Summer on the move

It turns out that moving twins, a dog, and a household about a mile is a huge undertaking.  About 13 years ago, I documented our move to Canada on this blog, and I wrote a lot about it.  It involved a continent's drive, two bird dogs, a lot of boxes and plants, a moving van, my professor and me.  I've since learned that moves with tweens can be, umm, more complicated than that one.

The short story behind this is that our beautiful old house, featured in many blog posts, got damaged.  This issue continued to cause a lot of friction for us, along with a dead tree hanging over our power lines, increased traffic nearby and a lot of construction around where we were living.  It seemed like we needed to find somewhere else to live.  During the pandemic, this was no small thing.  It took us almost a year to accomplish this.  How we ended up with our "new" old house is a story for another day.  This story is a little about the summer...

It has involved moving things slowly, one at a time.  Here's my Quebec Production wheel, and the two customers who helped me move it from the third floor of one house to the third floor of the other. (Note, I still have two great wheels left to move!)

Meanwhile, my parents visited and my mom helped enormously by hemming curtains with twins. (Both twins went to a sewing camp for part of the summer and were very keen.)  Just beyond this photo were boxes, a refrigerator and a dishwasher, appliances for our as-yet-unrenovated kitchen.  Partly demolished, in fact.

Here's our old house, which is now for sale.  I will really miss things about this house, including the front porch.

However, our new backyard is quiet at night, and I can sit, watch the dog wander the yard, and there's little to no noise or light pollution - and yes, it is right in the middle of the city.  That bright light in the photo is the moon rising.

The inside of the house still looks like this though.  Our furniture was used to stage our old house, but it's being moved to the new house soon.  In the meanwhile...things are a bit hard to put away.  Necessary renovations are still happening as we have one lovely working bathroom (nothing else is functional yet) and a kitchen that needs a lot of work.  Note tiles at the front of this photo.

Despite all this transition, I tried to find space every day to do something fun with kids and dog, too.  This was an amazing art exhibit we 'toured' - it is painted on fences and garage doors in a backlane in Wolseley.  We were able to walk there from our new house.  It was a long walk on a hot day, but well worth it.

There's a lot more to this story, but now, kids are back at school and we adults are still trying to make order out of chaos.  (Sometimes the blog silence is because I am silently screaming in the background?!)

Faster by the day

 There's an old phrase floating around that says something like:
Spinning on a spinning wheel is faster by the hour.  Spindling is faster by the day.  This has gone through my head repeatedly since having kids.  While I was gluing knitting needles and shooting other photos, I hung up some yarn to dry on my (dirty) porch.  First, I hung up an experiment I'd done.



Last summer, I bought some Clun Forest roving from Custom Woollen Mills in Alberta.  It is a down breed, bouncy, and hard to felt.  Perfect for boy mitts.  I spun it up in two ways.  One was a slightly over twisted chunky single ply.  The other, which took much longer, was a skinny single that I plied into a 2 ply.  It's well balanced and the skein looks much nicer.  I will continue onward with this experiment and knit both into mitts.  My best guess is that even though the 2 ply looks nicer and would perhaps last longer, the chunky single will save a lot of time.  My boys don't often lose their mitts, but they do insist on growing, so they outgrow them, but not before they get dirty repeatedly, felted, and well-worn.  Sometimes the end game is about efficiency and not perfection.

The second batch of yarn was ALL spindle spun.  I spun and plied it all on the spindle.  Much of it was spun and plied right on the same porch, as I watched kids.  I have no idea how long I spent on this.  I recently dug around in my spinning basket, noticed a had a lot of odd single balls of spindle spun yarn, and plied them.  That added up and amounted to a lot of yarn!

I have no idea what these skeins will be one day.  What matters here is volume- I was actually productive during those hours on the porch. The kids' wheelbarrow (well-used in 'weeding' play) caught their drips as they dried.

 I often feel stymied by the number of interruptions, illnesses, and other details I manage...it's not a professional 40 hour work week or lifestyle.  However, I recently applied to something and realized that I'd had 60 articles published in the last year.  Sixty!  (some were reprints, but that is ok) So, just like that water dripping, a little at a time does add up after a while!  So...spin on!  (or write on?!)

