Cookie Season

The weatherman is predicting snow - there's a storm watch on. It hasn't gotten here yet, but it doesn't matter. I'm hibernating indoors today anyway, for multiple reasons.

1) It's cold out there. Even the cat hasn't been in the mood for long walks the last few days.

2) I had a little fall yesterday, and did something to one foot near the big toe. I don't think it's anything serious, but it is swollen, and walking is a bit awkward, so I'm figuring best to rest it up for a day or so, and not do something like go out Christmas shopping.

3) Tomorrow I have a cookie exchange to go to, so I've been in the kitchen all morning. Christmas cookies are all about the pretty, I think, so I always make this my excuse to do something a little on the fancy side. This year it's stained-glass cookies, and twisted candy-canes and wreaths. Now I just have to do something about packaging them.

4) Last bits of school stuff I still need to finish. Business plan details, colouring the big plan for one design project, and getting the last of a second done on the computer, and studying for first exam Monday...

Bunny!

Last fall at school, we spent some time digging a trench at the fenceline and putting a foot or so of hardware cloth underground, aimed to discourage the rabbits from getting in and nibbling the produce.

We now have evidence that we either missed a spot or have very determined, Peter Rabbit-type bunnies. A few of us went to the garden to check on things for our crop reports, and saw this little guy sitting right there.

He didn't even move until we were pretty close, even let me rummage for my camera, and just kept on munching the clover, so a daring sort of rabbit as well as a super-cute one. At least it was the clover and not the veggies!

Despite possible rabbit raiding, the gardens are producing well. We picked well over 20 pounds of beans Monday! Plus there are tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, greens, summer squash, and herbs. The peppers are starting also, and I think we will be pulling carrots soon. For anyone wanting to get some fresh veg at good prices, drop by the M Building at Algonquin, near Woodroffe and College, around lunchtime. We have our little garden center and produce stand open every Tuesday and Thursday from 11 to 1.

Sometimes the produce we don't sell goes to the culinary program at school, and they turn it into tasty meals to sell at their store, Savoir Fare (H Building, and definitely worth a visit). Today though, because the extra veg would all be sitting around for several days, we got to buy them at a deep discount. So I came home with a bag of tomatoes and one of summer squash and eggplant and a head of lettuce, all for under 3$, and I have some beans from earlier this week. There will be tomato sauce and bruschetta in my future this weekend!

Summer School

Well, two days into school, we pretty much know what to expect. Just watch me disappear for a while again, I think. Lots of projects to do - at least they'll be interesting, even if they do take up a lot of time.

Our first little assignment in Urban Agriculture was to plan a garden based on the premise that we want to have a BBQ for 40 people, and get the veg and herb ingredients for the planned menu (given to us) from said garden. Not so bad, I've got most of that done already. But there will be more assignments. And, you know, the usual. ID quizzes, midterms and finals, outdoor lab time and logbooks.

The kicker is going to be the five (count 'em, five!) big projects for the Construction and Maintenance classes. To be done in the next 2 months - most are due the week before exams, so end of September.

Number 1 is a group project, which involves surveying (with theodolite and measuring rod) an assigned area of campus, drawing the scale map and two overlays, one noting possible drainage issues, and one drawing up recommendations to improve it.

  Numbers 2 and 3 kind of go together. For number 2, we have to design a front yard, using our CAD program, then do all the estimating for materials and labour to complete the project. For number 3, we have to put together a maintenance package for the homeowner in our design, with information on care for their new plantings (minimum 12 different plants).

Numbers 4 and 5 both involve creating manuals. One is a safety manual for 10 different types of equipment of various sizes, powered and not. The other is a quick reference manual for growth, description, and care of 25 of the plants we will be studying this term.

There's going to be a couple trips off campus, too. One is to a farm that grows and sells wild food - I forget what the name is, but they were profiled in the Citizen earlier this summer, so that's pretty exciting. A few of us are already into wild stuff - we were nibbling on purslane and serviceberries and stuff while weeding the vegetable garden yesterday. I think there's more purslane than legit veg in some spots; maybe we can add it to our market offerings (the class garden center is open Tues and Thurs, 11-1pm, offering plants, and vegetables as they ripen).
Our second trip off campus will be to the Cancer Survivors' Park near Hurdman Station, to do maintenance, then we're stopping at the Arboretum in the afternoon to do an ID quiz walkabout.

