Not Quite Friday the 13th

Another Saturday off, loving it, despite the fact the weather's turning chilly again, and I will have to bring my plants back in and hope that the fruit blossoms don't get frozen.

Coolest thing this week (although I didn't get a picture): we saw a fox one morning across the road from one of our jobs. Just walking through someone's front yard in the Alta Vista area. I do love that aspect of working outside in the mornings. It's quiet, and you never know what you will see!

I was rather wondering what yesterday would bring, being Friday the 13th, and rain predicted. But I would say it was rather good for a 'bad-luck' day. Sure it rained, but only a few hours, and we were warm and dry by the end of the day's work. And I am rejoicing, just a little, because it was the last day for one of the new garden guys - he has decided on a nursery job. And another new gardener starts Monday, a woman this time, so I am being cautiously optimistic. It sounds really sexist to say it, but really, in three seasons and something like 9 other gardeners and students I've worked with, the guys have been very disappointing compared to the girls, in terms of combined speed and ability. I expect there are good male gardeners out there, but I haven't met them!

Just to round out a nice Friday the 13th, my tax return arrived (with an adjustment in my favour even!) and my lettuce is up, and the lilacs and my little apple tree are starting to bloom.

My Hypnosis socks are finally finished, so that is exciting. Even if I can't wear them until after fair season, because I want to enter them in the fair. I am tempted to make something else for myself (after the gloves for Johanne's stash I cast on the other day), but I know I need to start prep for shows and such...we shall see.

Oh, and good news on our side, at least, from the Fort Mac fires. People are starting to go back home, and my cousin reports that things look better than they did on the news, and in particular, his truck and buildings are safe and sound. Plus there's now lots of work for him in helping with rebuilding.

A Little Bit of Everything

So what about this weather? Can't make up its mind - Easter Sunday it was so warm I sat out on the porch at the parents' in a t-shirt and bare feet and was too hot, then it got cold again this week, and today it's snowing. My library pile, with books on famous English gardens at Sissinghurst and Munstead, seems a nice escape from the snow.

The preparations for spring are moving forward, though. Clean-up outside is mostly done. My seeds have all arrived, and all the windowsills are occupied by flats (spaced so the cat can still jump up in her usual places, though). The zinnias and salpiglossis are up already, and I check the window boxes more often than I check my e-mails, waiting for the next little plants. I feel really happy about the salpiglossis, since they haven't had a textbook life so far. The package said they had to be sprouted in the dark for 20 days at 80 F. Well, I wrapped them in black plastic and put them in the windowsill right by the stove, since I couldn't think of any other way to keep them warm. After less than a week (!) they were up, tiny, pale,  spindly things, so I thought they might be better off with light, and switched the black plastic for clear. And promptly managed to drop the flat upside-down while putting it back on the windowsill. But there were still seedlings on top, in the soil, when I turned it back over - thank goodness for that bag I had over it - so I thought no harm in seeing if they'll live. And they are - they are bigger and they have little green leaves, so all is well!

Assorted items done: Got things up in my Etsy store again - and this time they are set up to auto-renew if they expire. Yay, because I'm really bad at paying attention to that little job. Got my taxes done today. Finalized the garden plans I made for Liz last spring (she had a busy year too, so it wasn't like she was twiddling her thumbs waiting on me), and did some estimating for a patio a friend wants.

Work hasn't started yet, except for our first job of the season, which was building a garden at the Home and Garden show the other week. We took a day and a half to do the planting, between deciding how things would look best, and juggling the plan when some plants didn't show up in good condition. Trees, shrubs, perennials, bulbs in bloom, we had it all, in a stone and wood backyard patio setting the construction team built. I was worried tear-down would be a long job also, but it went like a team of army ants had gotten in. Three hours only, and we kept all the plants for use this summer.

