What-I-Did-Over-The-Christmas-Holidays

Well not much actually !

Which is fine by me.
The 23rd of December is our wedding anniversary so to celebrate we went to Texada Island for the day.

We went to Shelter Point.

And found these little wild blueberries.

We had lunch at the Tree Frog restaurant which is a favourite of ours. As always they made us very welcome and we had a great lunch.

Here are a few more things that I did.

Carded some batts.

Spun up this skein of Babydoll/Romney plied with Angora.

I don't always give my skeins a name but this one is called Jane Eyre.

Made this pink hat which flew off to Europe.

Knitted up these legwarmers for a little gift.

And knitted this sheep hat for me, based on a pattern by Melissa Burt, using my handspun wool.

There's more, but  I'll show you another day.

Today I'm back to work.

Merry "<<_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _>>" *

* Please insert your own preferred holiday.

 Around here that would be Christmas,

 as you can see by our charlie brown tree.

There's even a rabbit under it.

And look at this lovely weaving bench Simon gave me for Christmas.

.

Our friend Randy made it from hemlock.

It is just the right height and feels great to sit on

so I'm feeling quite inspired to weave something !

so on that note,

Merry

 politically correct ,non denominational winterfest type holiday,

and a happy new gregorian calendar reset

from all of us at Periwinkle.

A Few F.O.'s

HAH ! I bet you weren't expecting two posts in two days.

Just making up for the quiet times......

I did manage to FINISH a few things I thought I'd show you.

I made this little hat from some of my hand spun wool from our Babydoll sheep.


This one is an adaptation for someone who requested a small tea cosy. It has slits for the handle and spout and a tie at the top.

I made this hat for Simon on the knitting machine, (mostly). I finished the top decreasing by hand. It is handspun with the logo of his favourite bike manufacturer on it !!

This hat is a pattern by Veronik Avery. It's all short rows and very important to keep track of where you are, (ask me how I know, which is why it stayed UNFINISHED for so long).

And a scarf from Sally Melville's Knit Stitch book. I really like this pattern it's knit lengthwise increasing each row so you get a gradual triangle then you cast on a bunch of stitches each side for the rest of the scarf. They are VERY long rows, but only a few of them so not so bad. It's very wearable.

Camping at Saltery Bay

We had a great night camping with our friends Wayne and Karen Sunday night.

We went out to Saltery Bay Provincial Campground. Here is a link if you want to take a look.

This is how it looked Monday morning with the sun coming up.

Tika had a good time, doing what she does best, lying around !

And here is a constellation of starfish at low tide,

that's the collective noun for starfish (according-to-the-internet-must-be-true).

And just because I thought this looked like a starfish, here is a pic of some bread I baked the other day. I wanted buns and a loaf of bread so combined the two. We broke off the buns and then had the loaf for the next day.

All The Fun Of The Fair

....Yes, it's been embarassingly silent on the blog front lately, but I'm still here, just been busy (and quiet) I suppose.

Last weekend was our community's Fall Fair. Always a great event.

Here is our Granary set up with fresh baked bread and ready to mill organic grains into flour.

Here is a very shady shot of my friend Helene at our fibre booth. All kinds of lovely woven items and fibrey goodness for sale!Here is a shot of our fine arts group who participated in a sheep to shawl demonstration.BUT, the highlight of the Fair for me was Saffy winning a first place ribbon in the rabbit competition. There were mostly meat rabbits so the organizers created a special "Wool Doe" category for her. She's in a class of her own that one !!

So without further ado..... (imaginary drum roll)......

Let me introduce you to Saffy, the prize winning bun.

She's very proud of herself. As you can see if you squint hard enough I printed up a little "Bio" for her and a sample of spun yarn and a mini knitted sweater to show people she's a fibre grower.

Anyway enough for now as Blogger is being particularly badly behaved today in the formatting department

Baby Bunnies Are Such Fun !

A quick post so you can see how cute the little buns are.

Considering just over two weeks ago they started out like this.

...and then they got fur.

And started to look like bunnies.

Now they are up for visiting. (Note the blue hands from wool dyeing).

And already we have an avid motorcyclist in our midst.

That's Beady, the only one we've named so far.

I Love Days At Home

Here are some of the things I got to do.

I washed the second half of Kirby's fleece. Here it is soaking in very hot water and Dawn dishsoap.

I made a CD spindle with the grommets Simon and I went EVERYWHERE, (in Powell River, that is) to find. I had some of those CD labels so I made a spirograph design on it. It spins nicely and looks psychedelic too. How cool is that ?

I got to hold this 6 day old kit. It's hard to get the best shot one handed but you get the idea.

And here is one of the light coloured kits. They have fur now.

I experimented making headscarves on my knitting machine.

Here is the headscarf and Kirby's 1/2 fleece outside drying in the sun.

And this is the second scarf I made. I changed how I worked the decreases so it is a bit shorter, which is better. I made it with some recyled ribbon yarn.

So that was my day !

Spring In The Forest

Just behind where we live are some fantastic trails through the forest. I took my camera on my walk the other day to capture some of the things I saw.

The ferns are all growing. They look like prehistoric birds somehow !

All the trees are bursting into leaf.

Some more ferns I passed.

I come to a fork and turn right.

A bracket fungus on the side of a tree.

I met a few creatures along the way, this banana slug for instance.

And a caterpillar on one of the ferns.

I'm not sure what animal would have made these prints, a deer perhaps ?

A lovely flowering redcurrant.

And the view looking up.

I put the rest of the pictures on flickr otherwise the blog might be too image laden !

Bald AND Beautiful

Today was shearing day. One of my favorite occasions, as I'm sure I've mentioned before !

We had a new shearer come from Vancouver Island this year. His name is Grant and here is his website. You can take a look at their Clun Forest and Navajo Churro flock and more info on shearing.

He did a great job on the sheep, despite their small stature which is particularly hard on the back !

Here he is in action with Humbug.

And Marmite is almost done.

Here's Dandelion, just up from the ordeal ! Lovely and clean.

Kirby, our Babydoll Romney wether was determined to finish his mouthful of hay. He seemed to enjoy being sheared.And look at this handsome fellow, Womble our Babydoll ram.

I skirted the fleeces and packed them away in used paper grain bags until I get time to wash them all.

What a great day !