So, yeah. Lots to do. I think my policy is going to have to be to start on as much as I can right away, and just keep plugging. Apparently there were a lot of stressed students in the final stretch for the first group...

In Pictures

It's been a crazy month or so. Work, dyeing, getting ready for the Corn Festival back home (my first show of the season), Tour de Fleece, picking and jamming berries (made a raspberry/peach orange combo that turned out real tasty)...Tomorrow is back to school for me, so yay for not being out of the house 12 hours a day. On the other hand, now I get homework, and volunteer work, and prep for teaching dyeing classes, and Huntingdon Fair  is in two weeks, have to get entries ready...

Now, I'm not going to blither at length about everything I've been doing since my last post, and make all those imaginary blog entries I've been planning into reality. But here's a few pics and notes.

Tour de Fleece: Good choice with the Lanterne Rouge group. I was doing all right until the last week or so, when I kind of fell off my wheel, as it were. Total spun: 3.5 skeins. I finally finished the second half of the last skein (another purple one) yesterday.

I didn't show off the last dye batch, did I? It's pretty. I figured some semi-solids would be nice for a change, being more versatile than variegated.

Remember the little wrens we had raising a family in the plants at work? No sooner did they fly off than two robin families took over hanging baskets. (Next year, if I go back, I'm going to change the sign to read Canadian Tire Garden Center and Bird Sanctuary.) The first ones hatched only one of their three eggs, but the baby is kinda cute, in an ugly way. Daddy robin was very suspicious of the camera. I'm glad I got to see the baby before end of work term, though.

There's been knitting too...a baby sweater I don't have a pic of, a pair of blue-and-white mitts in progress that I think of as my 'china' mittens, since they're rather like cobalt and white dishes, a pair of cabled mittens. Now there's a shawl in progress - a commission, in alpaca/silk laceweight, dyed coffee brown with walnuts.

 Next thing on my list? Make sure all my school stuff is ready for tomorrow. Janice has us at 9am for Urban Agriculture, so it looks like we'll be digging in the veg garden before afternoon theory class. Can't wait to see how that's doing, and say hello to Ginger the cat again.

Cleaning Up

Last week before exams this week, so there's been some academic cleaning up as well as physical. The business plan / Dragon's Den group project for English class was last week, and this week we got the results. Our group won for the afternoon section! The prof went and acquired some Dragon's Den stuff for prizes, even.

In our indoor and green roof class Wednesday, there were more prizes. The prof decided that rather than doing a plain old review before the exam, we would play a custom version of 'Jeopardy'. And because she's like that, she brought plants for prizes for everyone - the winning team just got first pick. So I have a new plant, a Dracaena marginata. Think spiky grassy clump like a yucca, but green with pink edges. I took a little time that afternoon and did a bit of garden clean-up here instead of working on my design project - hard to resist when the weather's nice. The scilla and crocuses are out here, and crocuses and tiny irises in the beds at school.

Construction class yesterday had no prizes, though - except that the rain stopped. That was good, because our job for the day was to clean out the leaves and debris in and around the pond and stream out back. Mucky and smelly work for the most part, but with a little added interest when we found what we think was a dragonfly larva in the mud.

Today ought to be interesting. The second-years have organized a Horticulture Olympics and BBQ, with us against them for the Olympics. Not sure how much use I'll be at something like wheelbarrow races unless we need someone lightweight riding in the wheelbarrow, but if there's ID or anything intellectual, I might stand a chance.

On The Needles

There are a couple knitted things in progress. It hasn't all fallen by the wayside in the end-of-semester scramble, even if progress has been slow the last couple weeks.

I got started on the second shawl out of the cria I spun for Johanne. One skein chocolate and one in the light beige I used for the last shawl. After a couple days of swatching and looking through books and Rav for ideas, I finally went with semicircular and striped with a contrasting border. Semicircular because I hadn't tried planning one yet, and wanted to see if I could. Striped, because I figured the variegation in the chocolate would show up best in a stockinette ground rather than lace, and I added little purl stripes of the beige to tie in to a beige border.

The border got started a week or more ago, but I don't really think I like the way it's coming out. So now I have to decide how I want to change it.

So that's languishing in the to-do pile while I meditate. Meanwhile, I started something else. Remember back in the fall, I was working on some diagonally striped fingerless mitts? Anyway, I submitted the idea for a pattern collection, and they were accepted. Deadline to have final pattern in - April 26, which is my last day of exams, and the day before I head off to the country to teach my second-ever spinning class. So I've been trying to get that done a bit early. Writing up as I re-knit, and I sent the rough copy of the pattern to a very kind friend who volunteered to test. Anyway, they're coming along.

