A Kayak A Day... (Or A Canoe)

We went to Cameron Lake yesterday where Teapot's school district owns an outdoor education centre. We decided to take the girls and let them try out the kayak. We spent the afternoon teaching them the rudiments of kayaking and teaching them how to get out of a kayak if they roll it. They both had to roll the kayak and get themselves out without fear or frustration. They did really well and were able to get out no problem.... emptying the kayak was another story..... Teapot had to help dump out the water. After they had their lessons we all decided to go for a paddle down to the other end of the lake.... half way down we passed the campground on the other side of the lake and discovered friends camping there for the weekend... so we stopped for a short visit and then carried on our way. The Daughters were in one canoe and we were in another and the kayak was back at the Ed Centre.... we had a lovely time.... we even trained Jiggs to sit in the canoe without jumping out after beavers and drowning herself. Here are the pictures from our day on the lake.....


Cameron Lake with storm clouds moving in..... but it didn't storm.

Daughters #1 and #2 coming behind us and doing an adequate job of steering...


Daughter #2 looks like she is going to hit Daughter #1 over the head..... hmmmm.
Look at those hard working faces....


Almost there......
Even Tootsie the wonder chicken herder took a sail.....

Jiggs was sitting on the shore after her ride with Teapot and I.... she did really well for a dog that has never even swum before....
While we were loading the canoe onto the truck Daughter #1 took the kayak out for another go around....

I think she really enjoyed the kayak..... we had a hard time getting her to get out and let Daughter #2 have a try....

There she goes......

I thought she did really well... good form and all.....

Daughter #2 stayed back and helped load the canoes and then played with Tootsie while we waited,..... and waited,..... and waited..... for Daughter #1 to come back.... it was almost dark before she came back.

After a long day we were finally loaded up and Tootsie decided to sit on the dashboard to ride home....


We had been out there most of the day and supper consisted of popcorn and chocolate covered raisins because we were having such a lovely time that we didn't want to go home and get supper and shorten our day on the lake. Not the best supper in the world but sometime a silly supper like that is good when you're having fun.

So I think we should forget that old adage, "an apple a day" ..... and say instead.... "a kayak a day".... or "a canoe a day".... It sure made me feel better...

I'm Still Trying

I'm just about bonkers.... I just tried the next question you know the 12 tpi and I've got a lovely 10 tpi! Ok... so I quit for a little while. It has become too stressful to continue on these stupid questions. I think I deserve a break after fours days and really struggling to get these questions done. Next weekend is the retreat the big annual dyeing retreat and so I have decided to spin some nice relaxing BFL so that I can work on my dye samples for the level 4 homework.

I have to be honest, I'm really looking forward to the retreat.... the last week has been ...difficult, so a bit of relaxation is well overdue. Teapot and I have bought the Daughters kayaks and we are supposed to be heading off to a nearby lake for a couple of weeks of pleasure and teaching the girls the rudiments of kayaking. We will take our old tent trailer, which is one step above tenting but only barely, and our canoe and the two kayaks. But first Teapot is heading off to Cochrane for the annual camp for JCRs. He is leaving on Monday and is gone for eleven days. He is looking forward to it. Eleven whole days where I am not nagging at him about finishing some of the work that needs to be done. We .... well I should say I, really wanted to get the new roof on the electrical shed.... the metal has been sitting there since last summer and I really wanted the downstairs bathroom finished but more and more I'm starting to realize that if I want these things done I will have to hire someone. Teapot just does not have the time or the inclination (particularly the inclination) to do any of that kind of work.

Quite a few things on the house renovation never got finished last year and it is looking more and more like it will be another year before any of it gets finished. Very aggravating actually.
Here are a few of the things that I was hoping to see finished this year....

1. new tin roof on electrical shed.
2. new tub (from last year) in downstairs bathroom finally working
3. steps to the deck moved into place and set in concrete
4. painting of the deck and veranda finished
5. Daughter #1's room have the last tiny piece of wall board put up
6. Daughter #2's room clear coated.
7. The sun room exterior siding put on
8. some of the electrical work finalized (so we don't get electrocuted)

These were the main things but there are other jobs, like the wall paneling in all rooms, the kitchen pantry finished, the flooring in the living room, (because we are still living on plywood floors). Not to mention the new venting for the downstairs bathroom because it has become a problem to flush the toilet and we think it is due to inadequate venting.

So not only am I still trying to do my skeins of yarn, I'm still trying to coax Teapot to finish the pile of work that there is around here.

I guess I'll keep trying.....

Mwa hahahahaha!

I am now finished my 1 tpi... my 4 tpi... and my 8 tpi....

