A Little Green With All That White

As I look out my window today, I can see snow all around.

I was peaking through my most recent pictures and saw that the cotton that I spun a few weeks ago looked so soft just like the snow outside. There are tracks in the snow from where Jiggs drops her nose into the snow and scoops up some into her mouth. It leaves funny imprints in an otherwise pristine surface.

Teapot is burning trees that are dead from the rampant Pine Beetle kill and while most of the trees are red there are some that are green still, and so I decided to change my blog to reflect the view from my window and in so doing ridding myself of that dreaded pink. Besides... St. Paddy's Day is coming and what is St. Paddy's day without a little green?

While I've been watching the horrible events of the last few days in Japan, Saturday has come and gone. My spindling class of last Saturday gathered once again yesterday, full of vim and vigor for the next installment on our spindling class. This time I had Teapot with me to drive and I enjoyed his company making the drive fly by. He went car hunting again while I taught the class the intrigues of spindling. I was pleased to see that most had finished their homework and had vastly improved. I even had two new student join the fray.  They've invited me to come again for another day to check homework again next week and to trouble shoot any questions that might arise, so once again I will be traveling back for another day of spindling next Saturday.

Daughter #1 enjoyed a sleepover with her friend at her friend's house. Daughter #2 enjoyed having her friend here last night. It is easy to see that this is the last week before mid term break. Neither one is feeling overly energetic as is the usual case the week before any break. We all find ourselves winding down to a well earned time from obligations, homework, and getting up early in the morning. I think even Teapot looks forward to a week and a half of pleasure. We are all disappointed that the JCR trip which Daughter #1 and Teapot were to be on has been canceled. They will not be going skiing in Smithers though the powers that be are trying to work it out so that the JCRs can go skiing at Powder King. I hope it will all work out for there are some very long faces on those thwarted in their skiing expectations.

Today I am working on a pair of mittens which are a request from a family member who needs nice warm woollen mittens because he lives even further North than moi. I hope to have them knitted by Tuesday at the latest so that they can go in the mail and I can go back to my homework. With all the cold of the last few weeks, I am sure that Fanny, my best breeding ewe, has been keeping her eyes crossed and her legs crossed in an effort to wait till the warmer temperatures of spring arrive before dropping her lambs. She looks rather pathetic as her pregnancy takes its tole on her energy and she spend much time lying down or standing very still.

That's her in the middle watching me take her picture.

I am finding it hard to believe that spring is near.... it is still too cold to think of spring adventures when winter still seems to knock daily at my window. Knitting mittens still seems like a timely project though with mid March looming I wish that I could be thinking of more spring like activities.  Is anyone out there planting their seeds yet for transplanting in the not too distant future?  My cotton seeds await their soil, and I begin to think of that lovely mound of soil in the yard that will be my new garden area in a month or so. I look forward to beets and carrots and potatoes and peas.  Each morning I hear the chickadees singing their love songs. It is the only time of the year that you hear them trilling in such a way.  I await the first call of the returning geese but I think this year they might be late since the snow is still deep and they can't even feed on the fallen oats in farmer's fields. Still the yellow canoe shows it head through the snow

 and I know that a trip down river will bring the pleasures of watching returning water birds in the not too distant future. The kingfishers may already be here since the river never freezes with the dam changing the river's flow.  It is hard not to get ahead of myself with the grey of the sky turning to the brilliancy of sunshine outside. But then the snow is so very bright.  I am sure that it is for that reason that the sun looks so charming.  For now though, there is bread to be kneaded and mittens to be knitted, and still the smoke of Teapot's fire drifts slowly past my window.... I wonder if he is ready for a cup of hot chocolate....

I hope your Saturday is calling to you with spring like qualities.

Here comes Teapot through the kitchen door.... I think I'll put that kettle on.

Fecking Shite Again

Fecking Shite = Earthquakes followed by tsunamis!

And I say a prayer for all those who have lost someone today.

Fecking Shite

Fecking Shite = Flax

I've finished the flax and it looks like an ape spun it.... actually that's an insult to the ape. It looks more like an elephant had at it with it's trunk!  But I don't care at this point. I'm finished and the tips of my fingers are raw to prove it. 6 skeins of line flax and the worst time I've ever had spinning anything. After watching YouTube videos on how to spin flax and reading and trying, and reading and trying again, I'm putting the flax away and never looking at it from this day forward, that is, if I can get away with it. It was horrible... it is horrible. It looks like rope and rough rope at that. I'm likely to get very little in the way of marks but that's fine by me.

These are my line flax samples and if you click on the photo you will get an enlarged version and you will also see how coarse and ropey it looks.

By comparison my tow flax sample look positively soft!!

I have never in my life had such a swearing fest as I have had in the last few days doing these sample... I don't know if the rest of the Bast fibres are like this and I'm not readily wanting to find out either!

