We've Made It!

I always feel like getting through February and into March is a big deal.  The worst is behind us, right?  I can be hopeful despite the fact that perusing last year's Syrup Journal entries, I see the we had a low of -8 F on March 6th last year.  

February ended on a high note.  The 28th was sunny and 65 degrees.  I was cooking down sap for maple syrup again, as I had done the previous Sunday.  On the 21st, we put about 60 gallons of sap into the evaporator early in the morning and didn't get back to the house until after 8:30 pm.  I only finished off 3 quarts of syrup from that.  The photo above was taken by the light of our Coleman lantern with my phone, so it isn't very good, but you can see we have "all the comforts of home"  a couch (an old van seat) and dogs.

This week, we had only about 45 gallons of sap to put in the evaporator and started around the same time, but we were back at the house closer to  7 pm.  And I finished 4 quarts of syrup off from that run.  That means the sugar content in this run of sap was higher than that of last week's run.  That's a good thing.  

The crazy warm weather kind of put a stop to the sap run, the best conditions being below freezing at night and bright and sunny and above freezing during the day.  Hopefully this weekend we can get another boil in.  

Not much else going on around here.  The barn work is so much easier that I am having more time for things like housework (ugh) and knitting and spinning and weaving.  I actually finished my big sweater project on Monday and I washed it and it is now drying.  I will post photos once it is dry and I put buttons on it.  It came out great!  I posted a photo last time of a skein of yarn I had dyed to use up leftover dye in a dyepot and I am knitting a lacey cowl with that.  It has been nice to work on while tending the fire under the evaporator pan.  I also started a new pair of socks for me.  

Mayhem

I am happy to have started a new spinning project.  Last year at the Great Lakes Fiber Festival I purchased a gorgeous Shetland Wool fleece. I sent it off with Mayhem's 2015 fleece and had the 2 blended into a ready to spin roving which came out beautifully.

I have plenty of this roving to spin into yarn to knit Sam and myself each a sweater.  The yarn will match, but the sweaters will be different.  So I have started spinning for sweater yarn, and I am very happy with how this is spinning.  A nicely prepared fiber is a joy to spin and one that is not nice can be no fun at all.  I figure I need to spin about 4 pounds and hope to spin about 4 oz a week while the weather outside allows.

I spin while watching TV in the evening, and once we are staying outside until it gets dark at 9 pm or so, I won't be getting much spinning done.  That's ok, there's no rush.

I also started tearing out a closet in Rowdy's bedroom.  I decided I wanted to use that space for my sewing machine table and we have another closet in that room.  So both closets have been cleaned out and a lot of stuff has been disposed of in one way or another.  I may have quite a mess in Rowdy's room right now.  We are trying to figure out how to work around a problem with the ceiling in that closet that was probably caused by the chimney fire of 2010.  We'll figure it out.  

Winter Woods Fungi

All Kinds of Weather and A Fabulous February Trial

I meant to post last week, but time got away from me.  Our weather has been typically crazy, so maybe it is just normal.  Who knows?  Rowdy has been happy with the snow.  In fact, last Thursday night it was 2 degrees F at 9 pm and I could not get him to come inside.  He laid on the dog bed on the front porch for an hour and a half and stared me down every time I tried to get him to come in.  He loves the cold.
 
But only a few days prior to that night, we had a wonderful warm weekend with bright sunny skies.  It was so warm that I heard a lot of buzzing coming from under the big maple in the back yard and found honey bees raiding the bird feeders in search of protein.  This photo is at the base of the tree where a lot of the seed gets dropped, but the bees were actually in the feeders as well. 

The three female alpacas took advantage of the sunshine and warm temperatures to get out in the pasture in search of something green to eat. I'm not sure how successful they were.

And 2 days later, it was back to snowy, frigid February.  

