Lights, Camera, Action

..... Well not quite, but I thought I would experiment today by posting a movie.

So here is a lamb movie, that hopefully will make you smile.

With a cast of thousands, (or make that Dill, Pickle and Mint), the star of the show is the chunky monkey herself, Anise.

Snow Day Sun Day

Today, when I got up it started to snow like crazy.

I felt sorry for the sheep and gave them some hay for breakfast.

Tika, of course, quite enjoys this weather.

Just as I was thinking it was going to be a staying home kind of day, this happened.......

So now the sun is shining and I hear the dripping of melting snow all around.

Home Sweet Home

Yesterday the sheep came home from where they have been pasturing at one of our neighbours for the past few months.


The reason for this is that we are having some cougar problems. A young pair of them are around at the moment and we think took our neighbours' cat. They have been spotted with alarming frequency the past few days.


Needless to say the sheep didn't exactly come home on their own. Ken and Corey and I bundled them ALL in the back of the Suburban, with much huffing and puffing on my part as chief sheep wrangler.


Coming out was a lot easier, and here they are home again enjoying the nice green grass that has had a chance to grow in their absence. I must say it's lovely to look out and see them again.

Here they are again this morning in the orchard.

I've posted some other pictures on flickr, take a look !

Beach Bums

Today was such a gorgeous day that Tika and I went to Palm beach. It is beautiful. Simon and I got married here, on the beach, 13 years ago on Dec 23rd. It looked like this then too.

Here's Tika sitting on the sand.

This guy was out making a little boom up of salvaged logs off the beach. There's lots of wood around at the moment because of the storms and high tides.

Here, the sun is reflecting on the ripples in the ocean.

And here's Tika after her paddle, drying off in the sun.

It was fun and nice to be out in the sunshine, (sorry Simon!)

Colour My World

Colours have been very prevalent recently. On Tuesday Fern, Katrina and I got together to dye wool using acid dyes and today I was over at Val and Chuck's for a dyeing session using fibre reactive cotton dyes.

This is some merino top Katrina dyed red and black in the steamer.

We get a lot of use from this electric frying pan. Here is some more merino top with chartreuse and fuchsia.
I threw some of Kirby's fleece into a pot on the stove with fuchsia and violet.There seemed to be some colour left in the dye bath after the first batch came out so I threw the rest in which ended up to be more muted.
I have put some pictures up on Flickr of the carded batts I made with these two batches of fleece. It turned out to be really pretty. I put sparkles and angora in too as I carded it.

Here is the fabric from this afternoon rinsing in the sink. Val used an interesting technique called Parfait from Ann Johnston's Color by Accident book. The fabric looks really cool.I thought I'd try some of the Soy Silk that Fern and I have. It came from Fibreworks, which you can check out here.http://www.gunboatbaylodge.com/fibreworks.html

This is what the 3 different batches of soysilk looked like while they were rinsing.

Well that's enough pics for now. The rest will be on Flickr if you want to take a look. There'll be sheep pics too !

I'm a lumber jack

Actually Simon is the lumber jack here.......although technically a lumber jack is someone who fells trees. We don't do that. We have a firewood permit so we go up and cut wood left over from logging close to Lois Lake.

This is the view from where we were cutting. It's really nice to be up there.

Here is a really big, burly, old stump in the pile that I thought looked kinda cool.

Tika came along in a strictly supervisory capacity. As you can see she's not impressed with the work output.

Unfortunately this is not our log stack. I took this pic on the way back down where they are actively logging. There was some nice wood in these piles. We came home with a truck load which we'll chop and stack tomorrow. It's always somehow satisfying to add to the woodshed and enjoy the fresh air and exercise at the same time.

Dabbling in Dyeing

Here is a pic of the dyed fabric I did yesterday at Chuck and Val's.

I will post some more pics on flickr but I just wanted to post this one to see all the great colours together. Very vibrant. I rinsed them out this morning, (took a lot of rinsing) and ironed them. It was quite magical as they dried under the iron, the colours look a lot different when they are wet.

As you can see Tika had a tough day today ! She loves lying around in the snow.



That's it for me, I'm going to post a couple more pics of FINISHED objects on flickr.

Puni Epiphany

From Wikipedia.

"Epiphany (holiday) January 6, the Christian feast commemorating the revelation of Jesus to humanity, specifically the visit of the Magi (see The Holy Bible, The Gospel According to Matthew, Chapter 2, verses 1-12) "
or

"Epiphany (feeling) a realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something or someone. An inspired understanding arising from connecting with profound insight, awareness, or enlightened truth."

I'm talking about the second one, but is it a coincidence it happened today.......?

I was having trouble keeping that wispy angora together enough to spin on the drop spindle. Then I read an interesting article in the latest Spin Off talking about the different names and types of fibre prep.....and there they were, punis !

Cotton and fine fibre are best prepared by rolling the fibre around a puni stick as it comes off the hand card then rolling on a flat surface.

I tried it with this result.

Sure enough, the angora is way easier to spin like this. The fibre clings together much better.

Here's what else I did today.

Washed some black llama to blend with angora hopefully.

Here it is in all it's glory, veggie matter,guard hairs and all !

And this afternoon I went over to my friends', Val and Chuck and we dyed some cotton fabric. I decided to "wing it" on my pots so it will be a surprise when I rinse them out. In the meantime this is what they look like sitting with the dye setting solution for a few hours.

Hopefully I will post pics of the finished product tomorrow or the next day.
AND I finished a scarf made from some hand dyed merino I got from Katrina.
Wow, am I productive or what ?!!

Happy New Year

How was 2007 for you ? For us it was a good year on the whole.


It was the year I learned to spin. Here is my first very twisty skein. I came out of the Fine Arts building in Powell River, where I learned to spin on a wheel, so pleased with myself, and my mind reeling with the possibilities.........

It was the year we got our Motorhome and now camp in complete luxury.

It was the year our house was raised and doubled our floor space.

It was also the year we lost Tia, one of our 11 year old Siberian Husky sisters. We still miss her greatly.

Here she is sitting on the deck.
And here she is on one of our many camping trips. This is Jones Lake, out by Hope,BC.