I'm a little behind on the reporting

Last weekend, da hubby....


and his friend, Darrell (who writes Hammered Out Bits) ...


....went scuba-diving.


Vandy (who is sometimes known as Anti-V) and I alternated being watching the bubbles, enjoying the pleasant weather, taking pictures, sewing and spinning. Sorry, no pics of us enjoying our activities.

Although, at dinner afterwards, Neil decided to play with my hair.


At home in the garden:

This spotted lilly is finally blooming. Of course I don't know it's exact name. :)


This feverfew is still blooming, while it's neighbouring feverfew stopped blooming a few weeks ago. My garden is very strange this year.


This is just a small part of the harvest to date. The tomatoes have been quite prolific this year.


Karen

MichFest 2006

Well. I went back to the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival for the first time in 11 years. The last one I attended was the 20th anniversary fest, and this was the 31st.



Ya know how everyone says 'you can't go home again'?

Well, what if you do go home and everything is exactly as you remember it, but you find out that you've changed?

I found my way to my campsite, the same darned area I've always had, and it was waiting for me. 11 years later. And there were even other Canadians nearby. :)

I love that spot in the woods.



Over the next two days, I discovered that I'm not ageing as well as I'd like. My friend Janet is 12 years older, and I think she handled the physicality of camping better then I did. I need to take care of my body better.

I discovered that I really don't have as much patience as I might have before, or the ability to shrug it off, or that I notice more and judge more quickly.

The Festival kitchen doesn't compost it's food waste? Like... say what? Okay, so when someone else mentioned this on the Festival bulletin boards, the enormority of the task got explained, and I kind of understand. But surely there must be other alternatives to simple landfilling.

Why did it feel like all 3000 women in attendance had to walk up and down the aisles all throughout the concerts without even pausing during the songs as the Festival etiquette requests? Why did so many use flash photography, which is also requested not to happen by the Festival etiquette?

Why were there so many women playing with glowsticks during the nightstage concert? More landfill, and not so happy chemicals in them to boot.

Why is the Trans issue still an issue, a dozen years later? Why can't transsexual women respect the Festival's preference to be for girls and women who were raised as women in the same skin they've always been in? It's just one little week of women-only space. If I wanted to spend the weekend with male energy, I'd have stayed home with my favourite source of it - the hubby. Is it so much to ask?

Why did so many women not show up for their workshifts? Workshifts build community, make the festival more accessible financially, and are fun to boot!

It seemed like.... it was one great big party, and the social consciousness has flown the coop.

It's probably just as well that I didn't go back for the 30th anniversary party last year. I'd had have been that much more annoyed, with more then twice the number of women partying themselves silly in the woods.



And yet.... still... somehow, I feel fulfilled. I took a nap on sunday afternoon, loving that quiet spot in the woods, surrounded by women's voices in the distance. The comedians were hilarious. I discovered some new music. Issa (the artist formerly known as Jane Siberry) was her usual wonderfully quirky self. And she certainly impressed the audience with her attire on stage. :)

And after a decade's intervention that at some point included a serious crash in self-confidence around driving - I didn't kill us on the way down, or the way back.



Karen

placeholder post

Hi all,

Here's a few images from last week to hold the place of a post while I sort out the trip to Michfest in my mind.

Lily of some sort...


Sunflower, planted late in the year and just getting started. I hope it's big and tall next year.


White coneflower.


Brown eyed susans and false sunflowers, mixed.


It's a liatrus of some sort.


Clearly, there's a theme here with regard to my style of gardening. While I try to remember to plant the tags next to the plants so I can remember what they are, that doesn't always happen. And I have a brain like a sieve with regards to remembering plant names all by myself.

My backup brain (aka the hubby) says "it's your garden" when he doesn't remember either.

Clearly, I'm not gardening for details.

Karen

Random Tuesday

First, we have our usual garden fare:

I think I need more then 2 cucumbers to start pickling. Perhaps next year, more cucumber plants.