So now I have to boil up these babies and finish processing them and one of them has to be bleached.... and while I'm doing that I'll be washing wool for Lopi and working on worsted and woollen samples.... and relishing spinning something I love.

I also decided that I just couldn't live with that godawful pink background anymore so while I'm trying to be satisfied with some pink, I think the black is a good background.

Oh yeah... I'm still waiting for lambs... and spring... neither is on the horizon yet... just one blasted moose still yomping away at the hay.

25 Years Comes To An End

The last mission of the Discovery Space Shuttle has come to an end. A sad day indeed. And it is all the sadder because our friends to the south are hard pressed to be the innovators and forward thinkers that they have always been. President Obama saw fit last year to end the Constellation Program which was to take the place of the Space Shuttle program. Obviously this economic recession that most of the world finds itself in, is detrimental to the people of the United States in more ways than one. We tend to think of people out of jobs and declaring bankruptcy, but the loss of innovative ideas like the whole Space Shuttle Program has come to be its most serious collateral damage for those of us who looked to the US for leadership in space research. The Endeavor will make a trip to the International Space Station in April and then the Atlantis will make a trip in June. There are no other scheduled trips.

Space Shuttles are amazing transportation devices. I have watched over the years the many missions of each and every one. I have to say that I looked on the Discovery's last mission with sadness in my heart. Here are a few pictures....

The most important legacy of the Space Shuttle Program is that for the first time in history we have been able to see the planet that we call home as something onto itself. It is finite and it is ours. It's blue beauty is fragile and that is what the Space Shuttle Program has been able to drive home to us over and over through the awesome pictures the astronauts have been able to take of our planet.  I love this last photo since we see the horizon of the earth in the background of the ISS. Very cool.

It is with sadness that I watch the Space Shuttle Program winding down. Manned returnable space vehicles are the legacy of the US and NASA combined efforts to lead the way in space engineering. There is likely to never again, in my time, be as rigorous a program as this. I am proud to know that it has been during my lifetime that space research has been so forward thinking.  That is not to say that NASA will not persevere with space travel programs. Currently they still have a space probe on Mars and one on the way to the outer reaches of our galaxy. But manned missions for the US are at a stand still. Let us hope, that if nothing else, the wars that torment the world and suck dry the funds of the US will come to an end so that the money that is wasted on killing each other returns to higher minded things like research into space craft.

For now we must look to the leadership of countries like Russia and India to watch the space programs that they have if our knowledge of this great universe and our place in it is to continue.

I would love to be able to get to the Smithsonian to see the Discovery at some time in my life, which is where it will be retired for those of us to view.... those of us who dream of seeing this planet in all its roundness and blueness, unhindered.

Knee Slapper

I was sent a joke that cracked me up. I'm going to print it here though I don't usually do that but there is a story behind my posting this joke here and I'll tell you all about it after you read this.

Tap on the Shoulder  

A true story from the pages of the Manchester Evening Times . . .

Last Wednesday a passenger in a taxi heading for Salford station leaned
over to ask the driver a question and gently tapped him on the shoulder to
get his attention.
The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus, drove up
over the curb and stopped just inches from a large plate window.
For a few moments everything was silent in the cab. Then, the shaking
driver said "are you OK? I'm so sorry, but you scared the daylights out of
me."
The badly shaken passenger apologized to the driver and said, "I didn't
realize that a mere tap on the shoulder would startle someone so badly."
The driver replied, "No, no, I'm the one who is sorry, it's entirely my
fault. Today is my very first day driving a cab.
I've been driving a hearse for 25 years." 

You may have already heard this joke but it struck me so funny because the first guy that I ever went out with, long before I met Teapot,  drove a hearse for his father's funeral home!

LOLOLOLOLOL it just cracked me up.

I Took Sunday Off

I really did. Usually I spend Sunday catching up on all the things during the week that I didn't do. But not yesterday.  Teapot had report cards to finish at school and so he was gone all afternoon. The Daughters were busy finishing assignments that needed to be done for today, as a result, I found myself at loose ends. So I finally decided to ball up those skeins of yarn that I had dyed during the retreat at Blueberry. This got me thinking about that Counterpane pattern in the last issue of Piecework. I had been planning on knitting that counterpane with the yarn that I had dyed and I had spent a week looking for the darn magazine that I had gotten just after Christmas. I still can't find it but a good friend in FSJ had copied the pattern for me so that I wouldn't have to keep being frustrated while looking for it. Eventually I will find the magazine but for now I have the photo copy. So I started knitting and this is what I've go so far...

I am working my way up through the colours. So far it is looking just as I had hoped.