It took 21 tries to get my 8 tpi right and what they didn't tell me in class is just how to figure out grist (thickness of the yarn)... now if there was a formula for that we would have her knocked.

All I knew going into this exercise were the formulas for figuring it all out.... like this....

Step 1
twist per inch in singles = [t.p.i. in doubles x (# of plies +1)] divided by the # of plies

so I want a 8 t.p.i. in a 2 ply yarn....

t.p.i.(s)= 8x(2+1) divided by 2..... which equals...
8x3 divided by 2....
24 divided by 2.....=12
so my tpi in the singles is 12

... but now I need to know how many treadles to get this amount of twist in my singles

Step 2
# of treadles = t.p.i.(s) x length of draft divided by the ratio

length of draft for you guys that are not spinners, is the length of your comfortable draft for whatever type of yarn you are spinning... I generally use a 1.5 inch draft for a worsted and a18 inch draft for a woolen.

and the ratio is the difference between the number of time your flyer turns to one revolution of your wheel..... I have several but I usually use my 6.

so based on these figures the formula would go like this...

# of treadles = 12 x 1.5 divided by 6
# of treadles = 18 divided by 6
# of treadles = 3

So now that I figured that out I would sit at my wheel and spin a single at 3 treadles per every 1.5 inches of fibre that I drafted...

easy right?

then when I had spun a single that was at least 15 yards I would do the same thing again only on a different spool.

So now I have two spools of fibre spun into singles at 12 t.p.i. (s).

What do I do to put these together.....

Step 3

Well the generally accepted rule is to ply at 2/3 your singles so mine would be 2 treadles for every 1.5 inches of plying.

But my length of draft is longer for plying than for spinning....
so let's figure that out.

My plying length of draft just happens to be 15 inches.....

so 15 divided by 1.5 = 10

if my treadling for the singles length of draft of 1.5 is 3 and then my treadling would be 2/3 of that so 2 in the ply but I need that spread out over a 15 inch draft so I would multiply 10 x 2 and get 20

I would treadle 20 times every time I draft out 15 inches of my two singles......

are you with me? I probably left a lot of you back somewhere around "what's grist"!!!!

Bare with me......

Now the problem is that this works only if you have the right grist... and generally the right grist rule is that the higher the tpi the smaller the grist.

Yes well that's not a lot to go on......

My questions ask for a 1 tpi, a 4 tpi, a 8 tpi, a 12 tpi and a 15 tpi... my default yarn is a 4 so doing a 12 and a 15 is a real stretch.

12 is thread and 15 is micro thread...... and I can't wait to get this done. I am using a merino/silk blend with the hopes that the silk will give this very fine thread a bit of strength.

My 1 tpi was fat. My 4 tpi was normal slightly lighter than worsted weight yarn, my 8 tpi was equal to a embroidery floss and my 12 tpi will be equal to sewing thread and heaven only knows what the 15 tpi will be like..... probably around BARELY ABLE TO SEE THE DA-- STUFF!!!

But I at least have 3 out of 5 samples done..... and a whole bunch of samples that are just not fine enough..... good enough and I can't use them....

Try doing all this and coming away with a nicely balanced yarn...

If I'm not back in a few days you know I lost it and they carried me away in a straight jacket......

Mwa hahahahahahahahahahaha.......!!!!

Further Up And Further In

Anyone who is familiar with C.S. Lewis, will recognize those words from the Narnia series where in the Last Battle, Lucy is told by Aslan to go "further up and further in" after the door to old Narnia has closed and Lucy finds herself in the new Narnia... the real Narnia. I always think of that passage as a little bit of heaven of which, C.S. Lewis had some insiders knowledge. The new Narnia is more beautiful, is more colourful and vivid... in a way more real than the old Narnia. It is the true place of "being".

Today my dear friend Anita has begun her journey "Further Up and Further In" and ended her journey here in this place.

Thirteen years ago when I moved to this little community a little white haired lady took me under her wing after my first guild meeting, and helped me buy my first fleece... helped me become the fibre addicted freak that I am today. I've never looked back.

She and I have spent many a sunny day sitting on either her deck or mine picking tags, or stewing a pot of woad. We have shared many cups of tea while our spinning wheels rattled away. We've discussed all manner of sheepy things and the aspects of what makes a good yarn. We have in essence been conspirators of our art.