 This past weekend, Grover and I attended the dog trial put on by our dog club in Zanesville.  Our last trial was in December, so it was fun to be running again.  Going into the trial, Grover had 2 of 3 legs of his Excellent title in Jumpers with Weaves and 1 of 3 legs of his Excellent title in Standard.    We had a really great day on Saturday, getting qualifying scores in all 3 of our runs!  In addition to Jumpers and Standard, we ran in a class called FAST at the Novice level.  This was only the second time we have run in this class, so we have to start at Novice and work our way up like with the other 2 classes.  One of the reasons I entered this class is because it is the first class on Saturday morning and Grover is usually pretty wound up in the first class he runs, so this kind of gave him an outlet to burn off some of that craziness, which he did, getting a Q and second place.  He then went on to Q in Excellent Standard, with a third place and then a Q in Excellent Jumpers with a first place.  So he earned his Excellent Jumpers title, which moved us up to Masters level for Sunday.  I was so thrilled with our day.  There was no way I was expecting Sunday to be as good.  And we started out with Standard and a couple mistakes that caused us a no Q there, but our Jumpers run was wonderful.  Out of 16 dogs that Q'd, we were number 11 and we ran it in 9 seconds under the official time.  So we got 9 points toward our eventual goal of a MACH.  But we need a LOT more!  Here is our run in Jumpers on Sunday:  

Masters Jumpers Run 2-14-16

After the trial, Grover and I went over and spent a couple days with my mom before we headed home yesterday.  So things have been rather busy.  I think Sam is planning to tap maple trees today, so I may have more on that next time.


 

I warped up my small loom for a couple of scarves this past week, but haven't taken photos yet.  And I continue to work on the long sweater.  I am onto the second sleeve and still have hopes of finishing while it is cold enough to wear it.  I think I'll make it.  I will possibly finish it while I am feeding wood into the fire under the sap evaporator in the next couple of weeks.  It is so nice having the evaporator enclosed in the sugar shack.  It stays toasty warm in there.

 

January is Behind Us.

I am finally able to access my photos I took with my phone in Oregon last month.  So here I am with my 2 sons, Ian and Sam/Zac/Satchmo in front of one of the waterfalls at Silver Falls State Park, which is where Ian and Michelle will get married in just 4 months.  

And here are the bride and groom to be.  The park is gorgeous and I hope I get to do the whole 10 falls hike, which is about 7 miles, when I return for the wedding.  I will be sure to take my camera and not depend on my phone as the resolution is not so great.  But I think the photos are nice anyway.

  



Ian took this photo the next day from a park on top of a mountain in Portland.  That is Mt Hood in the background.  It was a lovely day. 





All our snow melted this past week.  It was unseasonably warm for several days and on Sunday the sun was shining and it was 60 degrees.  Wow.  The dogs and I went up to the pond and I spent a couple hours with the chainsaw and the brushcutter clearing out the briars and undergrowth on one side of the pavilion.  We have one side done and it is parklike with just the big trees and no brush and Sam can get in with the tractor and mow it.  It is our goal to do this all around the pond.  Here is what it looks like prior to clearing it out.
 




And afterwards

Sam will go in here with the tractor and push those larger downed logs down to the burn pile next to the pond, which looked like this after my work on Sunday.  I added to it on Tuesday, but did not take a new photo.  It is easily twice that size now.

Most likely this pile will get burned while we are cooking down maple sap.  Still wondering how the weather will affect that....


I finished the dyeing for my big weaving project this week.  I still need to spin a skein of black alpaca because what I tried to dye just did not work out.  In hindsight, it was silly to try to dye black when I have some lovely black fleeces in the summer kitchen just waiting to be processed.....I think I will be skirting fiber this weekend to send to the mill for processing.  But I have already washed what I need to spin for this project and will start carding it this weekend.  I only need about 4 oz.  

I had a tiny bit of dye left in the pot when I decided my skeins were dark enough, so I took an extra skein and dyed it to exhaust the dye and I got this:


It came out gorgeous and I can hardly wait to knit a small project with it.  When I say exhaust the dye, what I mean is use up every bit of color in the pot.  The dye molecules "strike" the fiber, kind of like iron filings jumping onto a magnet (we all did that in science class, right?).  The heat and the acid in the dyebath are what make the color stick permanently to the fiber.  So if you exhaust your dyebath, there will be no color left in your pot, just clear water when you remove the fiber.  In this case, I did not let all the color in the pot grab onto my original skeins of yarn because I did not want them any darker, so I pulled them out while there was still just a little color in the pot.  Then I hung this skein over a big spoon handle and let just the ends down into the pot for a few minutes before dropping it in all the way,  So I have kind of a gradient skein.  Dyeing is fun.  I like to experiment sometimes like this.  The best part is if I do not like what I get, I can overdye the yarn with another color and get something completely different and possibly awesome.  Too bad we can't fix all our mistakes so easily! 

