Trying To Stay Upbeat... (which is really hard)!

It is really hard to be up beat when all around me there is the terrible devastation of this drought. The soil in my garden is no longer soil it is dust. Every good thing in it has dried up and blown away. This morning there is smoke on the air which means that somewhere there is a fire. I had a look at the CBC news and I'm sure half of B.C. is on fire. It really is scary how dry everything is. I just wish that some of the rain that is causing havoc in Saskatchewan would fall on us. Last night I sat out on the deck and watched lightning all around us on the horizon but no storm hit here and certainly no rain.... it was hotter than Hades last night.
But enough about that. It's just too depressing.

I started working on some knitting for the level 4 homework last night and though I haven't finished level 3 I decided to go ahead with the level 4 knitting sample for my percentage dyeing because sometimes you just don't want to spin.... knitting last night was just what I needed. I am making a small bag using colours in such a way that they run together.... I am sure it will look really great when I finish. Besides I miss knit night and haven't knit all summer.... so it felt good to have the needles in my hands again.

I went to FSJ yesterday and took the Daughters to The Sorcerer's Apprentice. It was a nice little movie but all the way to town I kept thinking about hay. I have enough hay for today's feeding and then I am out. So it has really become crucial that I find a source of hay today. I thought I had one. On the way to town yesterday I passed a farm that seemed to have lots of bails out and there was a sign with "Hay For Sale" so I stopped to see what was what. They had hay but it is hay that has a high alfalfa content. Well I figured even though that is not so good anything is better than nothing. So I talked to the lady and she said she would have her husband call me... I waited and waited last night but nothing.... so now I am not sure that there will be hay for me. I will call them today but I have to get hay..... absolutely... if not from them, from somewhere.

In the meantime I have a friend dropping by today... we will sit and spin.... and no doubt gab. I haven't caught up with her in ages... not since before Olds.... so I am looking forward to that. I figured it would be a good time to try those t.p.i. questions again since maybe while I'm distracted I might just spin the t.p.i. that I want exactly.... hmmm ... not likely but it's one theory... ha!

Teapot will be home tomorrow and I am so glad our time apart is over I can't wait. I can tell you that after 10 days apart, I know I do not want to be the sole owner of a hobby farm and I certainly wouldn't want to raise two girls on my own. Both are daunting tasks, better done by two than one.

So that is it for today... hay, spinning, a little knitting.... lots of colour.... and some watering of animals. I sure hope I can get hay.... I have until 4 p.m. tomorrow to find a bail.

Wish me luck..... and wish my poor sheep luck too.... Saturday is culling day.

Death

Death comes creeping on little tiny feet. He doesn't carry a scythe and he does not wear a black cloak and hood. Death comes knocking on the door with grasshoppers in one hand and dry dust in the other. Death opens his mouth to speak and dry wind is all you hear. Death has eyes as hot as the sun and as unyielding as time itself.

Sorrow comes hand in hand with Death. She is chained to Death and cannot get away. When Death comes to your door, Sorrow leaves a little piece of herself behind. Sorrow comes in the form of lonely paddocks with lambs with no moms. Sorrow sounds like baas from lambs calling for mothers that will never see the light of day. Death and Sorrow are knocking at my door.

I am looking out my window and know that on Saturday we will have to make decisions that I do not want to make. In the spring, when all our lambs were born I thought I would be able to keep a couple, but then as the season progressed I thought that there might be a problem feeding them and so I was satisfied to pick out a few of the ewes and the two rams and a couple of the old sheep that we think of as pets and just keep them. This week the axe fell. My supply of hay has run out and if I want to keep any animals I will seriously have to cull my flock. I want to keep the alpacas and there are 6 of them, and Daughter #1 has the horse which we will have to keep. But everything else.... well, there's not a lot of hope. I am hoping that I can find hay for the alpacas and the horse, I will be lucky if I can get that. I would really like to keep the two rams and two breeding ewes.... probably Fanny and Nellie but the rest of my full grown ewes and withers may have to be killed for sausage meet. While the lambs will be fattened on grain and slaughtered. I am very worried. Right now I am rationing the hay for all of the animals and Daughter #1 has to take her horse out to the side of the road where the grass grows on the south side in the shade of the trees and lets her graze for hours at a time. But what do we do in the winter..... that's what I would like to know.