Gray February

Most exciting things first:
This weekend I submitted an opinion piece to the CBC and it went live less than a day later:
Why Manitoba needs a more diverse teaching force

I'd want to point out, of course, that good teaching is crucial, but it is only one part of this assessment; we have no idea if Manitoba's students' test scores are representative of their skills, if the tests done were biased, on and on.  There are a lot of unanswered variables in social science, but, well, this is only one essay about the U of Manitoba's faculty of Education's new diversity admissions policy.
You can't say all that in less than 1000 words. :)

The best part of it all, I felt, was reading the (as usual) mostly knucklehead comments, which sort of illustrate why a diverse, effective teaching force is a good thing. (in aiding tolerance, for instance, which was seriously lacking in some comments) Then there was one absolutely erudite comment about the certification standards from a really qualified Manitoba teacher, educated in Britain.  That made my week.

Other things that are making my week... We have completed our first weaving, with a lot of Mommy help.  These were done on picture frames, using loopers cut from wool socks with holes in them.  The warp was cut up felted sweater strips, leftover from all the wool soakers I made for cloth diapering.

We've had perhaps another 2 or three more preschooler viruses since the last time I posted...digestive issues, colds, coughs...; to be honest, I've lost track.  I have become remarkably zen about the whole thing.  When someone is too sick for preschool, or needs to come home, I take a deep breath, drop all my plans...and just resign myself to returning to the couch with whoever needs me.  I've not done a lot of things this winter.  Oh well.  The house is pretty mucky, too.  I'm thinking of trying to clean up this week, since Didi (my mom, twins' grandma) is coming to visit, but I don't have high expectations.  It doesn't help to expect too much, cause then I feel upset with myself when things are back to basics all over again.
Perhaps because of the great retirement sale at Shuttleworks or maybe just because I needed a pick-me-up, I decided to go crazy and order the bulky flyer set ups for both my Schacht Matchless spinning wheel and my Majacraft Little Gem.  Maybe it was my Valentine's Day gift to myself? This is, I think, my first big wheel-related purchase in maybe 8 years.  It's been a bit of adjustment to figure out how the new things work, but it's exciting, too.  I see very big skeins of handspun in my future...someday!

Before I switched the flyers on the Majacraft, I amazed this kid, home sick, by whipping the wheel out of its carrying case and setting it up so he could check it out.  He was stunned; I don't think he had ever seen how it folded it up before.  He got to treadle and do some wool teasing, which he enjoyed.  (fluffing up locks of wool into clouds for spinning.)  I was rewarded for all this with a seriously firm admonition to "Clean up, Mommy, your office is very messy."  He then offered helpful hints.  Great.  Thanks, kid.

 Finally, I am planning to relaunch some older patterns and reknit some too, this year.  I am also working on a sweater for myself, the third time I am reknitting the Cuddle Coat.  Honestly, this sweater design has a curse, it has never had a decent photo of it.  However, the first one (in my little headshot, that is #1, with Harry the dog) is so worn that I have to mend it, the second one was trashed after it was absolutely worn to pieces, and here's the third.  Yup.  That is some boring looking gray/brown knitting!  If you click on it though, you may see the texture, little bits of color, and softness of the yarn.  Feels great.  Looks just like?  February.

In honor of that....stretch of time, cold, dirty snow, cloudy February, I have a brief sale on Ravelry:
20% off all my designs on Ravelry, through the end of February, with the coupon code....you guessed it:
February

Here's some more gray-brown in case you missed it or it happens to be sunny in your neck of the woods.... :)

Progress

I've been meaning to post.  However, a few things got in the way.  First, I'd be crazy not to admit that this winter (the worst since 1898) in Winnipeg really got me down.  We decided to travel east to see family in the USA for Passover, and that was a good decision.  Family visits are complicated and travelling with 2.5 year old twins internationally is not a great thing to anticipate...but just getting to see family...and all those flowers, all that grass, all those playgrounds and long walks outside made the effort worth it.

In truth, the plane rides were smooth and if you have to go across the continent on two flights each way, we somehow found the best  combination of flights to Virginia.  I figured out (mostly) what to pack.  The only person with a deficit--only two weather-appropriate pairs of pants--was me.  Luckily, we made good use of my parents' washer and dryer.

Right before I left, I finished two sweaters.  One is for the boys (the striped lett-lopi from a previous post) and I don't yet have a photo of it in action.  My mom was kind enough to sew a zipper in, and away we went out to play in it!

The second sweater was for me.  This one was amazing to contemplate, so I had to try it.  A  whole sweater from Bulky Lopi (very thick, lightweight singles yarn) on size 17 needles.  I made Nu but skipped the turtleneck and knit it a little differently, with a slight A-line so it would not be too tight.  It came out so well that I am wearing it today.  This might seem bizarre to those in warmer climes but we had sloppy snow this morning here and dark clouds; it ain't all flowers here yet.