But I've got more then enough echinacea, if I ever get off my butt and start to use herbs medicinally. But it won't be this year - I am way too busy.


One Local Summer, almost:
This morning, I was, quite unusually, ready before the hubby and staring at my tomatoes and wondering how to use them all this summer. The idea of a tomato sandwich appealed. So quick like a bunny, I threw together bread, fresh from Angie's Kitchen (just around the corner from me and sold at the farmer's market down the road) and tomatoes (from my own garden) with margarine and a wee tiny bit of salt.

It occurred to me while I was making it that this mostly fit the criteria for a local meal, but I got all fussy in the head and didn't go and take a picture of it. After all, the margarine and salt aren't local.

But having had no breakfast, and being completely without will power, I just ate it for morning break at work and it was.... wonderful! I'll have the bagel I bought for breakfast for a late lunch instead.

Tomorrow maybe, I won't be so fussy about qualifications and take a picture in the morning.

Michfest:
This weekend, a friend and I are off to the Michigan Womyns' Music Festival, aka MichFest, for short. I'm one part excited as all get out, one part nervous of the drive, one part wanting to stay home (I'm a Cancer, we're homebodies), and one part starting to get tense about not being properly packed yet.

Conflict is us: I'm also an Aries moon - cardinal fire, and cardinal water (Cancer). So much fun. Ya know, assuming I put much stock in astrology and all...

New Rovings:
Mmmm mmmm! My but Wellington Fibres does a good job. And very very decently priced as well! I just got the Shetland fleece that I picked up in June (check the archives, apparently I don't have individual post links set up) back from the Mill and the rovings are beautiful!

I got so excited by the price, even before seeing the results, that I took them all the other fleece in the house as well when I went to pick it up. One bag of mystery fleece, and several bags of Icelandic fleeces.

The question of the day is: should I take the new rovings and a drop spindle to the Festival, or not? My decade old memory of the Festival says that would put me firmly in the 'wyrd' category. That is, despite the stilts, prom dresses, sarongs, and various leather accroutements that are all pretty normal festigear...

Karen

phooey

They've finally stopped playing with our street, but it won't be recovered in black top until October or therabouts because they have to finish digging up the rest of the town first.

There's a hole in the front yard where the new water cut-off valve is.

The snowball bush that was in the way has been run over twice. The theory is that it (why do I want to say 'she'?) will recover.

There's a very large swath of dirt where the engineer dug up the back yard to determine what kind of septic system he'd recommend.

That's only the beginning of course, because we still have to have someone trench from the house to the new water pipes and connect us, and actually have the septic system done (as opposed to just research and recommendation). So there's no real point in reseeding the lawn at this point. It'll just get dug up again in a month.

It started raining in the middle of the night and hasn't stopped yet.

And I had NOTHING to wear this morning.

Thank the many gods for Diana, who is also having a bad day. Shared misery and all...

More thanks to the Universe that it is friday, after all, and I can sleep in tomorrow.

And that my first beefsteak tomato came off the vine this morning. :)

Karen

Garden again, and eating locally

This little scarlet flax flower is compliments of Canadian Tire, free with purchase. While I had absolutely no expectation that they'd grow, if someone's going to give me free seeds, I'll probably find a place to plant them. :)


I haven't the foggiest what flower is - do you? It certainly doesn't belong to the tag that's behind it.


Close-up of the lavendar. It's such a pretty plant, and smells so good. I've heard you can cook with it, but that seems so strange to me.


I've been trying to join Pocket Farm's One Local Summer challenge, but I'm having the darnedest time finding the local meat suppliers. And we're not vegetarians.

Today's brunch was french toast and sausages. Only the bread was reliably local. The eggs, milk, cinnamon and sausages were all bought at the big chain grocery store so who knows where they came from? It's kind of frustrating.

But I did just find this set of pages for Eating Locally in Waterloo Region, so stay tuned. All it takes is a little more effort, right?

