Winter snow in the Valley

It's that quiet time of year...the time between the before Christmas rush and the frantic New Year Celebrations when time seems to slow right down.
 It's a gentle time.  A time for reading, knitting, resting,visiting and going for long walks and watching films.

It snowed all day yesterday and all day the day before that.  But today...ah today, the sun shone

 And it was time for a walk in the snow..

Libby the border collie loves the snow.  Loves to roll in it, sniff it, chase the snowballs we throw, wade in it.  She makes pretty decent snow angels actually.

And the shovel game - ah the shovel game.  I throw shovel fulls of snow,, and she leaps up under them and is showered by the snow coming down.  Face full of snow, mouth full of snow and demands for more and more and more until I'm too tired to shovel anymore.

The garden is very sensibly asleep,
Happy New Year.
Patricia
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Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year to all

"Tis the Season and from  my house to yours I wish you all the best of it.  And a wish for 2018.  May we treat each other with kindness and consideration.  May be get along as Humans.  May we embrace the best of ourselves.  MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The Great Unveiling!

Meet Autumn, the Fall Faerie.  She is just finished and is excited to make her debut at the Oliver Art Show and Sale at the end of the month. 

Autumn is a needle Felted sculpture. 

She is made using wool rovings, some hand dyed...some commercial dying.  And of course beads because life is just better with a bead in it.  her wings are netting, and the pine cones come courtesy of the huge Mugo Pine in my front garden.  Autumn is sitting on a Chantrelle mushroom as they make the best seats.

I am particularly pleased with how her boots turned out.

And....she is ready for her close-up.

There is something quite soothing about doing a sculpture like this using traditional needle felting techniques to make something entirely fanciful.  Anatomy is important, of course - and regular trips to the mirror to see how shoulders set, and feet and hands look. 

I intend for this to be the first of a series of four faeries.  So Winter is next, appropriately, as the \northern hemisphere is now officially in autumn, and winter cannot be far behind can it?

I think, in these troubling times, a bit of fantasy goes a long way to keeping us sane in the face of all the disasters we are faced with.  At least that's my take on it.

And this being my birthday day, the sun is shining, the harvest is being brought in from the fields and life here in my Valley is humming along.  My heart goes out to everyone coping with fire, flood, and earthquake this past few weeks.  If this doesn't bring home the fact of climate change, what will?

Stay safe, stay strong, be well.
Patricia

Learning

Dyeing with dried marigold flowers on a silk scarf - an experiment.

I remember in the 70's doing tie-dye in a pot on the stove, using Rit dyes I think...or it could have been cool-aid.  But I had forgotten the process until a bunch of us from the Desert Sage Fibre Guild got together during Studio week here in Oliver to learn the process of natural dyeing.  We used silk scarves.  I had Marigold flowers in a self contained kit from helenkrayenhoff.com These are great little starter kits if you know nothing and are just starting out.  You just have to find a cheap steel pot and spoon - the thrift shop is a good resource.  Don't use your good spaghetti pot whatever you do.  And don't use the dye pot accidentally for Spaghetti.

 I discovered dyeing is a meditative process.  First the Alum is heated and the fabric - the innocent silk scarf in this case - is  simmered for half an hour.  Then it is taken out of the hot water and a new pot is set to simmer with the Marigold flowers in it.  I guess you could put the flowers in a cheese cloth twist, but, being new, I dumped them into the water.  The dried flowers had to simmer for a while so the water would be coloured.  I have to say, brown/yellow isn't my favourite colour - but, well, you have to start somewhere don't you.

So... while the Marigolds were stewing, I folded the scarf like an origami and secured it with elastics and popsicle sticks and had a cup of tea..  Just for extra fun, I pinned the corners with clothes pins too - resist dyeing they call it.  I remember that from the tie dye days but this is a tad more sophisticated I think.

The goo in the pot didn't look like much but in went the pinned scarf and simmer I did - and the final product was worth it I think. 