It was hard to catch a whole body photo of it, so here is a close up of the enormous stitches and a poor snapshot of the sweater as I am wearing it.  One advantage to long term tummy trouble (finally, a diagnosis, for those who are medically inclined, you can click here) is that my sweaters fit better now.  That is, everything hangs loosely on me.  I've lost some weight in a way I did not intend to, but things seem to be stabilizing, I hope.

Another bit of progress:  When the boys were very small, many of my 5 spinning wheels stayed just where they lived before the twins were born.  Over time, we moved things to fit more toys, play pens, etc.   Also, the only time I managed to spin was while wearing one baby in a sling and the other boy was asleep or with another adult.  This was a rare occurrence.  As they became more mobile, I faced reality and moved all the spinning wheels to my office space, far away from daily activity.  One wheel remained in my bedroom, but it got dusty and dirty from lack of use.  In fact, it had been months since I spun on a wheel.  I used my trusty spindles in the basement playroom every so often, and that was it.

Both boys like to play at spinning and one "knitting" attempt involved an entire skein of yarn and many of the toys in the play room.  We had to cut off that yarn to clean up after they went to sleep!  Anyway, lately, both boys have asked me to put a spinning wheel into the playroom so "Mommy can spin on a spinning wheel" again.  They have been entranced by a Curious George episode with spinning in it, and I am thrilled.  Maybe the novelty will work, I don't know, but today I moved one wheel back to the playroom where I can use it again while they race cars and build block towers.  We'll see what happens...but it might be a small step towards getting some of my old life back.  :)

Manitoba Fibre Festival & A Spinning Class

I may have mentioned before that I've been working with a friend to help organize a fibre festival here in Manitoba.  Well, actually, my friend, Margaret Brook, has done the lion's share (or is that ram's share?) of the work.  I have worked behind the scenes, making suggestions, talking up people at the farmer's market, printing flyers, and trying to support my friend as she does the heavy lifting.  I am so excited and pleased that Winnipeggers will now have a chance to make connections right in town with local fibre producers and to learn, buy, and gather to discuss all things fibre!

Of course, if you live in North Dakota, or South Dakota, or in Ontario or Saskatchewan, this might also be the festival for you...we'd love to have you!

I am also teaching an informal spinning class at the festival.  I believe there are still spaces left!  Here is the description:

 "Ask a spinner!" 

Instructor: Joanne Seiff
Spinning is a solitary activity; lots of questions can pop up on your own. Many of us experiment or research by ourselves, but sometimes it is good to talk out solutions with your peers. Join Joanne Seiff, longtime spinner, fibre arts writer and educator, as she facilitates a question and answer learning session covering anything to do with spinning. Bring your own wheel or spindle, some fibre, and a willingness to ask questions and share the answers you’ve found on your own. 

1:00 - 3:00 pm    2 hours
Registration fee: $20
No materials cost

To register for my workshop (or any of the others!), visit the festival workshop page here and click on the Paypal "Buy Now" button for the appropriate class.

I am really looking forward to seeing you at the festival!

Spinning my wheels

I've been really busy this week getting ready for this weekend. This is the direct opposite of most people's schedules--who wouldn't want to rest over the weekend? Apparently, not me-- so here goes:

Yesterday, I got to lead a family service at synagogue. This is only an hour long, but when working with people ages 3-adult, you've got to have a lot up your sleeves. It went very well, but by the time I came home, walked the dogs, and did things like eat leftovers for dinner, I was exhausted. I did try to have a conversation with a friend on the phone yesterday and I'm afraid I sounded entirely incoherent. (Meanwhile, the professor helped out at the service with the kids 10 and under in the AM and then rushed off to help someone move his belongings to his new house. Luckily, he got there after all the hard work was done!)

Oh--I also supervised the making of not one but two apple chocolate chip cakes, as the professor undertook dessert making for today's festivities.


Today I'm off to teach a spinning workshop at the Manitoba Craft Museum. I'm pretty excited. I've assembled these kits for each spinner. Here's what they look like:

In 14 reusable grocery bags:
One handmade low cost spindle (made by the professor and me)
4 oz of Romney white wool
4 oz of Romney cross brown wool
1 oz of a cherry blossom pink wool/alpaca/mohair blend
Information on skirting a fleece, washing a fleece, basic spinning info and a postcard each on Knit Green and Fiber Gathering and a free knitting pattern...

I'm bringing along some other kinds of both raw and washed wool, processed and unprocessed for them to check out and they will be able to "shop" for other things to spin from that.