It's possible that I'm overthinking this too much. We got some steaks from a nice store just around the corner and they said the butcher is over in Guelph, but they didn't know where the cow came from. Probably not that far away but still... if I don't know, how can I claim it's local?

And of course, I am being my usual nitpicky self - I want to do a 100km radius just because we use the metric system up here in Canada and I can't even think in miles anymore. Given that y'all are using 100 mile radius in the USA, I'm making it even harder on myself. If we do the math, 100 km is approximately 62.14 miles. See why I don't want to remember some odd number?

It shouldn't be that hard, I'm smack in the middle of Foodland Ontario.

Fussy, fussy girl....

Karen

This is our street on drugs.

In a manner of speaking, of course...

A few days ago, they dropped this big monster of a thing off in front of our house.


These are the pipes that will go in the hole the big monster will dig.


This is what the end of our driveway looked like when we came home tonight.


It dwarfs the house. Heck, it even dwarfs the motherwort.


*sigh* And this is only the beginning of it. We need to replace the septic tank this year too, and there's some .... co-ordination required.

I'm lucky 'though.... the hubby does project management for a living. He actually likes to sort out difficult details and schedule things. It's one of those personality quirks that I completely don't understand about him, and adore.

Karen

still more from the garden

Lavendar and feverfew. Well, one of the many plants that are apparently called feverfew. I wonder if this is the right variety used for brewing a strong tea that can help ease headaches.



Closeup of the flowering parts of Motherwort. It's a stunningly tall plant at close to 7 feet in height! It's been an absolute delight to watch grow this year.



One of the newest additions to the garden. I don't know about where you folks live, but in this area of Ontario, 99% of the daylilies are orange or yellow. Very overused. Neil wants to acquire every other colour just to be different.

On the Merely Annoying Front: the powers-that-be are digging up my street to lay new pipes for the formerly private well that serves 1/3rd of the this small town. It's a long story but it starts with another small community, criminal stupidity and government overreaction and ends with each of the affected households in town paying out a miserable amount of money to have the Regional government take over running the well.

*sigh* Almost as much fun is the neighbourhood's overreaction to the project at the last minute, and trying to stop it. But it's underway now, and surprisingly, all hell has not broken loose. Gosh.

Karen

more from the garden

One of the many many daisies in the garden.



This is my front window.



Roman chamomille, golden marguerite, and alkanet. Both alkanet and golden marguerite are dye plants, giving grey/purple and yellow respectively.



Daisies in the front garden.

Two cherry tomatoes have ripened and so far, I've eaten both while standing over them in the garden. :)

Karen

Tomatoes, redux

So... what are y'all planning on doing with your bounty of tomatoes?

Me, I'm boring. I'll probably sauce the whole darn bunch and freeze them for pasta sauce. We eat a lot of pasta in this household.

But I'm open to new ideas and recipes for other ways to use them. I can almost taste now....

Karen

tomatos!

These are where my tomatoes are at - how are yours doing?

*tap tap tap*

Are they ready yet?

Karen :)

Happy Canada Day!

Long overdue

Like a library book, I'm long overdue. At blogging, that is.

No excuses here, I've just been busy resembling a vegetable. The garden - she doesn't need me so much as she did when I started her. It's mostly perennials, and we've laid down some serious mulch to keep the weeds under control.

There's still some fussing and fiddling, some weeding, some planting, much learning.... but by and large, it's not so consuming this year. On weekends, I sometimes have trouble getting started, for all the lack of pressing garden needs.

I should make a list of all of the projects I have planned. Maybe that would make me feel needed again.

I have a hard time just enjoying things, apparently. Even the picture taking is getting kind of same-old...

Ah well, here's the latest crop of pics.



Maybe I just need to learn to appreciate subtlety. This lupin, for example, was new last year and produced just one small stalk. This year, it and it's neighbouring white lupin, are flowering in abundance. I liked them so much, I went out and bought two new ones - a red and a yellow. Had to put the new ones on the other side of the yard because I'm running out of space where these are.

Actually, that's quickly becoming a problem. Space. I'm starting to run out of space to put new things in.