So now, I'm looking at the garden in an entirely different light - and plucking pink and purple flowers to dry.  And looking at my yarn stash to see if there is something in there I can experiment with.

Thinking about Sunrooms

I have a lovely little sunroom in my house

 

  I spend a lot of quality time here, reading, knitting, taking tea breaks with friend. 

  And I was thinking how much it reminds me of the sunroom in the house where I grew up. There were windows on three sides of that lovely north facing sunroom.  Wine coloured drapes  covered the windows at night.  It was our front entry way – the way guests came in.   The windows slid sideways for air and the door window had a disappearing window that dropped down into the door itself leaving a screen window.  The downside of that wonderful room, was that the roof leaked.  And for all the detective work and roof walking tar brush in hand  my father did, we never completely got rid of leaks.  We didn’t mind though.  We just got pots out and captured the drips.

Our Christmas tree stood in that room.  I loved going out there at night with only the Christmas tree lights for company.  Sometimes we set up the sewing machine and worked out there.  The record player stayed out there and I spent hours singing along with my favourites, or just listening.  It was a great place to read too – laying on the love seat deep in the latest book from the library.    And on occasion it even turned into a dining room if we had company.

 Sadly,  that sunroom is now gone!-  Torn off the front of the house when I drove by a couple of years ago.  Maybe they couldn’t handle the leaks. 

My little sunroom here is half the size, but has four lovely south facing windows giving me a gorgeous view of the mountains surrounding the south Okanagan Valley.  This year it too had the Christmas tree front and centre – small – just fitting on the coffee table and festooned with lots of fairy lights and the antique ornaments.  Now, the plants I’m trying to save for spring are scattered around the floor and rewarding me with new green.  They will go out on the deck and into the garden once all the snow is gone.

And speaking of snow.....

 

 I bought cheery wicker furniture with red cushions for this room – came in a box – a big box – that I had the delivery man leave in the carport.  I took pieces out one at a time and started the rather complicated process of construction. 

 It seems furniture comes to be assembled in this goofy world we live in – gone are the days when you could buy it complete, delivered and set up for you. . Anyway – I did it – two chairs, a 4 foot coffee table, and a settee put together with a screwdriver and an alan key..  For some reason the coffee table gave me the most grief but I managed.  I put the first chair together backwards – why do I always do that?   Fortunately the plush red cushions were already to go and just had to be plopped on once the furniture was screwed together. 

On a knitting note – I have liberated myself from the sweater I was working on.  Tore it completely apart, and rewound the wool.

  It was a trial, that sweater.  I must have torn it back 4 times and then got up to the neck and decided I hated the thing – would probably never wear it.  So, I was sitting there  – musing on this – and decided it had to go.  I got my trusty ball winder out, and wound as I ripped and the more I ripped, and the sweater got smaller and smaller, the more liberated I felt.  Obviously it was not mean’t to be. 

  I like the wool – Malabrigio Rio in wine/red.  I wanted a squishy sweater- long, comfortable, great to slip on and go.  What I was getting was a tight assed piece of armour.  I tore up the pattern too so I would never be tempted to do it again.  It just wasn’t working.

And… I’m taking a break from knitting – well…except for socks – always have to have a sock on the go it seems. 

 This is Opal sock wool sweet and spicy Watermelon.  It's fun and bright. 

Kristen Glasbrook’s great teaching book, “Tapestr y Weaving" is my teacher here

  So…I’m learning to tapestry weave.  I’m a real baby at the moment but...   I’m learning. 

My sides are wobbly and those  first two triangles here are pretty pathetic, but the green one...hey...it worked.

It's good, as this year begins, to try some new things, and perhaps even pick up again some things long put away.

And a final "green" note here.  My Orchid is getting ready to bloom!  It is taking it's own sweet time about it but that is actually a bloom stock on there after five years of it just sitting around doing nothing.  Wow!

I wish us all a happy, peaceful 2017.  

Cheers for now

Patricia