For those who misunderstood the depth of my wool stash? I didn't buy any wool for teaching this class. Instead, I was able to empty two packing boxes. If I actually get 14 students, that would be just under 8 lbs of wool that I'm divesting myself of, and that's just in the bags! I'm probably bringing 2 lbs more for the "shopping" part of the class! Last I heard, I had 11 signed up, and apparently people do appear at the last minute. I'm perhaps overprepared...but who knows?

When I get done teaching, I may be able to scoot over to visit our neighbor. She's a Polish grandma who invited us to call her "Grandma" in Polish when we met her. She's turning 90 this weekend so there's an open house to celebrate. We'll bring one of the cakes.

Then, we get to go to a Spring Equinox potluck dinner at the professor's department head's house. (A department head is equivalent to his boss) We'll bring the second cake.

We've had to skip a couple of other things that were also scheduled for this weekend...including a philosophy discussion group that we both thought sounded fascinating. There's only so much you can manage in one weekend! Winnipeg is a pretty social (and intellectual) place!

The professor's car is currently being repaired so it will be up to Canadian inspection standards. (That's called being safety-ed here. Maybe it's spelled safetied?) So, right now we're a one car family, which has required more preplanning and money and time budgeting than we'd expected. The professor even figured out how to take the bus to work. It's busy around here.

I'll end with another special treat left in our house. When you move into an old house, sometimes things get left behind. We'd found a pair of knitting needles in a closet, but better yet is this picture, done by an artist called "Dougherty." This picture was hanging in the landing on the way to the basement. It's not a particularly scenic staircase, and we mostly do laundry and visit the freezer in the basement. I love this little chance to admire art on the way downstairs. Click on the image here, and look at the front porch. Perfect for a spinner, don't you think?

PS: I hope to get back to talking about knitting soon. I'm currently working on world's slowest sock project, and I've finished that scarf a mentioned a while back. Neither is photographed or ready yet for the big time!

spinning along

I'm stretching out this vacation (in my mind) for as long as I can this time!) That's because my daily life, while good, is full of things like laundry and house repairs and moving details. So, vacation is good. Let's keep talking about Crete!

It wouldn't be vacation without finding fiber arts things everywhere we went. Let's start with, say, spinning wheels. There aren't a lot of spinning wheels on Crete; it's not a strong part of their spinning tradition. Spindles are shown in museum exhibits, but not wheels. However, when we were in Chania, at the very end of our trip, we were shopping for knives. Cretan knives are well known for being nice tools, and for someone who cooks lots (me) a handmade paring knife or two is a great souvenir. That said, last time we focused on a bone handle--this time, we were happy to take plastic. Plastic is easier to clean, it's all recycled from something else, and the bone was a lot more expensive. We were paying for the knives when we saw this wheel behind the counter. The flyer and bobbin were on the floor next to the wheel and the cost? 250 Euros. It was a wheel I didn't need, but an antique spinning wheel, in any event!

Ok, now back to the goats... we left our car park in Myrtos (next to the goats) and took several driving trips. We went to Sitia, a city in Eastern Crete, one day. This is a pretty large, bustling place with a lot going on. Our first focus was olive oil--Sitia has some of the best in Crete-- and a good meal at the Balcony, a great restaurant. What we discovered was that the olive oil was available at the grocery store in Myrtos, so we didn't need to drive so far! The restaurant was nice, and...we found a yarn shop. We'd found others, but unfortunately, most are only open in the mornings, so I'd missed going into one. Crete mainly focuses on embroidery and lace crochet now, but I got some nice worsted weight cotton (like Tahki Cotton Classic) at a yarn shop in Sitia. I had the help of a kind Greek American woman who was also a tourist. She was from New York City, spoke very functional Greek and helped me get just the colors (navy and sage green) I wanted!

The trip was made entirely worthwhile by a super trip to a folklore museum in Sitia. I will post on that soon--it deserves its own post, it's an amazing museum.

When we left Myrtos, we chose to stop in a town called Kritsas. It was described as the "biggest village in Crete" and as having some nice arts and crafts. It was actually more of a town than a village, fairly touristy, but very picturesque. (click on all these photos to embiggen, it's worth it!)

As we walked through the town, we heard a sheep's baa and the professor caught a photo of this...looks like this farmer was either transporting these sheep to another farm or to market. They are hogtied, which means their legs are tied together, to prevent them from jumping out of the bed of the truck. The sheep didn't appreciate this (lots of baaas!) but it didn't hurt, from what I saw. It seemed like a logical way to transport sheep in this very hilly terrain. ..otherwise, they'd just leap right out of the truck bed! Also, one could note here that sheep on Crete are a special and primitive breed. Very tough, wily and clever, they provide milk, meat and wool--a true triple purpose breed.

