many thanks

Thank you all so much for the kind expressions of sympathy in the form of comments, cards and emails that were sent due to the recent passing of my sister in law.  They were comforting to me, and other family members and friends that read along on the riverrim. 

 

Cyberspace relationships are unique, most of you I only know through words and photographs on a screen....but they are a lot like letters, correspondence if you will.... and I appreciate your thoughtfulness and the time that you take to express it.  It is important to me.

 

Life goes on around here...the seasons are changing...

this bear showed up just before the nor'easter...he/she had tags in both ears which leads me to believe that it has been caught and released, possibly a nuisance bear.  The following day we saw a mother bear bring three cubs down the mountain.  We are using an air horn to deter them...which is working for the time being, but is almost certain to become ineffectual after they become conditioned.  The bear live up in these ledges behind our cabin. 

I expect they were here before we were.  There are marking trees up on top of the mountain that they return to year after year.  You can see the growth patterns and size of the bears from the way they mark the trees.  We have to remember to walk around outside with caution now.  The warm weather has kept them from denning- and they will continue to hang around until the freeze moves in.  I worry so much about my rabbits and chickens.  We have nail boards set out as a method to discourage the bears so they don't get to close.

the turkey are about on the hillside too.  I have counted a harem of at least 20.  I have seen so many pullets this year, that I think they were able to brood several clutches. 

here is a close up where you can see the beard hanging off the Tom.

 

I needed a project to make me think...something I could concentrate on...

....so I started a prewarp technique on the triangle loom.  This is done by warping the loom on the bias, and allows for a different design concept than I am used to.  The prewarp technique can create beautiful chevron effects.  I am using handspun Finn that I spun during demonstrations this past summer.  The warp is a single strand, but the weave structure changes to a basket weave when you weave the weft.  Another point to note is the fact that you must interlock the edges on all sides of the loom.  I fringed the edges and used one strand of the warp on either side of shawl to lock the weave in place.  This method moves quickly...it takes more time in the beginning- which is directly opposite from the normal continuous thread method....where it takes more time at the end.  The designs can run parallel with the short legs of the triangle, rather than running parallel to the hypotenuse.  The drape is different also, as the weave is on the bias vs. straight grain or crossgrain. 

passing

I had intended for this post to be about our trip to Rhinebeck, but we had some very shocking and sad news earlier this past week.  My sister in law suddenly passed away.  I have known her since I was a kid in the sixth grade, and I will miss her terribly.  Sometimes, there are things that happen in life that can break your heart...this is one of them. I am stepping away for a little while to take care of family matters.

h5n1 with a little fiber but mostly bad sad news

This past week, it has been difficult to keep up with the news in the world.  There are so many people hurting, so many people that need help, there is so much suffering going on, sometimes it is even hard to be hopeful about the future.

 

When there is bad news in the world, I usually retreat to my spinning or fibers art or garden or rabbits and chooks.  What to do when some of the bad news IS chooks?? 

First, I finished  weaving a leno lace shawl.  I had spun the yarn for this from a mohair wool blend, and plied it with silk.  I had just enough silk left over from the "mothwing" that I had purchased from the Copper Moth to complete the shawl, but not enough to fringe the entire thing, so I wound up fringing every 4th strand with the blend.  When I finished weaving, I took a picture of one of the pine trees modeling the shawl.  The mohair blend was very nice...purchased at the Endless Mountains FF from Steam Valley.

But my thoughts, much like the news, return to the chooks...they look so peaceful wandering about the hillside...doing little chicken things...coming over to greet me whenever I walk by...could they really be dangerous?  Are we living with a time bomb?

 

I am referring of, to the ever growing news about the threats of avian flu.  Being a responsible backyard chicken enthusiast--I feel it is my duty to keep myself and others informed about what is going on.  Is this hype or a very real threat?  I have been reading and reading and reading.  There are no easy answers.  Its not even easy to read and understand all the information that is out there.  But being informed is being forearmed...and so I sift through the tons of articles to see what is what.  I even posted to some forums where I know there are some pretty savvy chicken farmers.  The news is not good.  Facts are facts, and that is what I am faced with.  For now, I am not going to bring any  new chickens into my flock.  I am going to be super hygienic, and I will keep my ear to the ground and observe constantly.  The virus has most definitely jumped from chicken to human...and is still mutating.  My biggest concern is that the virus is spread by the migration of wild birds, and that my birds may come into contact with the droppings.  I am watching with interest what Britain will do with the free range chickens in their country...and subsequently what could happen here.
Here is a link of what I have been reading....including a blog that has tons of links on it.

