Leif, will be much missed

I will miss my friend and companion, Leif, very much.

He was my first dog, and the bestest.

Leif died on sunday. I hope he knows how much we loved him.

Doggie

Aka Leif the Licky.

Old Year, New Year

Big snowstorm at the end of December! It's all gone now with a rainy warm spell this past week. Who knows what happens next?



The New Year brought a brief burst of new energy. I cleaned up my stash. This is just the downstairs part of it - either yarn I theoretically will be crocheting with shortly, or fiber to spin. I've been spinning a great deal lately, because I've been taking lessons in wheel spinning.

I know how to knit, but I prefer to crochet. :)



Never fear, dear drop spindle, I won't ignore you for too long. Although the wheel is kinder to my shoulder. Has anyone else had "spinner's shoulder" with the drop spindle?



Neil took a new job at the beginning of December. His old one was killing him. We decorated his new office over the holidays. He's flying off to California later this month for a few days on the company's dime. I'm. not. jealous. at. all.



Neil gave me this Tigger doll for Christmas - it bounces and talks when you press it's tail. The dog hates it, but I'm still getting a giggle out of it. :)

Karen

DARC weekend

The Dark Ages Recreation Company is a group of friends who recreate the Viking Era, sometimes for money, and sometimes for research, and sometimes just for fun.

This weekend was fun. :)

Darrell and the boys were doing The Smelt. The big one of the year. Academics and Museum people and professional blacksmiths were invited to watch.

And I hardly saw any of it. :) Finally.

It's been getting on my nerves because it seems to have taken over the life of the group. So this weekend, I did something about it.

I pushed. I suggested that the rest of the group might like to set up an encampment on the other side of the property, and do some of that other stuff about the Viking Era that we like.

I warped a loom (or started to until the yarn knotted crazily).

Bera and Kadja cooked.

Rig worked on his soapstone bowl.

Stevegrimr (it's not his right name in either time period, but it's how I know him) was carving bone, and later cherry.

Neil and I slept in our viking bed, in our viking tent, with a million sheepskins piled on the bed because it was frigging cold at night.

We sat around the campfire at night with the blacksmiths and academics and friends and ate of the the wonderful food that Bera and Kadja cooked and talked and laughed.

I have so missed that community thing. I am full now, and happy, and I want more of it! :)

In the garden today:
I took the day off to unpack and do laundry and get my darned peppers planted.

So far....I've done some mulching (mostly because I had to empty the wheelbarrow to use it), and weeding.

Deadheaded the irises and have kept the dead flowers aside to perhaps use in a dye bath.

Weeded more.

Threw the ball for the puppy.

Planted some of the peppers, and one poor lonely tomato that I had thought was going to die but didn't.

Dug up some overcrowded tulips.

Did some dishes and laundry, and I'm still working on the yarn mess I made!

Threw the ball for the puppy. He's tired now, he must be happy and content as well. But no doubt, he's dreaming of more balls as well. :)

Pictures in a day or two.

Cheers, Karen

picture fest to come! and allergies

I've been sick again. I think it's my allergies playing havoc with my sinuses.

In 2003, when I was last tested for allergies, the results said I was allergic to cats, like my pretty Ginger, seen here being unhappy about being indoors while I am out...


...and on a lesser scale, to dogs, like the bundle of energy friend that is Leif the Licky.


In the last 3 years since that allergy testing, I've been having this growing passion for... growing things. Gardening. I think I may be becoming seasonally allergic as well. I'll find out on May 16, when I have an appointment with the allergist for re-testing.

Anyway, since I was home from work yesterday with a raw throat and massive congestion, I wandered around taking nearly a hundred shots of the gardens and house. In between taking out what feels like hundreds of dandelions, the hard way, before they start to self-seed. And just as many mini maple trees, just because.

Instead of my usual post once a week or more with a ton of pictures, I'm going to try to post 2 or 3 new pictures every day for the next couple of weeks... so hang on.

Here we see apricot blooms closeup, from a few days ago....



And in perspective...



And yesterday...the blooms are going away, while the leaves are coming out.



Now, I'd like to say that soon we'll have apricots growing, but sadly that isn't true. I think this is one of those fruit trees that need a partner tree to cross-pollinate with, and we have only one of them. This is a tree that we inherited from the previous home owners and they either didn't know that, or just wanted the tree for it's Pretty factor. It's not a big deal, since apricots aren't high on my list of fruits.

Karen

my how time flies...

A week has gone flying by since my last post!

I started an elm bark dye bath two saturdays ago by soaking the elm bark. Colour is supposed to be in the pink/coral range. It's supposed to be finished by simmering for an hour and adding the wool, and simmering for another another. So... I stuck it on the stove last night and simmered it, and put a test strip in...and an hour later - nothing. No colour change at all.

