour in my life so I pulled out some Optim which is a merino wool which has been stretched to resemble silk. It is a lovely combination of blue, green, teal, and purple. It is very soft to work with and I'm enjoying it much more than I expected. I love spinning colour on a dull grey day like this one was.  If it weren't for the trees then I wouldn't have known where the sky ended and the ground began. The electric fire place has been giving off lovely heat and a lovely glow. Makes me want to get a cup of hot chocolate. I have Annie Lennox on playing in the background.  It makes for a very mellow evening.... (my feet are complaining though because they are so cold..... maybe I should go find some nice s----- well, you know)!

There was one point of excitement in my life today. Honeydew, the llama that doesn't have an over abundance of brains, got her head stuck in the fence today and I have no idea how long she was standing there trying to get her head out of the fence. I gathered my courage and held her head while separating the fence for her to get her head back through the wires. It worked and she was very mild mannered about it all in the end. I think she was rather surprised that I meant her well.

As you can see from what has been going on in my life that the grey skies have affected life around here. we seem to be waiting and can't settle on anything of value to keep us occupied. November is a month of "in between". Not Christmas yet, and after the pleasures of a colourful autumn, things seem to have graduated to a......

What am I thinking..... there's only five weeks left till Christmas and I still have two pairs of socks to knit......... and God knows how many other things I have to do..... argh! I had better make a list so I don't get side swiped again!

This errant mind of mine keeps dragging me in places I really shouldn't go.

Did you know that eating poppy seeds can show opium in your blood if you do a blood test. I just heard that on the radio ; } Shocking really.... !

Holy Hanna!

Gee I turned around twice and the weekend disappeared. I'm still trying to figure out what day it is.

The weekend slipped by in a crazy dance of time. What did I do? Not much... I assure you. Do you ever have weekends where you just can't figure out what happened.

We did have company here for two days so that kind of threw me off.... And I totally enjoyed having Teapot's brother and his wife here. Then yesterday we took a quick trip to town to pick up supplies for the contractor who will be working on the house. Of course that took way longer than we expected. I had to pick out light fixtures...... hmmmm.  You know you're a normal couple when you are staring at hundreds of light fixtures and your spouse says, "I like that one," and you find yourself wanting to gag. Then you find one you like and your spouse adamantly disagrees with your choice. We finally settled on two fixtures that neither one of us loves but neither one of us hates either. In the end who cares what the light fixture looks like in the bathroom just as long as it aids you in finding the johnny-on-the-spot in the first place.  (I wanted motion detectors so that we could leave the light on all the time and it would go off when nobody was around.... Teapot thought it was dumb and too much like an airport.)

After picking out the light fixtures, I spent a very long time looking at flooring. I'm still no closer to picking out something that I want. Argh!

We did pick up all the paneling that we need.... and we did pick up the sub flooring for the sun room... and we did get the wall board for the kitchen and we did get the plywood for the kitchen cupboards.... and we did get the knobs for the bathroom and we did get the door knobs for the girls bedroom door.... and .... and .... and.... $1000.00 dollars later I'm looking at the stuff we bought and thinking is that all for all that money?!!!!

Ouch!

Still I can't wait till the house is looking more finished.....

I'm so excited..... (can you tell?)

Yup I should go and do some work since I've done nothing really all day....

Wow... it's almost Monday!!!! How in the heck did that happen....

Progress

I did say the other day that I would talk about two things later on so I thought that today would be the day that I would fulfill that promise. I made reference the other day to the gallery show and to the scarf that I wasn't happy with.

First of all let me talk about the gallery show. As part of the North Peace Spinners and Weavers guild I am expected to participate in a show every 3 years at our local gallery. Our gallery is a small gallery that hangs art shows each month and each one is unique and individual to the artist being showcased. However, when a guild show occurs we hang the show as a group and the group is showcased. I have participated in three separate shows over the years and this will be the fourth show. Each show has had a theme. This show's theme is Shawls, Scarves, Socks, and Shoelaces. The idea is that we have prepped and ready for the show at least ten or fifteen garments in that category. With twenty people in the guild the show actually adds up to quite a few garments. It is also an opportunity to sell some of our art. So I have been getting ready for the show. I have knitted two shawls and two scarves so far but I still have a whole lot more work to do, obviously. I am planning on making quite a few pairs of socks if I can and I hope to get out my Marudai and do a few shoelaces too. I have a  few more shawls in mind and and a couple of more scarves.

Now the other thing that I was going to mention was the scarf that I am currently working on. I had begun to knit a scarf in the bison/cashmere/silk/wool blend yarn that I finished spinning last month.... as I got down to the end of the ball I realized that I didn't have enough yarn to make the scarf long enough. I realized that getting more of that fibre to spin for the scarf would be next to impossible so I didn't even bother with that. I just raveled it out and decided to weave instead. I am working on my 6" x 6" pin loom making blocks and crocheting the blocks together as I go. I stupid-like decided to incorporate silk into the warp. Big mistake... the silk totally overshadows the bison/cashmere/silk/wool blended yarn and it is not nearly what I was hoping for. The softness, the squishiness that makes the bison/cashmere/silk/wool yarn so lovely is totally lost in the weave and the silk warp. I'm totally disappointed. But it is almost finished and I will post a picture here when I am done.