Last but not least, I finished the binding on the grey rug.  It is a couple inches longer than the white one, which I dropped off at the Arts Center last week.  I will probably take this one in there as well.  The Monroe Artists have their big annual show in April and if I have some rugs for sale during the show I may sell another one or two.  I think I sold 9 rugs through the Arts Center last year, which is pretty good.  It pays for more yarn to be processed which means my fiber shed will not be as full!

 

A Trip to Portland and A Big Snow

I flew to Portland OR on the 18th of this month to spend some time with my 2 sons and my daughter-in-law-to-be.  I took photos, but only on my phone, which fell out of my pocket in the shuttle from my hotel to the airport on Saturday morning and has not yet made it to Ohio.  At least it was recovered and my son has picked it up and will send it to me.

But we had such a nice visit.  It was rainy the first couple days I was there, but then on Thursday which was when we went to the wedding venue, Silver Falls State Park, it was just overcast and around 50 degrees.  We got in a short hike and a picnic and got to go to the actual site where the wedding will be held and Michelle made notes and looked for just the right place to hold the ceremony and we discussed the rehearsal dinner and other details.  June is still over 4 months away, but it will be here before we know it.  

Friday was actually bright and sunny and about 60 degrees in Portland, while here in eastern Ohio, we were getting walloped with snow.  I was concerned about my return flight into Pittsburgh via Chicago, but I did not need to be.  Chicago had almost no snow and Pittsburgh had only about 3 to 4".  By the time I arrived at around 4 pm on Saturday, the roads were clear and there were no delays or other issues for my trip.  However, there was 14" of snow on the ground at home!  The farther south I drove from the airport toward home, the more snow there was. 

There was a full moon when I arrived home, so of course Sam and the dogs and I bundled up and went for a walk down the road.   The snow was too deep to venture off the road, but it was still spectacularly beautiful.  Sunday morning I had to go up and dig the fronts of the bee hives out of the snow so they could go out if they needed to.  I have some old hay bales stacked behind the hives to block some of the wind from the west but the hive entrances are at the bottom and they were thoroughly covered up.  The bees seem to be doing okay so far.  I have been feeding them on a regular basis and I just hope to get them through the winter so they can build up in the spring and maybe I can get a honey harvest this year.

 This is not the biggest snowfall we have had.  We had 22" over President's Day weekend in 2003 (I think that was the year).  Sam gets the tractor out and plows pathways between the buildings to make it easier to walk from place to place.  Here is the path from the chicken coop over to the alpaca barn.  

 And from the mud room door over to the footbridge.

Yesterday, Tuesday, it got well above freezing all day so much of the snow has already melted.  
 

But it was pretty while it lasted.

 
Since I got home from my trip, I have gotten back to work on the sweater I started in December.  I did not take it with me because it was too big to easily carry along (I took a pair of mittens instead) and work on on the plane.  I have now finished the cabled part of the body of the sweater and have moved on the ribbed lower edge.




This is the back.  That's a lot of cables!  I do like this type of knitting that keeps my mind engaged, though there is a time and place for knitting one does not have to think about as well (like on a plane).  



 
I also sewed the bindings on one of the rugs I took off the loom before my trip.  Hopefully I will get the other one done in the next few days. 




This one is white alpaca yarn for the weft and I think there are 5 different colors in the warp.  The other rug is the same except using grey alpaca rug yarn.  So my big loom is empty right now and I am not sure what will be on it next.  By March, I plan to have a big project on it, something I can hopefully enter in the Monroe Artists' Art Show in April.  That gives me a month to plan and weave another rug or two.  

 

They're Gone

On Saturday morning Sam and I loaded 12 of our alpacas onto a trailer and sent them to Tennessee.  The barn seems so empty.  But all went well and they arrived at their new home safely.  I hope they do well there.  

Meanwhile, I still have the big dogs out there guarding their 3 senior female alpacas and the 2 boys down the road.  I'd like to find a new home for the dogs, but I want to see if I can get some weight off Star first.  I think now that there won't be 20 alpacas to clean up after I may finally be successful at that.  Both dogs vacuum up any little scrap of feed that hits the floor.