It is so dry and hot.... it is scary.....

This is what Death feels like.... the hopelessness of the unknown....

Sleep, Glorious Sleep

Wow, I can't believe how tired I am today. I'm totally wiped! I think all that work and sunshine from the weekend totally wore me out. I slept through the night last night and that is almost totally unheard of. then this morning I got up and started working on the PCSW newsletter and then I went to shower but the bed looked so darn soft and comfortable that before I really knew it, I was in it's grips and dozing peacefully. I woke at 12:52 p.m. Half the day was gone and I could still sleep. I guess I wore myself out more than I thought.

One of the ladies who attended the retreat sent me these pictures from her camera today.... so I thought I would post them here...


The last of the level 4 dyeing.... these were my percentage dyeing samples....

LS had prepped white buffalo pencil rovings for teaching kids to spin on a drop spindle.... these were the samples that she was going to hand out to the kids for spinning.... then she gave one to me to try which I have partially spun.... mine is the second one from the right.....

NC working on her spinning....

FE working on card weaving.....

This was the colour wheel dyeing that MW and I were doing on Saturday....

MF who arrived at 1:10 a.m. in the morning so that she could sit and spin on my deck.....

LS getting silk singles prepped and ready for dyeing so that she can weave a silk scarf....

Missing are pictures of MW, KK, and myself....

What a blast! I just can't get enough of looking at all that fibre that was dyed. Now if I could only dictate what I dream about.. well... you know what it would be... all those divine colours..... Hmm... maybe I should give it a try.... then I can sleep and think about all that fun at the same time.... who says you can't kill twp birds with one stone..... : )

A Dyers Retreat

Phew! What a weekend! I just took out my last batch of dye. It was awesome. There were 7 of us and there was dyeing going on all over the place.... colour all over the place.... and smiles all over the place. The sun shone, the wind blew, and we just dyed.... (no pun intended.... well maybe a little pun intended). I was given gifts, which was totally unexpected.... this hand painted banner was one of them....

I finished all my cleaning on Friday before lunch and the house and the deck with all it flowers looked absolutely great!...


I had started on Friday evening after the first of my guests arrived by dyeing pots of fibre on the stove in a variety of dyes. I was using Gaywool Dyes and by 11 p.m. I had tried out a whole bunch of colours, and had laid them out on the deck to dry.... don't they look delicious...?


Now I don't know if you are aware but this weekend there was a full moon so I was at my best for working till late into the night. The moon rose over the trees and made a radiant debut to us all and so we had to worship the moon in all it's glory with a little moonlight Chi Gong on the front lawn. This picture was taken as I came back from the moon worshiping. I just happened along in time to see the moon rising above the trees from the deck with the fire place and this wheel and a little of the fibre that I had dyed earlier in the evening.

The lady in the hat was our Chi Gong leader.....

We went to our beds with busy minds occupied with colour for our wool and silk.... this was fibre belonging to MF who showed up at 1:10 a.m. in the morning on Friday night/Saturday morning just as we were heading off to bed.... now that's dedication to drive so late at night to be here for dyeing.... well, at least I think so...

Some slept in tents... some slept in tent trailers, and some just slept in their car......

This lady.....

even brought her kitchen sink.... awesome set up, LS...

Saturday morning started out quite hot and windy. Things kept blowing around... but at least there weren't any mosquitoes... so we ate breakfast and got down to it.....

After breakfast, MW and I got down to it and started to work on our level 4 dyeing for the Master Spinner program... There were books all over the table as we methodically worked our way through the questions....

First, we did our Ombre dyeing.... and got very nice results.....

Then we tackled our colour wheel and could only do it in small amounts, so these are our first seven of twelve results....