A treat Easter Monday - a whole flock of Bohemian waxwings showed up and hung around for a while, eating the little crabapples on a tree in the front yard at the parents'. Gorgeous birds, and watching them eat crabapples is a hoot. They were eating them whole, but if the apple is too big...bird opens beak wide, apple slides down, bird closes beak, apple slides back up!

There has been fibre stuff going on as well, of course. Mitts for the ranch store, and now I'm on an interesting project; a request for a chiengora lace scarf. The dog is more of a hair than a fur type, so I mixed it with half Romney wool, spun a couple bobbins of fairly fine 2-ply, and now it's on the needles in an Estonian floral lace pattern.

The mitts are both from a book by Solveig Larsson, and it is a lovely book.

Spring On The Way

Baby socks for a friend of my sister's, finished this week just a little after the baby made her appearance:

Little people, and now little plants. Several days of mild weather means the snow is retreating, and in its wake, the daffodils in front of the building are coming up already.

And that means I have to get my act together and order seeds. I don't usually do that - it's a small garden, and what I need can usually be assembled from what I save myself plus some extras from my mother, and the occasional purchase at the store or garden center.

This year, however, I got a catalogue from Heritage Harvest Seeds in Manitoba when I was demo-ing at the Farm Show last week, and I couldn't resist. Plus I have a gift certificate from Stokes that should be used. So I've been hemming and hawing over decisions. Flowers from Stokes, veg from Heritage, that was pretty straightforward.

After that...well, there's less varieties for a lot of the veg, but Heritage has something like 200 types of tomato, and I have space for maybe 6 plants, so no point getting more than one type. I settled on Forme de Coeur, a nice multipurpose, productive, Quebec heirloom. But I could have had anything from White Currant (cream colored and half the size of a cherry tomato) to Ferris Wheel (where a slice is bigger than a piece of bread), or Silvery Fir Tree with delicate ferny foliage as well as nice fruit, or red-and-yellow-streaked hollow stuffing tomatoes, or a long-term keeper that ripens from the inside out... Deciding on beans was just as hard, but I ended up with 2 dual-purpose (fresh or dried) ones - Blue Jay, a green bean with navy blue and beige seeds, and Dragon Tongue, a yellow wax bean with purple-streaked pods and purple-striped beige seeds.

And it will be nice to have some pretty annuals to start from seed and pop in gaps in the beds for colour. I'm getting multicoloured zinnias and pink and cream celosia, and multicolored painted tongue (salpiglossis), which I've always liked the look of but never tried. I can hardly wait!

Decision Making

To any quilters out there - how do you not go crazy deciding between options? There are so many options!

Where did that thought come from? Well, I'm working on a quilt block. One quilt block. A local quilting group is doing this for a fundraiser, and Mom and I decided to get in on it. Each person doing a block gets a packet with 2 pieces of fabric (the same 2 for everyone), and instructions. Basically, the idea is to add 2-4 more fabrics, and make a 12" quilt block. That's really all the guidelines you have.

First things first, I needed to find two more fabrics. Mom and I went through a couple baskets of scraps.  When your starting point is a blue solid and a blue print, there are a lot of colours that go with them. After trying several different combinations, I ended up with a buttery yellow and a white with a flower print that picked up the blue and the yellow.

Next, pattern. I'm pretty much a novice, so I wanted something fairly simple - i.e., nothing where I had to accurately match eight points together or something. But not too boring. And of course it had to be doable in 4 colours. Um, so we have a couple books with names like "400 Quilt Blocks". And a few with a more specialized focus. I skipped the magazines; that would have been too much input. Finally settled on a block called Canadian Gardens, which seemed appropriate.

Four fabrics, quilt block, all right...Wait, I still have to decide which colours are going where. So out come the coloured pencils and the paper. I'm sure this is a lot easier if you have a vision of the finished quilt in mind - which colours you want to emphasize, for instance. If all you see is a pattern of triangles and squares, there are a lot of possibilities. (If I was doing a whole quilt, in fact, I would be tempted to try out all the various permutations and combinations of colour arrangement for the same block layout.) But since I had only one block, and didn't want to spend two days choosing the colour placement, I sketched just four and picked one of those (the top left one, if you're wondering).