Meanwhile there have been other developments in the last few days. Finally the contractor came to see me and find out what was needing to be done on our renovation and we had a really good chat. He is coming in next week to do a whole bunch of work for me.... which means that I will not have to look at tuck tape on my walls anymore. I won't have to look at bathroom pipes anymore and our bedroom will have paneling right to the ceiling. I am not going to get him to lay the flooring down right now.... I'm going to wait on that. But I am going to get ceiling tiles for about one third of the sun room done (I don't have enough burned for the rest of the room). But at least the strapping will be there and I will be able to put up the tiles as they are finished. So at least there will be progress and at least the bathroom will be finished. And our bedroom will be finished and the sun room will be mostly done and Teapot and I will work on the flooring over March break maybe. I am soooo looking forward to getting the house in a little more livable state. We are also going to buy some light fixtures for the sun room and for the downstairs bathroom. Then I can take the light fixtures there and put them in temporarily until I can find what I am looking for for the other parts of the house. I do realize that this is somewhat of a bandaid but its the best we can do right now. I do not want the house in a total ree raw for Christmas. There is a sale on flooring right now so Teapot and I may have a look at getting the flooring for our living room and sun room.

Well I'm heading off ... it is a vacation day today.... Teapot is home so I will get him to help me sort the house out and prepare for some house guests.... there's family coming and Daughter #1 will have to sleep in Daughter #2's bedroom.... now that should be interesting.... and we've got to hang the door on the two bedrooms so that there's privacy for all!!!! Yeah... life is just a little crazy today!

A Walk Through My Grandfather's House

If you look at the time that I am making this post you will notice that it is the wee small hours of the morning. I woke up crying.... and then my stomach began to hurt.... I didn't think that dreams could hurt....

Normally I don't dream hardly at all.... or if I do then when I wake, I forget them right away.  Not this week. This week I have been dreaming very vividly.

I may have mentioned here before that I grew up in Newfoundland. I grew up in Mount Pearl which is a city attached to the capital city of St. John's. My parents and grandparents (and if rights be known, their parents to the seventh generation) came from a little outport called Elliston, and though I didn't live there I feel like I actually hale from the town where my grandparents lived more than Mount Pearl.  (That's my maternal grandparents for those family members who read here.) I have many good memories of my years growing up and I have very vivid memories of my Grandfather's house and the way it made/makes me feel. I don't know if I am getting maudlin in my old age but sometimes I have to wonder. Maybe all these fresh memories are coming back to me because Teapot and I have been going through all the old photos. Whatever the reason, I have been thinking a lot about those years when I grew up. And then tonight I woke up crying. Not because I was sad, but just because it felt so good to be back in that place again. (For that is surely where I was!)

My grandmother had a chrome and vinyl rocking chair just off the kitchen in the dining room, it was as ugly as sin, but that was the best rocking chair ever. It was smooth. The rockers were really long on that chair and it rocked like a dream. When I rocked in that chair it felt like I was swinging. I would sit for hours in that rocking chair and rock and rock and rock and never since has there been a rocking chair that made me happy like that one did. I even saw in my dream my Grandfather's favorite pipe that he would give me to clean and fill with fresh tobacco. I could feel it in my hand. I could even see the sun slanting across the dining room table through the two big windows that never opened.... at least not in my day. I walked the stairs with the big brass chummy thingies that held the stair runner in place. I stood on the front steps of that house and looked back over my shoulder at the door swinging shut behind me and I remembered..... like I've never remembered since they died.

And I missed them.....

Gives new meaning to Remembrance Day......

The Problem Of My Poem

I've always had this love of playing with words. To me poetry is like Sudoku only with words instead of numbers. A few years back a friend of mine, who happens to be a teacher, and I were having a conversation about poetry. He knew that I liked to write poetry and couldn't believe that I thought poetry was just manipulation of words. He challenged me to write a Shakspearean type poem, romantic and using words that were similar to what Shakespeare would have written... but not a sonnet (though I love writing sonnets too).
So I sat down and wrote the following two poems...

Come hither my love, in yon downy bower,
where silken skin shall prevail over furrowed brow,
and gentle touch shall awaken more than beating hearts.
Fear not and pluck the ripe and honeyed fruit,
and taste the pleasures of this golden time.

The other poem that I wrote went like this....

Hasten, sweet slumber, upon these adoring brows,
Yon gentle wake shall carry this restive two.
Respite shall be their hallowed destiny,
while faith, honour, and love
remain their trusted companions.

They weren't too bad all things considered.

I've always wanted to incorporate these two poems into the decor of Teapot's and my bedroom. The second poem... with "Hasten sweet slumber", should adorn the wall above our bed. That one seemed obvious. But it is the other poem that I'm not sure what to do with. Somehow it seems decadently sexual and I almost feel like I should have it tattooed on my belly..... (I can't believe I just wrote that!)
Anyway, I'm having a dilemma in trying to decide on what to do with that poem. I have a very decadent painting in my mind.... of a woman scantily clad.... with the poem embossed onto the painting.... however, somehow this seems a little too blatantly sexual too. Teapot is not saying much but I'm sure he wouldn't object to a scantily clad woman in a painting hanging in his bedroom.... (wince)! So I either have to get over it and just be decadent.... and come to grips with my discomfort or forget the whole thing.  Hmmm....

Oh what to do..... oh what a dilemma.... oh I hope the mother-in-law, doesn't read this.....!!!!