These painted daisies were new last year as well and the plant almost didn't make it. In fact, I had so completely convinced myself that it died, that I couldn't remember what this was when it started flowering.

It's a rather stunning colour, isn't it?



The foxglove continues to impress me. I bought 3 new ones in different colours this spring. Last year's is flowering but the new ones aren't yet. It's a biennial.



This calendula is also new this year. It has a slightly different colouring then last year's calendula. Calendula is supposed to be an annual, but it looks like it self seeds quite hardily - at least the spot where I planted it last year is quite full of foliage that looks like it belongs to the calendula but no flowers there. Only on the new ones. Quite strange. I'm letting the space where it was planted last year be undisturbed so I can see what happens.



The tigerlillies are in trouble this year. They're out on the front of the fence that faces the sidewalk. It's a very small town, but apparently there are still troublemakers or the just plain thoughtless. Someone has been pulling them out and throwing them on the ground nearby.

Neil thinks it's a kid riding by on his bike, grabbing at it, and discarding.

I don't care who or what the excuse is - it's just plain rude. I want to put up a big sign in the post office and shame the offender into an apology. *sigh* I wish the world worked that way.

A few years ago, we found the shasta daises out on the fenceline were being cut. We decided it was a kid taking flowers to his mom. Also annoying, and they could readily have obtained permission if they had bothered to ask.... but cute. Not random destruction like the tiger lillies are suffering.



This is called a japanese wonderflower. We bought the bulbs from the big show - Canada Blooms - last year. We had six of them in flower last summer, and now we're apparently down to 2 plants. I just looked them up on the web, and apparently 'Japanese Wonderflower' is a madeup name to sell Mirabilis jalapa (aka 'Wonder of Peru' and 4 O'Clocks) at garden shows. Fascinating.

And it's not particularily frost hardy in zone 5. Which explains why we lost 4 of the 6. It's one of those tubers I'll have to dig up every year if I want it.

I hate that. It's contrary to my philosophy of gardening, in that if it can't survive in my zone, I don't want it. I tend to only buy annuals for window boxes, vegetables, and to fill in empty space where I've overcrowded it with spring bulbs that are gone too early (and I'm working on that problem).



St.John's Wort. I have two of them. One from an ordinary commercial nursery, and one from the famed Richter's Herbs. Strangely, it's the one from the ordinary commercial nursery that is giving these wonderful flowers. The one from Richter's is straggly, and not flowering at all. I'm assuming that the Richter's plant is a slightly different variety, and better for medicinal use, so I'm not ready to axe it just yet.

Even if I'm also not ready to use herbs medicinally yet myself. It's on the list of things to do with my life. In the meantime, I just plant them.

But it is puzzling.

Well, that's it. I guess I had more to say then I thought.

Cheerio,

Karen

It's my birthday!

And I'll blog when I have a free moment. Sorry folks!

Hope y'all had a happy solstice!

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

huh?

I'll admit that I wasn't listening very closely. We're encouraged to not engage in political discussion with the patrons while at the service desk. It too easily trips over polite lines and annoys the management.

But this one patron was talking about how frustrating her most recent essay on abortion has been for her. I was nodding politely and just signing out her books...

And she said "did you know that Ireland has a law against abortion but they allow women to leave the country to get abortions in England?"

I couldn't help it.

I replied with surprise. She seemed so annoyed. "So? it's not like they can stop all pregnant women at the border _just in case_ they might go and get an abortion."

"Damn straight they can!"

huh?

Wow, was that ever time to shut down the conversation.

"Your books are due in two weeks".

Do you think she seriously meant that all pregnant women should be locked inside their country for the duration of the pregnancy just in case they might have an abortion? What about all those pregnant women who actually want to be pregnant? And, how would they know? Is it time to start issuing pregnancy tests to women who want to take a weekend trip out of country?

I'm appalled.

Karen

Smelting Fleece, or Fleecing the Smelt, or...

Okay, so it's a weird title for a post, but it works for me.