Got the pattern pieces drawn and cut out (the 8-squares-per-inch graph paper I had for school made that SO easy), traced onto cardboard and cut out for templates, and traced and cut appropriate pieces of fabric. Which was a job, not because of the cutting, but because the cat decided she needed attention, and accurately tracing and cutting pieces of fabric is much harder when there's four feet and a tail in the way and a cute face purring and trying to rub your face...Now I get to do the sewing, and hope everything lines up.

But not right now. Because it's beautifully sunny and nice out (supposed to be 23C today!), the birds are chirping, the crocuses are blooming, and I need to finish cleaning up the garden before work starts later this week.

Spring: Finishing And Starting

Despite the fact that we had a winter wonderland outside (again!) Sunday morning, spring is just about here. Things are coming up in the garden, and work starts next week.

A lot of my fibre projects seem to be either finishing or starting right now also. On the finished pile, I have all 5 skeins of that pewter-grey llama I was spinning, plus my first official weaving project, hemmed, washed, ends trimmed, and ready to go to the Guild on Monday.

Also going to the Guild will be my basket from the class I was taking. I must say it's not exactly a perfect basket, but hey, it's my first try. The reed we used was really light-coloured, and the basket sticks out like a sore thumb, since every other basket I own is patina'd and rather darker. But by a nice coincidence, I've been doing my first dye-bath of the season - walnuts - and thought that the exhaust bath might be useful to stain the basket darker, even if it takes a few coats. So I'm trying that right now.

The walnut-dyed yarn is hanging up to dry. The darker skeins are going for a sweater for a cousin's new baby, commissioned by my aunt. It's wool from their sheep that they had mill-spun at MacAusland's, and the weight and texture are similar enough to Briggs and Little that I will add some colours out of my stash of B&L to get enough yarn for the sweater.

The lighter skeins had a cold soak for 30 min or an hour in the exhaust bath - I just want enough there for a tint, which gives lovely reds with a cochineal pink/red on top.

While waiting for the yarn to dry for the little sweater, I'm finishing off a pair of socks for me. Fleece Artist BFL Sock I bought at Rhinebeck last year. The only picture I have so far, though, is this one of Pumpkin having a lovely nap on my laptop case and knitting bag, with the sock sticking out of the sandwich.

And the last current finished thing is the first Cowichan-style sweater Joan commissioned (we're still waiting on the yarn for the kid's version). It's really cozy, even if knitting with Lopi does make me feel like I've got a hairball in my throat. And I found out that taking a picture of your own back is rather tricky, but I got some sort of picture in the end! (All right, so the easiest was taking pictures while not wearing the sweater.)

More Spring Gardening

Out at the parents' for Easter weekend, and my last free time before work starts on Monday. Been warming up for the job, cleaning out my dye garden, and helping Mom to clear what she refers to as the 'cochonerie' - all the weeds and undesirables - on the back peninsula. The area has been overgrown with raspberries and stuff, and some escaped goutweed, which we're trying to eradicate - two feedbags full of the stuff today, plus a lot of branches and vines to heap up. Once everything is cleaned up, Mom is thinking she'll make a rockery there.

The chickens have been enjoying their last hurrah, since things are coming up, and they make too much of a mess in the flowerbeds to be allowed to run loose. So they go in the pen tomorrow.

And all day a verse I picked up somewhere has been running through my head, as it does every spring, when the flowers start.

Now winter's rains and ruins are over
And all the season of snows and sins

And time remembered is grief forgotten
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten

And in green wood and undercover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins

In the Garden

As far as I'm concerned, the garden season officially opened yesterday. I planted a window-box full of Japanese indigo seeds, and managed to fit it on the actual windowsill, in-between the rest of the pots of Mom's cuttings of coleus and iresine.

