Post-Thanksgiving Postmortem

We were fortunate in having a gorgeous Thanksgiving long weekend, warm and sunny. Made everyone want to get out and do stuff.
Mom and I got back home Saturday afternoon, which left just enough daylight, after a snack, for me to pick about 3 cups of pokeberries and put them in the freezer, sort laundry, and get the first load washed and hung up. We planned out Sunday after supper, while the pumpkin for the pie cooked. It needed planning - my sister and her boyfriend arriving, Mom working at an auction, Dad working on the shed,  me planning wool washing and dyebaths, Thanksgiving dinner...It's amazing what you can do when you need to, though.  By lunchtime Sunday, everything was under control.
Three pies were cooling on the woodstove, (scratch lemon, homegrown pumpkin, and mixed berry from the summer's harvest) beside a thawing ham and a homegrown chicken. Mom and I tag-teamed the pies before the auction, and she got the coleslaw and the stuffing made as well.

The clothesline was full of clothes, taking advantage of the breeze and the sun, and the first bag of fleece I had from Kim this spring was found and soaking in wash water.

Four jars of Japanese indigo leaves were harvested and simmering.

And the porch had some ornamental piles of squash with apples from one of our trees for contrast.

By the time we sat down to dinner, I had a pile of fleece drying on the lawn, and some of it was blue from the indigo. A batch of walnut dye was in progress, and yielded 5 skeins of warm brown wool for Mom. Most of the laundry was washed, and some was dried and folded. Andrea and Erik, when they arrived, had time to do some homework, go on a beer run, pick flowers for the table, and help with dinner - Erik got volunteered to peel the squash. And Dad got the mudroom section walled, and started on the pantry-to-be Monday.

It was a good thing we got everything done before supper. Because after Thanksgiving dinner, no-one really wanted to move much. It's always a good meal when most of it's homegrown and homemade.

Souvenirs For Every Taste

Mom just got back from a tour through Ile D'Orleans and the Maritimes, a 10 day road trip she was making with a friend. So I got to see the pictures, and the souvenirs she'd picked up this past weekend. None of the tourist kitsch for our family. She came home with a half-dozen of antique baskets, some interesting rocks for the garden, some of the red dirt from PEI to use for dyeing cloth, which they were doing there, and some wool from a farm they stopped at - two skeins of yarn for her, and a bag of colored fiber samples for me, for felting or spinning. They still smell sheepy, too!

During the growing season, when I visit the parents', I often take back a bouquet of flowers from the gardens for myself, as I don't have as many flowers here, and I prefer to leave most of them for the rest of the tenants to enjoy seeing. Julia has decided that the hakone grass I put in this week's bouquet is a souvenir more to her taste - you can see that the blades have been clipped short on one side, where they were draping gracefully!

Wet and Wooly part 2

As promised, the pictures of some of the things I was working on this weekend. First up, the spinning.

I think these are the closest pictures to the actual color I’ve been able to get. And I've heard from the third skein - it got left behind at fleece spa on Friday, and should be home soon.

Next, the Jacob batts. The thing about the Jacob I love is not just that it’s a nice soft wool, but how white the white is and how black the black is. Beautiful stuff.

And of course, the baby booties, not quite done.

And the baby kimonos.

Pattern is the Sachiko baby sweater, wonderfully simple and ideally suited to knit nights. I did find that the diagonal edges are a bit tight and tend to curl because of it, but other than that it’s an adorable little sweater. I used Knitpicks CotLin for the embroidery and ties. A duck and balloons should be nicely gender-neutral, and I like the contrasting ties.

Wet and Wooly, part 1

Out to the parents' this weekend, and I was hoping to have a chance to do a bit of work in my dye garden. But it rained ALL WEEKEND! Ok, so it let up a bit in the mornings - I took advantage of that to go and pick myself a few flowers - but it was wet the whole time, and I don't particularly like gardening in the rain.

On the other hand, when you stay in and work, you can get a lot done too. Mostly fiber-y, natch. No pictures of the work in question yet, you'll have to wait until tomorrow for that. It was going on midnight when I got back last night, and I didn't want to hunt the camera and hope the batteries were charged. But...

1. The pink and orange yarn is done, all spun and plied. The first skein has gone AWOL, though, so I'll wait to wash and set the yarn when I find it.

2. The baby kimonos I was working on for gifts are done - blocked, ties made, and embroidered. The felted baby booties are felted and drying, after which I have to do the velcro and maybe a bit of needlefelting.

3. Sorted all the remaining washed and undyed Jacob fleece I had and put it through the carder, for 2 batts each white, lt grey, dk grey, and black. The belt broke halfway through, so I had to improvise. Nylon cord (rather like large shoelacing) of the appropriate diameter, with the ends melted together to make a continuous loop and the join smoothed, did the trick.

4. Helped my mother with warping her loom for some rag rugs destined for the kitchen and living room.

and finally 5. Went over to Kim's (she of the mitts - Ravlink) to pick through this week's shorn fleece before they dispose of it. Came home with a garbage bag or so. Wish I had pictures - her duck has 5 little yellow fuzzy ducklings, ever so cute! The duck is the only bird she has currently who seems to know how to do it, though. Apparently her hen which is setting is only setting on one egg now, being in the habit of eating the eggs she's setting on, at the rate of one per day. And the goose has a nest which the gander is fiercely protecting - but his mate only sets on them when she feels like it, so I doubt there'll be any results there either.