Tomorrow, if the weather isn't too horrible (that means you, mutter mutter Winter Storm Watch), I'll have time to finish the mitts up when I meander off after class for my usual Friday social/fiber session. If not, I'll be hibernating at home to finish them, and being very grateful I'm not outside like the poor goose we saw today at Canlock. We had a class trip there, as they sell stone and mulch and such. And in one of the piles of mulch is this Canada goose, sitting on her eggs already, and having a hissy fit if anyone comes near. (Guess they won't be selling much of that mulch for a while.) I wonder if she'd let them put a tarp up to protect her a bit?

Only A Little Grouch

It's hard to be really grouchy when the rhubarb is up and showing a patch of crumpled green leaves, and the scilla will be in bloom any day. But a string of little annoyances means I'm a little disgruntled, at least.

Had my first day at my co-op placement Saturday, starting to get the garden center ready for the season.  Nothing wrong with that. But I now know for sure, and not just intellectually, that you can get a sunburn in April. Next week I bring sunscreen, or a hat (there's a no-scent policy at work, and my sunscreen's scented). And I'm having a few days of stiff muscles, since this garden center prep involved a quantity of shoveling snow, chipping ice, carrying things, and tying awning down.

I had to get up at 5:30 to make it to work Saturday, but was hoping to sleep in yesterday. Except the cat started waking me up at 5, and continued causing trouble until I caved and got up at 6:30. Then up late last night finishing stuff for our "Dragon's Den" business plan presentation in class today. Besides putting together the good copy for the paper to hand in, I had a felt-pocketed piece to sew up for the living wall we're using for a prop (living walls are what our theoretical business produces). Only, the sewing machine jammed partway through. So I finished the necessary sewing by hand. I don't mind hand sewing, but it just meant there was no time to make the wall as elaborate as planned. And now I have to get the machine fixed at some point...

Oh well. Today that project will be done with. Tonight will be Guild meeting, although I may not stay, since I have an irrigation quiz tomorrow morning. And then it's just the scramble to the end of semester.
(And that's my other grouch. Our list of permitted plants for our big design assignment is WAY limited. Very boring.)

Yes, there has been some knitting, if less than I'd like. Tomorrow maybe I'll show some off. I need inspiration for a semicircular shawl border.

 

Spring Inside

You wouldn't know it to look outside, but it's officially spring.

Admittedly, the snow is better for the plants and things than the 25 C temperatures we had last year...but I've about reached the point where the snow can leave anytime it wants to.

Glad there's a contrast between indoors and out, though. Plenty of colour to be seen. Even a bit of fibre in pretty colours, since I've started spinning the silk/merino roving I bought at Rhinebeck.

And as for school...it's been busy! On top of three quizzes and a couple assignments due, we had two guest speakers this week. Nick from The Pond Clinic today, teaching us about designing and building water features, and with some crazy footage of his swimming pond at home. Can you beat that? Imagine a pool in your backyard with a waterfall, and a whole ecosystem - plants and frogs and fish -and potable water! Yesterday's speaker was hardly less interesting, either. We had Dr. Alan Darlington of Nedlaw, who designs and builds living walls. I think at least three of theirs are in Ottawa, including the multi-storey ones at UOttawa and Algonquin.

We're thinking of spring in the woodshop, building a vegetable cart/rickshaw kind of thing. It will be for a little market stand for our surplus produce this summer at school. And of course the Spring Show opens tonight, so the displays have been blooming into a finished state. A watering can fountain and a seriously cool chair in the front entry:

A hobbit hole in the show house:

And even a patio surrounded by flowers and a vegetable garden complete with rabbits (mossy green ones) tucked in the back:

I'm almost sorry to miss the opening night, but with a quiz tomorrow morning, this is the last of my fun time for the evening. Supper and then studying for me.

In the Field

Despite the fact that the warm weather last week started my rhubarb poking up, it's still too cold and snowy to do anything garden-related outdoors. Definitely had my fix of green this week, though. We've had two field trips, Wednesday and today, to indoor green spaces.

Wednesday morning saw my class assembling at the corner of Baseline and Merivale, at what used to be the Nortel complex. After standing empty for a few years, it's now occupied by Agriculture Canada - very convenient, since it's on the edge of the Experimental Farm. Our tropicals/interiorscapes/green roof and wall teacher, Trish, has been involved with the indoor plantings there since several years before Nortel left, so she and her colleague Alex took us around and showed us the place.