Then I went outside and cleaned up a bunch of the dead stuff in the garden that I never got around to last fall. The snow has retreated from the west and south sides of the building, even if it will be a while before I see some of the other beds, and it was a lovely afternoon. I even had to take off my coat after a few minutes, which hasn't happened in, oh, 6 months!

And voila, there are things growing! Even if the snow hasn't retreated far yet, all the bulbs and things are eager to get going as soon as possible. The chives are up. The daffodils are up. There are little points of crocuses coming through.

There are clusters of red-tinged tulip leaves.

And the brighter red buds of rhubarb are breaking the ground as the snow retreats.

No doubt about it now, winter is over!

Bucolic

That is definitely the way to describe my weekend. Saturday's class went really well, and everyone had fun. I think it was just a great combination of people. It was supposed to be 1-4, but at 4:30 everyone was still there talking - always a nice sign.

Anyone who thinks the perfect Sunday morning means sleeping in and having a leisurely brunch would have been out of luck at the farm this week. By 9:30 or 10, everyone was up and fed, dishes done, Mom was taking the dog for his walk before work, Dad was taking the lawnmower for a walk before church, and I was hanging my second load of laundry on the clothesline - slightly delayed, since I hadn't wanted to interrupt a pair of flycatchers who seemed to be discussing the possibilities of the shed eaves near the clothesline as a nest-building site.

After the parents went off to their respective destinations and the day started getting warmer, I settled on the porch to do a little picking. Not banjo, like in some country song, but llama fibre. It's a mindless task, but rather nice to do it on a sunny spring day in the country. All the birds were chirping like mad, about mates and territory, and nest-building. Maybe some of them will have llama-lined nests from my discards!

The llama is my cousins' from last year's shearing. Lots of second cuts to pick out (it was Shawn's first time shearing, and he hadn't been thinking of it going to me at the time), but I got about a 50% yield, and what I was keeping was nice.

It was so nice to be able to sit out and enjoy the spring, and I spent the whole morning there. From the porch I could look out to the front border and the new bush, and to the left, past the apple trees, a gleam of yellow was visible from one of the gardens, where crocuses and daffodils, and forsythia were in bloom.

I wasn't alone in enjoying the weather, or the fibre, either. Abby was stretched out on one of the other chairs, and Rex was busy holding the door closed. Then Gail wandered over, and helped with the picking. She can't resist raw fleece - behaves like it's catnip.

It was, despite the help, a productive session, since about half the garbage-bag-full got picked. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the dye garden, hacking back the greenweed, and collecting the weathered stems from the madder. Last year's experiments showed that stems dried green give an olive colour, but stems that weather overwinter like these will give a peachy-pink similar to bedstraw. No point in wasting them!

 

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.

 

Oh, What a Beautiful Day!

Easter weekend at the parents'. You know, I can't think of a better way to spend a day than this. It's been warm and sunny all day - I did laundry and hung everything out on the clothesline for the first time this year, and it all dried beautifully, and smells of fresh air.

The chickens are strolling around the yard, clucking contentedly, picking at the leavings under the bird feeders, and taking dustbaths in the sun.

Mom had a few things she wanted dyed, so I fired up the first dye bath of the season. Black walnut hulls dried last fall, adding a lovely brown to some yarn she found at the 2nd-hand store, and some towels that had faded.

Now there's a chicken in the oven, and sausages defrosting in the fridge - there will be barbecue for supper! Hot cross bun dough is rising, getting ready for tomorrow's breakfast buns. And an Easter dinner to look forward to with ham from my cousin's pigs, and pie from berries we picked last summer. Life is definitely good!