So I need to back up a bit and talk about this a little. The 150 hour project for the level 4 of the MSP is looming over me and so I had decided quite some time ago what I wanted to do. I wanted to knit this...

in a blend of Cashmere, Merino, and Silk. But I want to use percentage dyeing in order to make the petals in the pattern look like actual flowers... in order to do this I need to carry the colours from pale lemon yellow to darker peach, with gradual changes in the colours as I work up the petal pattern. I will be using percentage dyeing, blending fibres, and Cashmere which was one of our new fibres we learned about this year. It is important to use the knowledge you've gained in these types of projects and this suits the criteria fairly well.

Now what does this have to do with a counterpane pattern in the Piecework magazine?  Well, I got the brilliant idea that if I needed to dye my wool I would not want to blow it and spoil a whole bunch of my hard won hand spun Cashmere blended yarn if the dyeing didn't work. So I ordered some Gems yarn which is a merino, lace weight yarn sold by Louet.... and while I was at the Blueberry I had a little test try of my dye. I do realize that a Cashmere/merino/Silk will take the dye differently but it is better to test with this first before I commit myself to colours that might be wrong.

When I finished dyeing this yarn I had a bunch of fibre that was useless for my 150 hour project but quite lovely to be used in a project... so since the counterpane pattern has a leaf motif in it I thought I would give it a try and see how it looks using the methods I will be using for my 150 hour project.

That's what I did yesterday.

I needed a day to sit on my arse and do nothing other than watch my needles click away, feel the sunshine on my face after a week of snow, and listen to CBC. It was a lovely afternoon.

Saturday was bad and good all at the same time. I almost died but I had a great spindling class. Having almost died, it meant all the more that Sunday was appreciated fully.

Dieing was not something I wanted to do, so I didn't do it, but it almost wasn't up to me. I left Saturday morning on roads that were less than spring-like (that's an understatement) for my class of spindling students in FSJ.  I was traveling along about 20 kms less than the speed limit, and about halfway there, when a driver in a car coming toward me, decided that her side of the road was not good enough and so crossed over to mine.  She obviously was busy talking to her companion and either didn't see me or thought that her SUV was bigger than mine and would have a better chance in a head on collision. She did not move over till the last possible moment. We missed but it was by about three or four feet at most. It was horrifically scary. She swerved at the last minute when she finally decided to put her eyes back on the road and not on whoever was distracting her..... and I thought she might end up in a ditch but she didn't and I was able to carry on unscathed.... Still my knuckles from that point forward were extremely white and my teeth will all need to be resurfaced since they were grinding the rest of the way there.  I hate winter driving and avoid whenever I can.

The rest of the day turned out well except I was so uptight driving home that I had a serious case of white knuckle syndrome again and every vehicle that came toward me meant that I was slowing down to about 40 kms on a 90 kms road... I'm sure I ticked off every driver who had the misfortune of catching up behind me.... because every one who did passed with frustration in their moves, and all the ones who were coming toward me looked at me like I was some kind of strange weirdo that shouldn't have a drivers license. But all is well, that ends well. I'm home and I'm safe.

As for my spindlers... it went well except that my two newbies didn't show up, so I was teaching a class of students who at least had some experience. They all went away with smiles on their faces and yarn to practice on till next week. It was a real privilege to teach them. Here they are learning how to card rolags after having spun pencil rovings of various grist.

MJ learning how to card properly... she's charging the card.

MA also learning the same thing.

DS is learning how to flick card locks.

NC had two drop spindles that she worked with. This one had no hook and was a bit of a challenge. But she did really well.

And this lady is another of the Master Spinning Program and needs no help spindling... she's there to help if I need it.

We all went for lunch afterwards and had a lovely time. Next week I will go back and teach them plying techniques and how to choose a spindle based on fibre and weight of yarn that they want to spin. I also told them I would show them support spindling... hopefully to wet their appetite for another course at a later time.

I'm off to shower and spin flax... finally.

Oh What I Can Do With My Head

I've been sucked into a cartoon.

It ain't easy being green...

"Ahhhh... My head's exploding."

I always wondered what it was like to be a fish.

Cyclops maybe?

Didn't I see this in a cartoon one time?!

I can't take it anymore maybe I should just pull my head in like a turtle.

Surprise! 2 heads. Oh there's just too much of me.

I think I was in one of Picasso's dreams. Or maybe it was Salvadore Dali.

Hm... If I really looked like this I'd have to go kill myself.

Didn't Helena Bonham Carter look like this recently in Alice in Wonderland? I think I should go pluck my eyebrows.

Brian Mulroney syndrome.

Angelina Jolie's lips just wouldn't work on me.

Ok.. that's just freaky.

Help!!! I look like a shark. Hmm... I wonder if I have all the teeth too.

The evil one. I just need the horns... oh sorry they're there you can't see them but I can feel them. Mwa ha ha!

Ah... thanks girls I'm back to normal now... well, better than a putty head anyway.