We didn't actually do any smelting, just prep work for it. The actual smelt is still a week and a half away.

For those of you who haven't been following me around for the past year, or haven't wandered anally retentively through each and every last post in the archives... I have this weird hobby where I sometimes get to dress like a woman who might have lived in the Viking Era, and do things that Vikings might have done, and get paid for it too. When I'm not getting paid, I do research.

For me, that research has turned me into a fibre junkie. You know - natural dyeing, spinning, weaving, etc. No, I don't knit. *gasp* It just isn't my thing.

For Darrell and the boys, it's iron smelting. Originally, I think he wanted to smelt iron the way the Vikings would have done it. Lots of serious research on archaeological remains and all. Now I think he's just obsessed.

Not necessarily a bad thing. After all, I'm obsessed about fibre. Or fiber, depending on your country of origin or spelling preferences. Despite being fiercely Canadian in so many other spelling matters, I must confess - I prefer 'fiber'.

So where was I?

Right - last weekend. Last weekend, the hubby and I went up to the Wareham Forge homestead and the fun ensued.

First, let me talk about the weather - both days had temperatures in the 30's with a humidex that pushed it into the 40's. Now, let's set the scene on the ground. The Wareham Forge homestead has something called an esker running through it - picture lots and lots of annoying stones with a sprinkling of topsoil.

So Saturday morning dawns and we sit around drinking coffee, until the urge to move hits us - the boys go outside to sweat and toil, and Vandy and I make good our escape.

We went off to a little bit of fiber heaven - also known as a sheep farm.

We got there just as the last sheep was being shorn, so unfortunately I have no 'before' pictures.... just the naked sheep. Their eyes reflect strangely when a flash is used.



We did get there in time to watch the farm's doggie getting sheared...



And we met Elvis...



Don't ask. I don't know why this rooster was named after the king of rock and roll.

Vandy and I both came home with fleeces. Mine is from a sheep named Ely, and she's a moorit (reddish chocolate brown). Vandy's sheep was named Greta, who is a musket (light greyish-brown). Yup, that's right. Sheep grow themselves in colour. It's not all white.

Sorry, no pics of the fleece. I just wasn't thinking. If you want to see coloured sheep fleece, you can go back to February's archives and watch me playing with a black Icelandic fleece.

Anyway, I'm all keen to send my fleece off to a fiber mill to get turned into commercial roving. That experience with the black Icelandic was enough to teach me that I really just don't like the processing parts of preparing the fleece for spinning and that someone else with big modern machines can do it for me with much gratitude. See? This is where researching the Viking methods and the fiber junkie go their separate ways.

It's okay, it happens to the best of us. The key is to not pretend or deny that we're substituting a modern method. And to not use the modern method when the museum is paying you. It's an important detail.

Which brings me to the smelt preparations.

When we got back from the sheep farm, we were stunned (okay, I was - I'm not sure about Vandy) to see four large wooden posts sticking out of the ground near the pond. And the ground had been flattened, and railway ties added to make for a firm edge to the pond. That's the part that relates back to the obscene temperatures and the rock infested ground. It was the beginning of this....



.... which actually got roofed the next day. Imagine doing all the physical labour involved to dig out holes for the posts, and carving the riverbank with that heat, and rocks a'plenty. I would have played the girl card if I'd been there.

The next day 'though, I did help out...



... by mixing up the clay cobb with Selena, so that Kevin (the bent over guy) could make the smelter itself. Kevin took our cobb in handfuls and deposited them between two metal forms ....



... and then Ken took a big stick and tamped it all down nice and tight.



Now of course, the Vikings wouldn't have had nice flat metal sheets to help make a smelter, or newspaper so the clay releases cleanly. But that's some of those modern methods that make our life easier thing that we don't pretend about.

The guys who've done the research theorize that the Vikings _might_ have used wooden forms to make the smelter and then just burned them down around the smelter since the wood will burn at a lower temperature then the clay. There's no archaeological evidence about the _method_ of building a smelter. There's very little archaeological evidence about how it was _used_ in this era.

