Monday, April 16, 2012

Oh...that IS soft...

I couldn't resist...

I've never spun a two tone yarn before.  This was a surprise in my last mill order.  I'm anxious to see what the finished knit garment will look like.  I'm thinking a plain rib scarf and cap set.  We'll see.

Experts say you should plan your project and spin for it.  I'm not an expert ;)

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Things I Made Today

I've been busy with my carder, preparing batts and rovings for sale.  I'm heading to Elliot Lake in early May for a weaving and spinning conference and aim to have some lovely batts for sale, as well as my yarns.



This batt is a combination of my dyed alpaca in mauve and royal blue, with some blue merino and some white and navy silk.  It's stunning and oh, so soft....This batch may have to stay behind in my stash.

That's the hazard of creating yarns and fibres.  Sometimes it's hard to part with my product. 

It is rewarding, though, to run into a fellow fibre artist later, who proudly displays a wonderful one-of-a-kind finished garment that started with fibre from my farm.

I borrowed a cake tin from my public library last week.  Isn't that neat?  Our public library has a wide assortment of cake pans to lend out to it's members.  Some people think that is an odd thing for a public library to do, but public libraries today are not just about lending books, but rather about providing the community to many kinds of shared resources.

Somewhere in my memory, I can remember my mother making a special Easter lamb cake.  I must have been about seven years old.  The lamb had white coconut as the fleece and green coconut as the grass.  The "how-to" had been from a Chatelaine magazine.  This wasn't something that my mother would typically do, considering she had six kids in her hectic home and a husband on the road...cake decorating just wasn't a priority.  But I do remember that Easter lamb cake as something very special.

I had never made an Easter cake for my daughter (and although I can blame a hectic home, I only have the one offspring and a very present hubby...so I own no good excuses other than "it ain't my thing"). 

That mother-owned guilt was telling me that I might have missed the chance to make a good, warm Easter memory for my daughter.

But we made our cake today together, my daughter and I. 


And, along the way, we made a special Easter memory.

Happy Easter!

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Mostly Pictures

Did you get played on April Fools Day? 

Our teenage daughter does the barn chores every Sunday morning. 

On April 1st, hubby and I got up very early and dyed some eggs.  Then he placed them under a willing hen in the coop and we were back in bed before daughter got up to do her chores.
She was a bit puzzled when she saw the pile of bright colours under the hen.

Later, darling daughter and I had some fun dyeing some other eggs with food colouring. 




See this little hen?  This is the face of evil.
She's been sitting, determined that she is going to hatch a brood.  And she tries to maim anyone who wants the eggs.  She is NOT the best part of my morning.

 This is the lovely Lily.  The alpacas love the weather this week, slightly below freezing at night and slightly above during the day with lots of sunshine.


Oh, and if you were concerned about the fate of the barn mice...you needn't be.  Mittens has found a new home.