So, I am left with trying to find something uplifting to think about or else I will get depressed thinking about the possibility of exterminating my chooks ...out in the garden there are still some late bloomers.  Even in the middle of all this cold rain, there is beauty.  The o'clock are a shocking pink, and are quite happy to bloom all day long without the sunshine.  Thank God for the beauty of flowers.  They inspire me to start thinking about making some more yarn...I kind of like the way the pink of the 4 o'clock contrasts with the darker magenta of the amaranth...

Everywhere I look--things are turning yellow.

This past week has given us unseasonably warm, still, dry weather and very yellow sunshiny days.  It is so quiet around the riverrim.  The river is very low, and is not making its usual "shhhshhhhssssh" music as it flows past.  This is the only time of year that I will see the river so low and quiet.

The angle of the sun is changing, and I am acutely aware of that.  It makes different shadows through the leaves.  The sun saturates everything with its light and objects seem to glow from within-- illustrating a weird type of luminosity.

So, the more yellow I see......, the more I see yellow.  I am noticing things that are yellow that I don't usually pay mind to.  See what I mean? 

btw- I have discovered that I really, really like to use a dehydrator.

With all this yellow hanging about, I just had to make some yellow yarn.

 

I will bask in all the yellowness of these October days...because I know that come November...it will all turn to gray.

new lambs

We had our second series of workshops at the Hatton Farm yesterday, and these sweet little Finnsheep lambies were there to greet us in the morning.  They had been born earlier in the week, and could not be more precious.

 

We had a nice turn out for the workshops, some of the people coming from out of state to participate!  It is really fun getting together to teach new skills and share ideas with other fiber people, and even though I am the instructor for some of the classes, I always come away with a little something that I learn from the students.

 

The one drawback about being an instructor is that you don't have time to take one of the other workshops.  Since there are 4 of us teaching, the mini workshops are going on in different areas of the farm at the same time.  For instance, while I was teaching the spinning workshop in the barn, Grace was inside in the kitchen teaching the casserole dyeing workshop.  When it was time to switch, I went up to the house to teach the needlefelting, and they were having a great time and just finishing up.  What beautiful skeins of yarn they created, so colorful!  And in the living room they were ending the Tri-loom workshop that Judy had been teaching- while out on the patio Louise was completing the Alpaca Fiber workshop.  It is a little like musical chairs, with lunchtime being the only time to really visit with everyone.  It is fun being a teacher, but sometimes I would like to be the student too. 

 

Once again at the end of the day there were many inquires about when and what the next series of workshops would include, but we did not settle on anything as of yet.  It is really good to see the interest, and to have such a positive response from those who came out to join us.

 

I was so busy teaching, that I did not get time to take pictures--except for those sweet lambs in the morning...when I see new life like this, I feel like I am seeing something that only a few people have ever seen before....kind of makes it special to think of it that way.  And just so the rest of the crew would not feel like old hat, I took their picture too....

When I got home in the late afternoon, I had some time to relax and visit with the rabbits and chickens...a nice way to unwind bask in the quiet of the day.  The weather has been really beautiful... no frost in sight, but things have been still and dry.  At dusk, we checked in on the chickens before we locked them up for the night.  We always do a head count...just in case.  One of the hens did not come home last night.  It was the new aracuna pullet.  We searched all around until it was dark, could not find her and went to bed with our fingers crossed.  I was hopeful that she would come walking home in the morning as they sometimes do.  She was not that lucky.  We woke at 4:30 am to hear bagaulking, and by the time we got outside it was quiet and still...no sign of what it was that got her. It is always hard to loose a chicken, but she was a sweet one that we did not have very long.  Here is the last photo I had taken of her earlier that day...

On the fiber front, I have been spinning up some mohair that I plied with silk...and then weaving it directly onto the loom...something a little different...but every now and then I feel the need to do something different.  It is helping to keep my mind off the loss of the little pullet.  The poor roo, he looks lost today.  I walked down to the river and looked all around to see if I could see any signs of a struggle or feather or (gulp) a carcass.  Nothing anywhere.  Not sure if it was raccoon or fox.  Usually with the raccoon there are signs of a struggle, and I would find the carcass.  Fox tend to run off with their prey.  See how my mind is wandering back to the chicken?  Anyway, here is a shot of the fiber.