Our weather took quite a turn on Tuesday.  The photo above is the view of the state highway from my office window in late morning.  There was barely a dusting of snow when I left home and by the time it stopped snowing about 2 pm, I think there was about 5 to 6" here in Woodsfield.  The temperatures also dropped overnight and we had a low of -6 on Wednesday morning with frozen pipes (as usual).  I spent a lot of time with a hairdryer on Wednesday thawing them out.  

Not much else is new.  I am leaving Monday to go to Portland for 5 days so I wanted to be sure to get a quick post up before then.  Over the weekend I did some dyeing:

My 2 lightest colors are a bit too close.  I may have to dye another skein.  Otherwise I am pleased with how this came out.  It is warp for a big project.

Speaking of warp, just today I finished the weaving on 2 alpaca rugs and took them off the loom.  I used color in the warp and then did solid white and solid grey for the weft.  These weave up very quickly with soild color weft, no cutting and measuring for stripes required.


Check out my hat I knit for my trip to Portland next week:

I just finished it and I plan to put a big pompom on top, even though I am not usually a pompom kind of girl.  This is a free pattern on Ravlery,  the baa-ble hat
and I used leftovers from other projects to knit it.  It was very quick. 

  See, the hat is knit with some of the same yarn as the sweater I am wearing today!

Happy 2016!

A brand New Year has arrived once again.  I know already that there are changes in store for this year and time will tell what we will make of those changes.

The first change is that 12 of my 17 alpacas are due to be loaded onto a trailer in just 3 days to make a trip to their new home in Tennessee.  We have had alpacas here on the farm since 1999, starting with only 3 and having over 50 for quite some time.  Over the last 3 years or so we have slowly reduced to less than 25, and then to 17 this past September.  I always said that 25 was kind of the magic number:  more than 25 was work, less than 25 was enjoyable.  It is gratifying to know that one of those first 3 alpacas to inhabit our farm will be one of the 5 remaining.  
  
Another big event for 2016 will be the wedding of my older son, Ian, to his partner of 7 years, Michelle.  The wedding will be in June in Oregon and I am looking forward to it.  In fact, I am flying to Portland in just under 2 weeks to spend some time with them and with younger son Sam/Zac/Satchmo who will be visiting Portland while the lodge at Yosemite is closed for 6 weeks.  I will get to hear about wedding plans and hopefully see the venue and meet some of Michelle's family.  

In late summer son Ian and his new wife will hopefully move from Portland to Corvalis OR  so Ian can finally begin the Forestry program at Oregon State.  He will have established his residency in Oregon by then, which he was denied this past year. 

So those are a few things on the agenda besides the usual happenings.  Tonight Grover and I start back to agility class.  We have been moved to a Wednesday night class at 8 pm, which means I will not get home until after 10 pm.  I am looking forward to getting back to class.  The weather has not been really conducive to practicing outside.  Our next trial is in mid February.

Mom was here for several days between Christmas and New Year's.  We made a trip up to Amish country together so I could take her to the Zinck's Fabric Outlet that Tari and I have been to a couple of times.  I think Mom was overwhelmed at the selection.  It was a lot of fun.

 



Our weather has been a typical roller coaster ride.  60's before Christmas and then two nights ago we were down to 5 degrees.  On Monday, when the dogs and I left the house for our walk, it looked like this:



The temperature was in the mid-20's and the sun was shining, but we had had snow squalls on and off all day.  

We did the loop up to the pond and by the time we left the pond, it was clouding up and starting to snow again.


By the time we got back down to the road, it looked like this:

And poor Rowdy looked like this:

I had to put my camera inside my pullover to keep it dry. 

Today, it was 9 degrees when I got up and the sun is shining brightly.  January in Ohio!

I made a few Christmas gifts this fall which I did not post due to their gift status, so here are some finished projects:

Socks for Mom

Socks for Jill

Table runners for Mom and Mary

That's about it for Christmas gift projects.  I am in the process of warping my rug loom for a couple of colorful alpaca rugs.    And I am almost done with the shawl I wrote about in my last post.  Hopefully I can finish it today.