They've got some pretty cool spaces. There's a semicircular garden which boasts a huge Peace Lily relative, among other things.

And a warm nook with a climbing fig up the walls, and towering palm trees.

And a water feature with fish in one of the ponds. The rock wall at the back has water trickling down continuously, and behind it is a biofilter - using plants and bacteria to process the fish poop, basically, and keep the water clean.

This afternoon we headed off to Richmond Nursery to learn about seeding and nursery production.

The first thing you notice coming in is the plants in the first greenhouse.

The second thing you notice is the cat - Taz is the official greeter. I don't know if this is a trend in horticulture, but I approve.

We prowled around the front greenhouses waiting for everyone to arrive, admiring plants.

Then we had a tour behind the scenes, learning about the planning and equipment involved in getting all the pots and flats ready that people will be buying in a couple months.

Automatic seeders plant 288 plugs per tray

Mechanical transplanter moves seedlings to larger pots

Going Out With A Bloom

That's the title of this year's spring Show and Sale in the Horticulture Department. Coming up soon - the show runs from the 21-31 March. The second-year students are the organizers, and have been growing all sorts of things in the greenhouse in preparation. They've also been deciding what they want for wood and stone accessories, which our year gets to build.

Construction class this week, part of the class was in the wood-shop making Adirondack chairs. The rest of us were playing with stone - my group being on pillar-building again. Last time the concept was 'think outside the box'. This time, we were told, 'something formal, modern, modular'. We ended up with 4 variations on a theme:

(If you can't tell scale, each of those is about 32" high and the caps are 28" across and bloody heavy.)

So now we have to draw up scale plans of the pillars, and the ones that the second-years like best (from all the construction classes) will get rebuilt at the entrance to the building, to welcome visitors to the show.

In other hort news, I've got a co-op placement! Come April at some point, you will be able to find me out at the Canadian Tire in Orleans, in their Garden Centre. I'll be taking care of the plants, advising customers with questions, dealing with orders and deliveries of plants, putting together planters, and planning seminars on various gardening topics that might be of interest to people. Lots to learn and teach, and I think it'll be pretty exciting! The woman who came to do the interview was really great to talk to - fibre interests as well, and very enthusiastic. We talked so much that I was almost late getting back to class; neither of us thought to check the time until we'd been there an hour. I figure that's a pretty good sign!

Anticipation

The last couple days have been fiber-oriented and exciting. Finished mittens, cast on fingerless mitts. Worked on those today - spin-in afternoon at a friend's. She made a decadent dessert for us - chocolate cake with whipped cream and Oh Henry bar topping. Received KnitPicks March catalog with my Pysanky kit pictured in it, and papers from Storey Publishing - the pattern proofs and papers to sign for the two shawls of mine that will be in the newest 101 Skein Wonders book, coming in the fall. And I signed myself up to test-knit something for the end of March.

But dudes, I am looking at the next week or so, and it's going to be a doozy. Two more days before back to school, to finish homework and study a bit, and maybe have a crack at the Garden Club proposal I promised I would look at over the break. Then it goes like this:

Monday - Print and hand in draft business proposal and portfolio for English class.

Tuesday - Study, do Geology homework.

Wednesday - ID quiz AND midterm on tropical and indoor plants, then assignment due for design class (that's ready to go, at least).

Thursday - Hand in step/retaining wall project AND midterm in Construction class.

Friday - Evergreen ID quiz, and co-op job interview, back-to-back.

Then I get to hare off to the country for a couple days, recuperate, deliver some of these mitts and things I've been knitting for Johanne, (and discuss payment options and the possibility of writing up patterns for a few of the things we've made with her yarn) and collect the stuff I loaned her for the show (the one I was spinning at a couple weeks ago.)

So yeah, going to be fun. See you on the other side, probably. I daresay I'll survive, but it's the anticipation that gets you ;)

Homework

There's a bit of knitting on the go...

But I have been trying to be good, and doing homework - mostly projects that involve me sketching and calculating, and generally quantities of paper. This occasionally becomes a problem when Her Royal Highness decides that I've paid enough attention to the papers instead of her. Then she lies on my work and swats me if I try to shift her.