That's where we get the concept of experimental archaeology. Take what we do know, and try to make it work.

But I digress.... here's Kevin putting the finishing touches on the smelter building.



Darrell's got some good shots in his temp folder, taken the day after we all left.

There'll be all kinds of pictures and words about this most recent project on the DARC website eventually, in the Iron section. Neil's slower to write those up then the bloggers amongst us are.

*sigh* Now, I'm doing it. I'm actually getting quite tired of the way the group is getting taken over by the iron smelting, but here I am blathering on way more about it then the fiber stuff, and showing y'all lots of pics.

So.... anyway, when we got home from that excitement there were a few more flowers out in the garden. Here's one to tide us all over til the next post. It's the very last tulip picture of the year.



Karen

Two weekends behind

Sorry, sorry... let me catch up.

The 20/21/22 weekend was the first long weekend of the summer in Canada, celebrating Queen Victoria's birthday. We're weird that way about the Royalty in Canada.

On saturday, we went to the first camping SCA event of the year. Neil and I just dropped in for a day to teach some Arts and Sciences classes and I got a tad fried by the sun.

Nina asked me to help her out with a class on hedge-row dyeing. I brought some madder for one dyepot....


...and we picked dandelions for the other dyepot.


After a few hours of simmering on the fire, while the people simmered in the sun, we felt like we weren't really getting very much colour out of either pot. Neither of us had remembered to bring a mordant to add to the pots.

So I suggested to Nina, who was camping that weekend, that she keep the materials in the pots overnight and take it out in the morning. I'd hoped the longer time in would give the dyebath more time to leach metal from pots - one copper and one alum.

I've seen the madder results, but not the dandelion ones yet. I'll have to take pictures of both soon.

This most recent weekend, we went up to the Wareham Forge homestead to visit our friends, Darrell and Vandy.

Darrell's goal: enlist big, smelly menfolk to build a semi-permanent smelter and smelter cover in his backyard.

Karen and Vandy's goal: escape from the boys, and go visit some pretty shetland sheep being sheared. Come home with fleece for dyeing, spinning and weaving.

Both goals were accomplished. Details in the next post, when the pictures are ready. They're off the camera, but not yet disseminated, thumbnailed, or put up on the web. Soon, I hope.

Karen

Okay, so what now?

I've been having a difficult couple of months with the sinuses, and I'm at the maintenance level of the allergy shots. Things are supposed to get better when you get to the maintenance level, not worse.

Cats and dogs, btw. And as you know, I have one of each.

So... I went back to the allergist recently to be retested. I thought perhaps after a few years of a growing gardening hobby, that I might be becoming seasonally allergic.

The results?

Nadda. Not a damn thing. Not even the cat and dog allergy that I'd previously been diagnosed with.

So...I guess that's a good thing. That the previous allergies are dying back. That I haven't developed new ones.

But I gotta ask (and I did, believe me) - what the heck is with my sinuses then?

Tests to follow.

The allergist thinks it's anatomical - effectively a deviated septum. I think I've got a sinus infection. A coworker thinks my voice sometimes sounds like I have asthma.

If it's a sinus infection, I'm never ever going to trust my GP again. I've brought it up in the past, and she asked me a few diagnostic questions. Apparently, I didn't give the right answers so she blew it off as an idea. Without any tests, or even physical examination.

Funny thing is... I had to stop taking antihistamines a week before the retest, and ...I've been feeling better without them. Strange, huh?

Anyway, in the garden today we have - alpine brain coral. Not it's real name, I don't even remember it's real name except that it's an alpine something.


Drawf Irises


Japanese Quince


And because I still completely adore this flower, another view of the pink and white tulip. :)


Karen

conflict of interest

Honestly, I can't decide whether to be completely bummed out that West Wing is now... done. over. finito. Forever. What can possibly come close to it?

Or just plain... tickled pink.



This is absolutely, by far, my favourite picture this year.

Karen