Monday: Rented a Vrtucar and drove up to the Balderson area north of Perth. My goal was Windblest Farm, where I met with Janice and Susan, both members of Fibre Roads, a group of several fibre farms in the Lanark region. We're in the early stages of planning a project involving my design with their wool and alpaca fibres. This is pretty exciting for all of us, and it's far to early too know how things will pan out, but we're launched now. Here are some photos of the day.
These are hats in Janice's hand-dyed wool on sale in her barn/studio. Her wool is spun at Wellington Fibres, and that is where our project wool/alpaca blend will be spun as well. We hope to produce kits with the pattern for sale sometime next year. Stay tuned, and let me know if this endeavour interests you.
Tuesday: Met Melissa, a blog reader from across the water in upstate New York, and put her on the path to some buttons for her various projects. We had a nice lunch at Chez Piggy, while I fretted internally about the job being done on my vines back at the house. I was right to worry. For a ridiculously large amount of money, the arborist I hired stripped the vines away from where I wanted them and failed to remove them from where I didn't (the eavestroughs, utility wires, and windows).
Wednesday: Supervised the putting on of the storm windows for the winter. Our house is designated as a heritage property of architectural significance, so we are not allowed to modernize our exterior. The guys who arrived to do the job also cleaned all the windows to sparkling perfection and (joy of joys!) pruned the vines back to the second storey, all for a reasonable price. I still have a bare stripe up the front of the house, but vines, like hair, grow back.
Thursday: Had coffee with our real estate agent and gawked at her gorgeous custom-built home, then decided this was motivation to get around to putting up our own curtains in the living room. We've been surviving with the previous owners' curtains until now, mostly because I was too lazy to get a step stool up onto the wide window ledge to reach the high wooden curtain rod at the top. Turns out it wasn't a big deal. I love my brick and cream Waverly fabric ticking stripe curtains and this is the fourth house for them. The secret to moving curtains from house to house? Pleater tape, which allows you to adjust them to whatever width is required. Here are the curtains during the adjustment process,
and here they are in situ, by lamplight.
Friday (today): Time to round the family up and walk over to the Queen's Family Health clinic for our flu shots. Why is it so difficult to convince male family members to get out of bed and do this? When I get back, I'm going to get started on a new knitting project. I've been mulling it over and looking at swatches done a few months ago and I think I'm ready to get launched. Stay tuned...
P.S. Note to self--remember next time I swatch to attach a note with the needle size used. Argh!