In recent years Anita has battled one bout of cancer after another. Breast cancer first, then bowel cancer next, and finally breast cancer again.... the thing is that cancer never got in the way of a good yarn... you know the kind you knit with. Even on her worst days she always had time for a little spinning and a little knitting. She made awesome Icelandic sweaters.... one after another, some of them with all natural yarns hand spun on her wheel or on her electric spinner, some of them with wools she had dyed from things she had picked on her daily walks. It was nothing to turn down the road she lived on and see her in a ditch with a basket over her arm filled with Mare's Tail or slips of Alder... and God help you if you didn't know the latin name. She would hunt down onion skins from the grocer in town. Always she was fearless in her hunt for a good dye.

Fleece excited her like candy for a child.... a good fleece could never be passed up. I once turned in her driveway to find her with a cheeky grin and a wool bag that had been dropped off at her house by a farmer she had met on her last trip south. She had evidently seen some black sheep in a field as she was driving along and so decided to "drop in" and meet the shepherd of the flock, thereupon, befriending the couple and soliciting a promise to save her the fleece from the blackest one. Unbeknownst to her, they showed up some months later, with their whole clip, some thirty something fleeces all stuffed in one giant burlap bag. It was just as they had left that I came upon her with this giant bag in her front yard, bare foot, and thinking she had stolen the cat's cream.

We have traveled all over this country together, taking our craft to local schools to show children of all ages, what once went into the very important task of covering ourselves for warmth. I remember one young fellow asking what she was doing and she responding, "I'm spinning yarn out of wool from a sheep," and when he responded with the question "Why?" she looked at him as if he was the most ridiculous thing in the world and said "What do they teach you kids in school?" She didn't suffer fools lightly and anyone who didn't show interest in the craft was certainly a fool!

As she entered her eighties her stamina for woolly workshops began to ebb. She would come to them but only if they were short ones. This last two years, she has been unable to "make it through" any workshop at all and so I began to travel to those workshops without her. But always when I got home I would have her over for a cup of tea and an opportunity to talk "shop".
And so it was last week, when I returned from Olds, that I went by to see my old friend. She had been declining in the last month and she knew her time was coming to a close, so before I left for Olds, she had said to me to make sure I came by when I got back to see her and to show her what I had learned. She greeted me from her bed with a sad smile on her face and said in a tired voice, "Frankie, I don't think I'm long for this world. Tell me all about your trip to Olds and show me what you bought." So I did.... and we had one last lovely visit.... two days later she was in a coma-like-state.

I like to think that my friend is "further up and further in" with natural dyes that never fade, with woolly sheep of every colour as far as the eye can see, with a shearer right there on hand, with a spinning wheel that is well oiled a doesn't clunk or bang and hands that are steady, hips that don't ache, and eyes that are clear as the big blue sky....

Rain Rain Come Again Any Day

It's overcast but still really warm... every time it clouds over these days we sit with baited breath for those pearly drops of moisture to hit the roof... a merry drumming that would make us all happy, happy, happy. It is dry.... really dry... scary dry. We have no grass. It died a couple of weeks ago. The flowers on my deck are ok because I water them but when you get heat like this for prolonged periods then it becomes disastrous. I am glad we didn't plant a garden this year as anything we planted would have dried up ages ago and would have been horrifying to watch. It is so dry that it is beginning to look like fall. The trees have begun to turn golden and if we don't get rain soon we will lose a lot of them. This is drought in the truest sense.

It was only a short four years ago that we suffered the same terrible devastation. Poplar trees died in droves because of course their root systems are connected so when one dies there will be a whole patch that dies. We spent the next year taking dead Poplars out of our yard. We will have to do it again make no mistake.
Teapot went to the farm where we buy hay a few days ago and once again it looks like hay will be at a premium price. On his way there though, he saw an odd thing. He was driving along and the fields on the left hand side of the highway were yellow and bare. The fields on the right were not, actually they were quite lovely and green still. Then he noticed that the road looked like it was wet which also was odd since we have not had rain for quite some time. He pulled over to investigate and discovered that the wet highway was wet from the dead bodies of grasshoppers. They had been making their way across the highway from the dead field to the green field.... this is also not good. I went to a friends house in Alberta last year and saw a grasshopper plague like nothing I have ever seen. The grasshoppers had eaten every living thing and were working on the fleece of an old sheep that was too old to move around much. They were literally shearing her wool down to the skin. I never want to see anything so horrifying again. It really is dreadful to watch.

Today it has been windy and of course that adds to the miserable blight of drought. It whisks the moisture away so very fast and turns everything to powder. The winds whorls around taking with it the dry dust that once was the rich soil of our garden. It is spectacularly bright without the rich green beauty of the trees and add to that the Pine Beetle kill and you have a disaster zone. I feel bad for the farmers and I feel bad for the animals that make their homes in the forest.
Sadly, this last week I have begun to watch the birds depart for greener pastures. They are drifting away in small flocks unlike the great flocks of autumn. They hatch their younglings and once they can fly they leave to find a place father south that is not so badly affected by drought.
I am afraid of what will happen to this beautiful valley if we do not get rain soon.

