Preparing

This past week, I did a little tour around my house and collected samples that I'll use for teaching my class on how to make and use recycled yarns.  It was a good opportunity to give beloved household items a good wash and airing!

Remember, if you're interested in taking this class on Friday at the Manitoba Fibre Festival, please register here!

These are only some of my supplies, but a short summary...the baskets.  These knitted baskets were taken directly out of household use.  The flowered one is used to hold medicines and odds and ends on a high up shelf in a kids' bedroom.  The white one sits in a hallway, usually filled with dog toys.

(We are still helping Sadie the dog realize that she can also return toys to this bin as well as distribute them around the house!)
This braided rug usually lives in the guest room.  It is made entirely of old clothing and is aging very well.  I recognized most of the clothing from around 1995-7 or so.  I made this rug for our first home in Durham, North Carolina, around the time we got married.

I wove this rag rug on a floor loom for an outdoor exhibit at the Forks in 2010, I think.  When it came home (a little worse for wear), I washed it, it cleaned up nicely and it became a rug in my guest bathroom.

Part of the reason it was easy to gather all this?  The professor and my kids have been working to paint our guest room recently.  It was an ugly brown color...we inherited it this from the last owner.  When we had our house insulated in June, the workers decided they could not insulate the house on the third floor from the outside.  (too high up, too hard to drill into the stucco to shoot the insulation in the walls.)  So, they drilled inside, and we've had a lot of chaos in cleaning up from this.  Because of the big bore holes, it was a good time to repaint...and we chose a cheery pistachio green shade.  The guest room is mostly reassembled now and looks so much better.  I feel relieved every time I see the new color!

Last but not least, I had an article come out recently in the Vancouver Jewish Independent about the start of the new school year and what we share when trying to connect with others.
That's the news from here!

Taking a rest

Spring has sprung here. We've seen our first flowers (crocuses and another blue flower that we're not sure of--the flora and fauna are all different here from what we know) The professor tested out his Manitoba butterfly identification skills today on a long walk with me--we saw one that he said was a Compton Tortoiseshell. By way of comparison, he mentioned that according to the historic records of butterfly spotting in Kentucky that he'd studied, someone saw a Compton Tortoiseshell there and it was very rare. Spotted only once in the recorded Kentucky history. So, we're learning about new moths and butterflies, too!

The dogs have "livened up" as is their practice come spring. They spend a good part of every afternoon and evening roughhousing as if there is no tomorrow. When we put them out in our small fenced yard, they have to be watched every second. Every new smell and noise riles them up. Their current research project involves excavating under the foundation of our garden shed (an entirely satisfactory shed which we'd prefer not to have undermined) because something lives under there. I'm not sure what it is, exactly, but I did see a gray furry bottom-bigger than a mouse or squirrel scoot faster than lightning when I let the dogs out one time. It might be a cat that shouldn't be in our fenced yard, but it might also be something a bit more wild. Gopher, perhaps? We've no idea. We're busy defending the shed!

Also, our schedules are busy, too. The professor is off on a research collecting trip for a few days this week; I just dropped him off at the airport. I've got several teaching and other social commitments too, and then at the very end of April, we're off to see family on a whirlwind trip on the U.S. east coast.

So, all that said, I am really enjoying every single sunny moment when I get to work quietly by myself! I just gave away some tickets to a special movie showing because frankly, the idea of sitting at home on my own, weaving or spinning or knitting and listening to my audio book--well, it sounded like pure delight. Every bit of sunny silence is fabulous. I even managed to nap yesterday through a neighbor's yardwork--with chainsaw-- after I came home from being in charge of family service at synagogue. I needed that nap!

In honor of that heaven--a nap on a sunny warm afternoon--I managed to catch my whirling dervishes at rest. When I come up the stairs to the second floor, I often see Sally. She's staked out my bed and gosh she's enjoying it! (She especially enjoys the wool counterpanes we leave on there so the bedding isn't quite so, umm, doglicious when we go to sleep.) She sometimes will even share space with me. If you look carefully at that first photo, you can see a white basket in the hallway, full of dog toys. Yup--that's the one! If you've seen a copy of Knit Green, you'll know more about that basket! It's now decommissioned and spends its days holding onto very important dog toys.

Harry is often guarding the first floor--here he is in the front hall, keeping the living room, dining room, and staircase upstairs safe from invaders.

Happy spring! I hope you get the chance for both long walks with dogs in the sunshine and... a bit of rest afterwards.

Where I've been...

This past weekend, I taught at a knitting retreat held at the Delta Marsh Field Station. This is right on the edge of Lake Winnipeg, and it was my first real road trip outside of Winnipeg since we moved here. The field station is actually linked to my husband's department, and I've never felt so lucky to be associated with biologists. The place is gorgeous and I hope I'll get to go back! (it's rented out to other groups as well, so maybe I'll go back with these knitters, too...)

I got to talk about Knit Green and show off some of the projects from the book for the first time. It's a real relief to share these things after keeping these secrets for all this time! The Spire Smock (blocking photo, above) was a big hit and fit my friend Christine perfectly. Many people checked the Waves napkins...this is a prototype for the one in the book. (I used different yarns for the one in the book.)

I also brought this basket, which is featured on the cover of the book. That was fun! Everyone really enjoyed getting to touch the projects as they actually appeared in print.

I'll keep introducing you to these projects and telling you more about them as time passes. In the meanwhile...


I had a conversation with my dad a few days ago about our fireplaces. We have two fireplaces that were originally built to be coal burning. Now they are used for wood instead. Although it is easy to purchase wood for having a fire, it is nothing like what you might expect if you live on the east coast of North America. There are no dead trees in the backyard, just waiting to go into one's woodpile! There's not even a lot of space in many people's yards for a woodpile here. While I live in the city, I thought I'd offer a tour of the prairie as I drove home from Delta Marsh. (no photos of the marsh itself, there's no good place to pull off the road to shoot a photo!)

This is the hunting lodge that was converted into part of the biological field station. It's right alongside the lake, so there are lots of trees here. The lake has some sandy bits, some rocky shore, and a lot of drift wood. Cold weather was coming, so there was a big breeze off the lake and that made waves.

The drive from the field station to the city is about 70 miles or so and an hour and a half. It takes some time to drive on the gravel roads, which require lower speed limits.

I stopped along the side of the road from the field station to take photos of the prairie.

This is what the road looked like, it's built a tiny bit above the actual landscape. These fields were being used for hay; other fields had crops which were already harvested or being harvested. The combines used in field work can shoot great clouds of dust and dirt in the air if the soil is dry--you can see these clouds for miles. It looked a bit like a fire until you got close.

This is what one of the drier fields looked like--there are great shades of color from black earth to dark green to hay color. There are also fields of sunflowers, canola, flax, hemp, and grain.

The farms and field edges often have trees planted as wind breaks. You can tell that the trees were planted there because they are all in straight lines or very intentional clumps! (Trees will seed themselves, but there aren't a lot of forested areas here.)


The yellow car is mine--I was trying to shoot all the angles I could see without blowing away. It was a breezy day.

When I got onto the Trans-Canada highway, speeds increased. Even so, there wasn't a lot of traffic on a Sunday afternoon. So, I was able to look at the window and noticed a train crossing the prairie. If you click on this photo, you'll see how long this freight train is...longer than the photo! I shot the photo through my windshield, while driving home.

On a sunny day, the sky is blue and the clouds skid by...the horizon lasts forever and there is such an open beauty to the landscape! While the city looks like, well, a city--you can drive out just a few miles and see the prairie come back into control again.

More about knitting and a story about our (great big) small world in the next post!