All of our colour wheel skeins and our Ombre skeins look so lovely here that I couldn't help taking another picture.....

Meanwhile dyeing was taking over the deck.... there were pots brewing......

and more pots brewing.....

See those smiling faces.... well that's because there's all kinds of stuff brewing.....

This is NC measuring out the powder dyes....

And then the results started to role in.....
Now is that not an awesome display of colour... and creativity....

Some of us had worked really hard on that very hot windy day and so it was nice to find a quiet corner to yourself.... doesn't this look peaceful?

Books and magazines were hot topics..... and the short break in out of the elements meant for a few moments of time away from the sun.....

That evening there was more moon worshiping and and some of us couldn't hold up any longer after a day of hot sun and all that fresh air.... I for one was totally exhausted.... and somewhat dehydrated.... so the next day we put up a tarp over the deck to shade us somewhat.

The dyeing continued as one after another fooled around with colour and fibre..... what better way to spend a day? Sunday was a day of spinning for me since I still needed 8 skeins to finish my level 4 dyeing samples..... ahhh percentage dyeing is really quite fun!.... But as the day progressed on Sunday I knew I wasn't going to finish the spinning in time to get the dyeing done that day.... so MW stayed an extra night and then this morning we got up and carried on....

It was really nice because it was a whole lot cooler and a whole lot less windy.....
So here are the results from today....

This is Wensleydale (wool), silk, mohair, cashgora, and BFL rovings all coloured with beautiful colours....

Silk hankies and wool rovings with slightly different colours.

And a small amount of merino fleece....

And my favorite part..... my percentage dyeing.... which I am currently working on using in a knitted hat that I started tonight.... mostly because I'm just too tired to do anything else.


One last batch of dye is cooling on the counter.... I'm done... finito..... till next year..... boy that seems like such a long way off..... boo hoo, sob, sob.... that's not faaaaaiiiirrrr! : (

It was so sad to see everyone leaving on Sunday evening.... I'm so glad that MW stayed the extra day. It gave me a little bit of a buffer from feeling totally abandoned.

But I have so much lovely stuff to do between now and next year's retreat.... still, I can't wait till next year.....

Bad... bad... bad....

Yeah, so house work sucks... I got some of it done but there's a whole lot more to do. I did lose two hours to playing with my new look on this blog..... oh that was a seriously dangerous activity.... I could have played with it for hours... you know tweaking this and tweaking that. But in the end Daughter #2 kicked me off the computer with a reminder that I was the mom and she was supposed to waste time like that and I was supposed to get her off the computer..... (Oh but it was fun)!

Now I have to pay the piper because there are still little piles of dust bunnies etc... all over the floor that I have partially swept up but need to get transferred to the garbage can. My office looks awesome and so does the spinning room, but the dining room looks blah.... so that needs to be cleaned. The living room is getting there but I have to move the burl and sweep out that corner.... My bathroom and my kitchen are both looking quite good but the deck needs an overhaul.... So while things are looking better I'm basically a slob..... and hopefully no one will have to use the upstairs bathroom because it is terrible. I even watched a movie last night instead of cleaning... bad, bad, bad!

I have coffee brewing and the smell is delicious. I have Coopworth on the wheel (that's wool for you non-spinners). I have two nice spools with my 8 tpi waiting to be plied.... I wonder if it will be 8 tpi! I have a charkha with 15 tpi in silk waiting to have the second spool done and an email from one of my fellow Master Spinner wannabes who just got her mark back on her level 3 and she got 95%... like that is so awesome....! I'm terribly anxious every time I think about it. There's a lovely little breeze making it not too hot, and the dog hasn't run off this morning... it's an awesome morning.

Still though there's a pile of work to be done and I need to get to it. I'm expecting my retreaters today around right after lunch, and what really makes me feel ticked is that I don't have a camera to take pictures of it all. I will have to use my pathetic phone camera..... or hope that someone else brings a digital and their cords to download pictures. Still though I will try to capture some images even if I have to drag this computer outside and take pictures with it!