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 Bloom

A couple days of warm weather and rain, and everything is growing in leaps and bounds. I took advantage of the sun yesterday to edge and weed some beds, turn the compost heap, and prepare the beds to plant veggies. I planted the early stuff - peas and lettuce - today. And the whole time I was out it was idyllic. Warm, all the birds singing like mad, and the breeze wafting scent over from all the blossoming trees and shrubs. The crabapples trees across the road are in bloom, and apple blossom has to be one of my favorite scents.

The sand cherry is just covered with blossom.

The lilacs are opening.

Everything else is taking off too. I've had to pull flower heads out of the rhubarb already. The yarrow and Jacob's ladder (polemonium?) have buds. The lily-of-the-valley will be adding their scent to the air in a few days, and the irises have flower heads coming all of a sudden.

I started tomatoes and peppers and Japanese indigo inside today. Tomorrow I want to pick up a few more seeds for things I'm missing. Now the only problem is I'm running out of windowsill space!

Optimism

I do get rather annoyed when a project decides, halfway through, that it's not going to work. Even though I know it's something that happens when half my knitting projects are from handspun, or stash that's been there a while - things where I have to use what I have, because I can't get more. And even when I do recognize that it's a grand exercise in problem-solving and creativity.

I want to get the little baby sweater my aunt commissioned done in the next few days, since I can then pass it off to Mom to give to her this weekend. However, I had to restart it yesterday. The back was 3/4 done when it became very obvious that the remaining blue I'm using as the main color would not be enough for the sleeves. Not even half the sleeves. I wondered it I was going to have to choose an entirely different pattern - and I really like the little intarsia stars. But then I realized that I could keep the pattern if I reknit it in stockinette stitch rather than garter, seeing as it takes essentially 2 garter rows to equal one stockinette, in height. It means the cast-on stays the same. The stars are knit with one row rather than 2 per stitch, and aren't quite square anymore (and will need more attention to end weaving, seeing as it's easier to get gaps with only half as many rows and no difference in frequency of color changes), and I had to add a hem to keep the bottom edge from curling. But it will work. Is working. And going faster, so the back is already redone, and one front almost half done. And the extra yarn saved should be enough to take care of the sleeves.

Other things, at least, are progressing. The oatmeal alpaca I had on the wheel this week is done and plied, for a total of 340 yards.

And not only are my crocuses out, but there are scylla and miniature daffodils. Cheerful and pretty and exciting.

Soon, by the looks of it, there will be more things too, with buds in the wood hyacinths and the pulmonaria and some of the big daffodils. Someone needs to reschedule Tulipfest, because at this rate they'll be out weeks early.

On the Knitting Front

I finished my challenge shawl Thursday night, and blocked it. Surprise, surprise, when I went to pin it out, I found that although I had been aiming for a triangle, it wasn't quite.

Still, it's pretty, with a soft, lofty, shiny texture, and the angled shape may be better, given that it isn't huge - blocked size is 48" across and 21" deep. When I write up and retest it, I want to make a larger version, and one with a slightly deeper border. Both things were limited by having only 500m of the yarn available, and I cut it so close that the remaining bit of yarn wouldn't be enough for even one row extra. I did the border separately and sewed it on as I didn't want to have to tink back on the shawl body if something went wrong. I seamed it a bit differently than the cria shawl, and I like the way the join looks, like an ornamental braid. I think the shawl will end up being named Swanhilda. Deb said it looks like bat wings, which is true, but I can't call something white and fuzzy by a bat/vampire name.

Now the primary project (and I want to finish this week) is the baby sweater. The two fronts are done and the back is in progress. Being handspun also, and leftovers from my sweater, I am crossing my fingers for there to be enough yarn. I could always make the sleeves in stripes if needed, but it would look better in the blue.

I would like to record here that my first crocuses opened today. In Ottawa. And it's 20 degrees C out. I'm beginning to suspect we must have skipped January, and this is really mid-April instead of March. Mom has snowdrops, and there were roses which lasted until December, so that is 2 months only with no flowers this year. At this rate, the Canadian climate is going to cease being useful to show how tough we are.