This expat Newfy who grew up with so much fog, drizzle, and rain now wonders why I hated the stuff so much.... I wish the good Lord would send our way a little of the rain that the prairies are receiving too much of....

Oh Happy Day

Yesterday was a special day... it was the day that we here in the Peace Country celebrate our wonderful river.... even though B.C. Rivers Day is not until the fall (when we also celebrate our river) we take the second weekend in July to Paddle The Peace. It is always an awesome day but some years I haven't been able to participate. This year I did. Teapot and I got up early in the morning to meet some friends at the landing and paddled to the Lynx Creek RV park and there we had breakfast with about a thousand others (slight exaggeration) and then we got back into our canoe for a trip to the Halfway River about 40 km from where we started. The day was glorious and there were about 250 participants this year, a flotilla of about 150 canoes, kayaks, and motor boats of all kinds, taking part in another perfectly balmy (and may I say hot though not so hot on the water) day. I saw friends both new and old, some I see often and some that I see rarely. We paddled with friends that we don't get to see often enough and had a truly delightful time, and I even brought a spindle which during the blessing of the waters I managed to get a little spinning done on my spindle. It truly was a lovely day.... what better than to spend a day on the water with friends and we had several pairs of friends.....

Have a look at the pictures for yourself and see if you are not jealous.....

Leaving the old ferry landing.... These are two of our friends..... essngee we'll call them....
These are two more of our friends..... the big J's.... and Teapot on the right.

We left the ferry landing at shortly after 9 a.m. so that we could reach the muster point at the Lynx Creek RV park and when we got there there were already lots of canoes lined up ready to leave at the right time. Our canoe is the last one which just happens to be the awesome colour of yellow.... yeah, it's way in the back there.....
Just as we were arriving a helicopter from the media was there to take video, photos and do a feature on the Paddle For The Peace

We had to walk down past a whole lot of RVs to get to the breakfast area.... yes they served us all a good breakfast..... I did wonder how all those campers who were in the park for the day and had nothing to do with our event, felt about the crowds of people who were there.....

The breakfast was served with pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage.... these folks were cleaning up.....

Teapot sat in the shade during the speeches and so did I..... he looks too happy for boring speeches, he must have been anticipating the day ahead instead of actually listening...

Once breakfast was cleared away, there were a bunch of political type speeches because in essence The Paddle For The Peace is a protest against the Site C dam that BC Hydro proposes for down river from this site.... if it goes ahead there will be no more river, just a big reservoir that no one can canoe on because of the roughness of water and lack of islands that provide safety....and lets not forget all the land that will be flooded.... no birds, and very little wildlife will prevail.... yuck!

People started to get ready to leave so we headed back to our canoes to ready ourselves to make our way down the river.....

We weren't the only ones ready to leave.....

There were lots of us...

We took pictures as everyone left the muster area in droves....

People were everywhere....

Meanwhile the helicopter watched our every move and took pictures.....

There was every kind of vessel.... and this one reminded me so much of my Newfoundland home that I had to take a picture....

And here a couple of more friends who I just happened to bump into while we were standing around the food... the came all the way from FSJ to be there and I was really glad to see them come out.... that's their doggy.... her name is Molly.... she's really nice...

Finally we really got underway... and headed away down the river.

We saw many supporters of the cause and this fellow on shore was no exception.... enlarge the photo if you want to see the banner that was hanging from the deck rail.....

This photo was taken on the roughest part of the river... well just before the roughest part... I wouldn't be able to take pictures in rough water.... I was too busy paddling... and it really wasn't too bad at all....

The rock formations were awesome and the bottom of the river was clear in some places and I was able to see fish darting away. There were Kingfishers, which I just love to watch dive for fish... but they are too darn fast for my camera. There were swans flying over and ducks galore.... and all kinds of different wading birds.... awesome.
That's all the pictures I have because my camera died on me... (which is not good because I've got a lot of snowy pictures after this.... which means there's something wrong with my camera....)

Teapot and I stopped for a picnic lunch of humus and flat bread with homemade cherry pie for desert.... our friends stopped too... not for long because we didn't want to be the last ones in the flotilla.... and after that the whole afternoon was idyllic....

We were on the river from 9 a.m till 4 p.m. and we were sunkissed, fatigued, and happy by the time we got home.... I couldn't wish you a better day... there just couldn't be a better day......

Aaaaah That's Better

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.