If you live in the vicinity and would like to come by and see what we are up to.... well you're welcome and all of you who are not in the vicinity... well then na na na boo boo!

Oh I'm bad, bad, bad.... (hopefully in a nice way though). : )

Ye Olde Batt Gets A Face Lift

OH MY G-- I am having sooo much fun....!

Hope you like the new look.

Jobs To Do And Someone's Got To Do Them!

This morning it is quite nice and a little cool. Sometime overnight there must have been a deluge. The deck is wet again which is awesome since, with the rain we had the other day, and this little soaking, we might start to see the grass begin to grow again. I actually do see a little green among the brown and gold. Honestly though, I do think that it will take several days of rain to bring back the grass from the brink of extinction. Besides, it is too late for the farmers and their hay crops for this year.

But sitting here this morning with the freshness of the new wet ground surrounding me is feeling pretty darn good.

Tomorrow is the beginning of the retreat that I host each summer. I will be preparing dye solutions today and cleaning house. The dye solutions shouldn't take very long and I will do that out on the deck. The cleaning house will take longer. Suffice it to say that while I was away in Olds not a whole lot was done to keep the house relatively nice. Then, when I returned, I had spinning and level 3 on my mind, not to mention other things. The heat also zaps me of wanting to do anything regarding house keeping (I actually think watching a kindergartner pick his nose would be more pleasurable than housework). All that has been done here for the last few weeks is the bare essentials, and so today, I will have to pay the piper and actually make it look like a care how clean my floors are and whether the toilet seat is touchable!

Actually I started cleaning last night, and started with the front sunroom. For weeks Teapot has been working on transferring over all the files on one computer to our new computer and he has basically not wanted me to touch anything.... oh well, that's out the window now because I moved both of the computers on to a new desk and unplugged the whole works of it..... : } Still, it needed to be done because there was a terrible amount of dust and old bills that needed sorting.

Then there is the dining room table which now has a whole lot of stuff from Olds sitting on it. I want to go through all of that stuff and put away the stuff that I didn't get to a couple of weeks ago. In the process, I went through a few other things too. I fished out the rug that I was hooking last summer and haven't had time to work on recently and thought about doing some this weekend. I do love to go through my stash because I find all kinds of things that I had forgotten about. I had originally wanted to finish the rug before I went to Olds this year but rug hooking is not in the forefront of my mind. While I do enjoy hooking rugs, and hope to finsh more than just this one, I know it will never consume every waking hour the way spinning does. It just is something pleasant to do with my time.... (what time you ask?... you know, the reams of time that I have after everything else is done)! I have even decided to take the big 7 foot tri loom out and try to get a few picks done each day like I did last year. It was progressing quite nicely when I did that and then the big j.c. got in the way of that too. And then there is the quilt that I am working on for my sponsored child in Peru... it is a quilt that I hand stitched and put together and all it needs is the backing and quilting done. It would be nice to finish it this year.

Actually, I am beginning to understand why Teapot distracts me every time I start to go through my stash... I'm sure it's because out come all the old projects that haven't been finished and need to be done-something-with and they sit around having very-little-done until such time as I get sick of looking at them and then they get put away again. Well, I am making an online pact..... I am pledging a little time every day to work on these projects and by the time I go to Olds next year I have to have at least two of these projects done and have the third one partially finished..... and it can't get in the way of finishing my homework.... that's always the priority.... yeah... so there!!.... (am I crazy?!!!)

Ok so a few minutes was needed there to restart my heart with the plug from the computer..... and now I think I'll go call the doc and let him know that I am ready for that lobotomy.

Deep breathing.... deep breathing.... ok, I can do this right? Finish two of three projects and make inroads into the third one.... right.... it's not unachievable... right?!!!!! Gee, I was having a lovely morning until I opened my brute sized mouth..... oh well, what's life without a few challenges...... " I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..."

Well, if I am going to do this then I had better get to it.... no time like the present to put your money where your mouth is..... any bets?!!!!