There are lots of textile shops in Crete with embroidered table and bed linens--sadly, most of these aren't hand done anymore, and probably not made in Crete. However, as I walked up through the town, peering into the shops, I saw what could only be a distaff, loaded with wool, and a spindle. I rushed into that shop!

Most women on Crete don't spin or weave anymore. In fact, spinning and weaving were common on the island up until at least the '70's, but today, there's not much need for it anymore, with the improved availability of commercially made goods. However, this lady showed me with very little English, that she spun and wove for her own pleasure. When I showed her I too spun, she was tickled! She got out her handwoven blankets and sacks to show me. They were gorgeous! All single ply yarns, spun with the coarse wool of Crete.

When I tried her distaff and bottom wool spindle, I saw what well-made and beautiful tools they were. Well balanced, and handmade! She explained that they were hers, she had none for sale. She also showed me her handmade wool combs (a lot like Viking combs) that she used to process the wool herself. She did a beautiful job of that, too.

Before we left, she showed us another traditional skill. The cords used on handwoven sacks are braided/woven on a distaff like stick. The stick is tucked under one arm, and the little prongs or branches at the end are used to separate strands of yarn. The braiding is done with both hands free--this could obviously be done while walking or tending children.

I was sad that we didn't have enough language in common to talk further...but thrilled to see someone spinning for fun in Crete. What a universal language we spinners/knitters/fiber arts people have!

...more about the folklore museum next time...I'm off to make a traditional Southern cole slaw for the Biology picnic! (in Manitoba, it might seem exotic!)

bed never felt so good

On Monday afternoon, our moving van arrived in town, but it was too late to go through customs for the day. (The appropriate customs office in Winnipeg works the very civilized hours of 8-4pm.) Early Tuesday morning, we were able to get approval from the customs folk and bring our belongings home. By then, I was longing to see my bed again...we spent a week sleeping on the floor. Even with a foam layer and a wool blanket, the floor was hard! (it did get softer after a week, I was so tired I might have slept on a rock if given the option...)

Then, everything was unloaded off the moving truck. This was somewhat stressful. Turns out one needs a permit to park a moving truck in Winnipeg. The local constable showed up nearly immediately after the moving truck parked in the back lane. (alley)

I had to rush inside and phone to purchase a permit from the Winnipeg Police folk. I've no idea how much it cost, because honestly, I was desperate for my belongings at that point...I think maybe $70 Canadian. This should have been done by the moving company, but I guess they didn't know about it either.

The movers were nice and fairly competent. We've gotten so we know the competent ones from the incompetent ones! The professor helped too so things were mostly unloaded by 4pm or so. Overall, the positives outweighed the negatives, but:
The piano got broken
The wheels/feet got broken off of two dressers and a bedframe.
A couple of other things got damaged.

All in all, not horrible, but definitely the most damage we've ever had in a move. The piano was also damaged in our move to Kentucky and took months to fix. Things will be expedited here because A) we claimed the damage very clearly on our paperwork and B) there are lots of piano restoration folk in Winnipeg. We're hoping that we can have the legs mended but honestly this is a messy one-- it's a good 3-4 inches of completely splintered front legs on a spinet piano. We'll see how this goes. We've used some vise like things to take the weight off of the legs for now.

All 5 spinning wheels (as far as I can tell for now) have come through just fine.

All I could focus on though was getting to sleep in a bed again! It was the first time in a week that I'd slept anyplace other than the floor, so I thoroughly enjoyed that last night. We are digging out our other belongings. I unpacked 4 dish barrels this morning (big boxes of dishes) and I'll unpack a few more boxes--likely spinning and knitting books, in my office, this afternoon.

Kristy (in the comments) is right though--we're in a great area foodwise! We're being sustained through large amounts of take out pizza and gelato. I went shopping today and bought saskatoons (berries like blueberries) at a market that focuses on local foods. After I bought actual food for the refrigerator, I also had to get a frozen yogurt with raspberries pushed into it, in a waffle cone. You know, just to break up the monotony of the gelato diet. :)

Next, we're having some trees trimmed/cut down in preparation for our new fence. The dogs can't wait for the fence. Neither can we...while I enjoy walks, jumping out of that bed and into my clothes for the first walk can be rough. On the floor, 5:30 AM? I was up. Now? The sleeping is easy...until 7 AM at least!