Today she's been good, so I've been taking advantage. For our design class, we had an assignment to do a step and walkway for the front of a house, and a deck and steps for the back of another. Nothing fancy specified. Mostly to make sure we know how to calculate appropriate height and depth of steps. Janice (the prof) handed us the base sheet and said it should only take a couple hours, if that.

We haven't discussed line widths, or use of colour in class yet, although we were asked to get drawing pens and coloured pencils. The last couple assignments have been pencil on paper or tracing paper, very basic - and boring. I got started, and then I had a little fun. Well, those pens and crayons were there, and I was itching to use them...

...and now the day's mostly gone, but I had lots of fun. Sorry, Janice. I may have gotten a little carried away.

Re-Cap

A little bit of everything to share today, if only to get caught up. This coming week is Reading Week - no school, just a number of assignments on the list, so I'm aiming to get a little more blogging and pattern-writing done than has been the norm lately.

Two pair of mitts done for Johanne's farm store, blocked, photographed, and bagged up.  A third, a pair of fairly basic gloves, should get done today, and I have to plan out what the pair after that will be.

I meant to get pictures of my Wednesday stint at the Green Trade Expo, but never had time. Basically a Horticulture trade show, and one of our profs offered us as volunteers to help out with things like registering people. So I was out at the CE/Ernst & Young Centre all day. I signed up for 2 shifts, figuring I could use the third shift time to see the show, but ended up working all three shifts, and getting 10 minutes of free time just as people were packing up. I did wander over to the booth where they had a plant ID guessing game, and discovered something new to me. A little shrub, species Kerria,  with rather astonishingly emerald-green stems. The man at the booth said it's not terribly hardy here, which explains why it's unfamiliar. Found it in a book here, with golden-colored double flowers. Very striking, isn't it?

In construction class, we're back to stone. Our group was to build a light pillar this week, and the teacher said to think outside the box. Umm, yeah, I guess you could say we did that - ended up with a spiral design. Now for our logbooks, we have to do sketches with measurements, like plans of the pillar.

New Projects

The cria shawl is done and blocked (with expert supervision from the cat, naturally). Turned out very nice, 65" across and 28" deep final size. I'm thinking Tiger Moth for a name - the center pattern is Tiger Eye, but it looks moth-like to me in this orientation. And yes, there is a bit of striping going on - innate to the handspun, not a different lot or anything. If I'm very good, I could get the pattern written up this week and start hunting testers, but I suspect it will take a bit longer.

 

Finished shawl means I get to start a pair of mittens.

The pattern is a nice basic one, doesn't require a graph, so good to take around. Actually got it from a weaving draft in a book on Latvian weaving I borrowed from the Guild this week. There were several promising patterns in there - a source I'll have to consider more often.

For a change in pace in Construction lab today, my group ended up in the wood-shop, making planter boxes for the upcoming show. My woodworking tends to be like my gardening - few if any power tools involved. But today it was all power tools. Miter saw, table saw, jigsaw, band saw, and brad nailer. I feel like I've definitely added to my repertoire! That's my group-mates in action, below, using the brad nailer. We basically take turns doing things and taking pictures and recording - we need records for timesheets in our logbooks, and pictures for that and for our portfolios in English class.

Hard and Soft

New computer - Yay! - is up and running. Dynascape is up, and I know it works, because I did my first assignment on it. All the little essentials like MS Office and Photoshop are installed too - and I did it all by myself. Very proud. Really rather sad to reflect, though, that the IT people at school are pretty much useless. Had completely off-track diagnoses from them, but between my classmates and a bit of reading and common sense, I got along fine despite that misdirection.

Finished spinning the beige cria while I waited for various things to upload and install, and polished off a pair of gloves while watching online videos for class (testing the kit quantities for my Andean pattern). But really, the fiber-y side hasn't been very active lately, and there are so many things I want to do! I'm having a craving to knit sweaters, especially after seeing Cora and Pull Me Over recently on Ravelry. (No! Bad! Must finish WIP sweater first!) And I want a chullo rather than a tam for some of the cold days.

What I have been doing instead of playing with the soft stuff is exactly the opposite - starting the 'Lego for Grownups' construction in class. Rather fun, actually. Our group is working on a water feature for the first couple weeks. There's a semi-circular basin, pieced together with pavers.

A pump insert fits inside.

Then a back wall goes up, which will be support for a little waterfall. Some of the pavers have to be split to fit, or have the edges roughened.

The water will fall into the basin, where all the plastic of the insert will be covered with pebbles. I think the waterfall may light up, also, when we're done. Pretty cool.