In the meantime, I cast on a sweater that I am very excited about.  It will be a big cabled coat-like sweater and I am making it in some yarn I have wanted to use for some time and found a great sale on right before Christmas.  I may have bought enough for 2 sweaters in 2 colors.  But here is my progress on 
 Citadel

This will be the 3rd sweater I have knit by this designer.  I just love her patterns.  The shawl I plan to finish today is also by her.  I just purchased an ebook collection of new patterns by her, which has this sweater, the shawl and at least one other sweater I want to knit.  

The Authentic Collection, by Joji Locatelli 

So this and weaving rugs should keep me busy through the next couple of months until we get to maple syrup season.  We will have to wait and see what the weather brings us in the meantime.

2 Days Until Christmas and it is 60+ Degrees in Ohio

Some dogs have a hard life....not mine, though.  I wish they all had a comfy warm place to sleep.
 
It's true.  We are forecast to have highs near 70 in Ohio today.  I believe the old record was 62 degrees for this date back in 1957.  We had some rain the last couple of days and the overnight temperatures over the weekend were in the 20's, but now the forecast is showing highs in the 60's the next several days.  No white Christmas here.  I'm ok with that.  It does mean a lot of mud though, here on the farm.

Since my last post, I have traveled to Grand Rapids Michigan with my mother to visit our family there.  My cousin, who is 6 weeks older than my older son, and his wife had a baby in early December.  This is me with little Easton.  This is the first grandchild for my aunt, who is my mother's younger sister, and she is so happy to finally be a Nana.  I am happy for everyone.  It is wonderful to have another new baby in the family.  

The other big news, which is closer to home for me, is that I have a deposit check from a man who is buying 12 of my remaining 17 alpacas.  I have been wanting to make things simpler, especially since my sons live so far away, and this will definitely make things a little easier.  But is is so hard to think about having only 5 alpacas out there after having had them for almost 17 years.  The ones who are staying are Chiquita, 17 years old,  Peg and Bodhi who will both be 17 in the spring, Truffel, who doesn't belong to me and is getting up there in age and Lightning, our white male.  The buyer does not want a male.  So mostly seniors who deserve to stay here and be buried here.  The rest of the herd will be leaving for Tennessee in January.  This weekend, Sam and I need to microchip 8 of them and Monday the vet is coming to do health certificates to make them legal to be imported into Tennessee.  It is hard to say what might come along to live in our soon to be empty pastures.  I had planned to get some sheep, but with traveling to the west coast a couple times a year, spending time with my mom in western Ohio and going to agility trials, I think it will be easier to just buy lamb and wool as needed.  



 And speaking of trials, at our last trial, which was in November, Grover earned his Open Jumpers title.  I am very pleased to say that at our most recent trial this past weekend, Grover Q'd both days in Excellent  Jumpers!  He got 2nd place on Saturday and 1st place (only 20" ex dog who Q'd) on Sunday.  I was thrilled at his Q on Saturday and amazed when we did it again on Sunday.  So he needs 1 more Excellent Jumpers Q to move up to the Masters level.  Our standard runs, while respectable, were not good enough to Q (weave pole issues again).  I was not UNhappy with those runs, but we can do better.  We have only 1 Q so far in Excellent Standard, so need 2 more qualifying runs to move up to Masters in that.  Our next trial is mid-February.  We will start back to class in January.  
 




Look what I got in the mail last week.  33 pounds of rug yarn in 4 different colors.  This should keep me busy weaving rugs for months to come.  And I still have a lot of fiber in storage that can become more rug yarn.  I am planning a new rug warp and may start to count it out today.

Last post I mentioned waiting for parts for my loom.  They arrived shortly thereafter and I was able to start (and finish) my weaving project.  Here it is on the loom.  It has since been removed, but needs to be washed and hemmed.  More photos next post.  I am very pleased with this project.

My shawl is coming along nicely.  I am now using the second color and need to finish a large mesh panel with it before I move on to color number 3.  Considering I really did not like the colors of either of these 2 yarns, I think they work well together and I just love how this is coming out.  


Yesterday the dogs and I walked to the beaver pond in the afternoon.  After 2 days of rain, it is quite full.  There is plenty of sign of beaver activity, but no sightings of beavers.  

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!