For the moment, I've given up. Took the pot off the stove and back into a corner to soak some more. Any ideas?

Anti-V mentioned to me in email that perhaps I need to be soaking it in alcohol. Although the recipe I'm using is from Jenny Dean's _Wild Colour_ and she didn't mention alcohol. All the other recipes have worked so far, I'm surprised that this one hasn't.

Any clues?

----------

I've been browsing through all the images that I've put up on the web, and quite a few of them have never made it to the blog. So here's a couple more to amuse you.


Still blooming now in our garden, I'm not sure of this one's name, except that it's an aster of some variety.


This is Ginger, being weird, and sticking her head up between the coffee table and the couch. She's returned to her normal, healthy old-lady ways after a bout with fatty liver this summer.


This is Leif, or or in this position, sometimes known as "Belly Boy". This weekend, we took him up to Neil's Mum's house, where he got to spend time with Pogo and Shelley. Now, Shelley's been spayed, but Pogo hasn't yet, being very young. Pogo has apparently gone into heat, and it was amusing watching Leif and Pogo try to get together. Leif's been neutered for so long, I'm surprised he still knew what to attempt to do.

--------------

Also, I bought 3 'pie pumpkins' with an eye to making pumpkin pie in the next few days, right from scratch. There's a recipe in the Joy of Cooking. Wish me luck, and feel free to send other recipes my way.

Karen

gardening is hard work!

I took the day off yesterday to work in my garden. Neil got on a train at 6:30am to go to Toronto for a conference. Since I wanted the car for the day, I had to drop him off there. At that ungodly hour of the morning, on a day off.

But the good news is, that I had another bag of forget-me-nots ready for the garbage pick-up before 8:30am.

Don't get me wrong, they are a beautiful, intense little blue flower in full bloom. But as a species, they are also extremely invasive, and prolific little pains in the ass that when out of flower, can completely choke the life out of a garden. Sometimes gardening is about making hard choices and being mean to otherwise pretty little things.

Speaking of obnoxiously invasive species of plants... I bought some woad at my day trip to Richters. I understand it's invasive and persistent to the point of being declared a noxious weed (illegal to grow) in some parts of North America. But it's history as a source of blue dye that needs to be fermented in stale urine (for the ammonia) just can't be beat. :) So I could be pulling my hair out in a few years over it's invasion of my garden, but we'll see. In the meantime, I should get a few interesting dye baths out of it - stay tuned.

Anyway, back to the day. I also dug up the remaining concrete porch support but had to wait for the Man to return from Toronto in the evening to lift it.

I also dug up all the crocuses from their current location - the plan there is to relocate randomly throughout the yard, add to the front garden, and give away to friends.

And edged all of one of the new garden spaces, and the veggie garden.

In between throwing the ball a billion and one times for the dog. I swear that creature was on some kind of Energizer-bunny battery....he just kept going and going. The routine went something like this - throw the ball, put the shovel in the ground and heave, throw the ball, bend down to pick up the grass and bang it off, throw the ball, heave the grass in the wheelbarrow, throw the damned ball, start all over again, where banging the dirt off the underside of the grass was occassionally relieved by picking crocus bulbs out, throwing the ball, and heaving the bulbs into nearby bucket.

If it had been a stick that fascinated him, I might have gotten a break once in awhile for a bout of chewing on it.

Maybe that's why I'm falling asleep at my desk today - the ball throwing. Not the massive amounts of digging, mind you - it's the ball throwing that's done me in.

Karen

Tulips!

Spring has been springing out in my little part of the world and we finally have tulips! Okay, so we've already had daffodils and crocuses, but I like the tulips the best.



This yellow one is my favourite so far, but there was another one, not quite fully open yet that appears to be pink. I'm looking forward to seeing it tonight when we get home.

Also caught this pic of my dog, Leif, a couple of days ago. It's too silly not to share. :)



Karen

Garden fun!

Things the hubby and I achieved this weekend:

• We dug up one of the freaking huge cement posts that anchored the porch we destroyed two weeks ago.


• We lay down newspapers and mulch over some of the grass we want to kill to create new garden space. Neil says "yet more garden space for Karen's obsession".


• Neil began work on the shelving system for the shed.


• We more or less finished the dog house ("per the stupid ass SPCA regulations" says the man on the couch"). It'll need some insulation for winter but it's good for the summer.


• The dog house doubles as a potting bench. :)


• I trimmed the sage bush and parsley.


• Threw the ball a few million times for the puppy. :)


• Tried out the new digital camera we bought yesterday, but have yet to upload the pictures.

Now all I need to do is finish my taxes for the year.

Karen