Barnraising, Part 1

Uncle Bear, Phil and Michael got the first uprights and roof beams for the new sheep barn in the yard done today!


Aunt Pat and D'white the alpaca are going to have to figure out a compromise on whose room will be on the end...

zOMG! Teh Sky Iz Fallin!!!1

Yes, we actually got some honest-to-goodness weather this morning - brief hail between rain showers. By the looks of the KTLA website and newspapers this morning, you'd think the sky was actually falling....

Less impressive in this photo than the weather reports make it out to be, but if you look closely you can see - there really, really was hail!

Guess who eats pasta?!!

We picked up some gluten-free pasta from one of the vendors at the Farmers' Market. Guess what? Eli likes it!!!! I made it into a quick beef stew for him with onion, garlic, mushrooms, pepper and salt, and broth. For the rest of us I added the Pacific brand Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper soup and some sour cream.

Old Downtown Farmers' Market

It was a sunny, lovely Presidents' day down here in LA, so we headed out to the old Farmers' Market. It was very much like Pike Place, only even more so.














Wayyyyyyy off in the distance, that's the Hollywood sign on the hill! We could almost even make out the ocean from our vantage point on the top of the parking structure.

After hitting Cost Plus on one end of the block, we decided we needed to stop and get a bite to eat just to sustain ourselves before heading home.... Fortunately, there was a nice little baked goods counter selling Princess Cake by the slice and finger cakes they called "Marzipan Bones". Yum!

Uncle Bear poses beside the impressive wall of BBQ sauce:

Shaun and Eli didn't join us this time. The market would have been just a bit overwhelming, so instead they went for another hike up the hillside back at the ranch.

Aquarium Outting

Shaun braved the crowds Sunday to take the kids down to the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific while we ladies were having our fiber group gathering. Abi and Eli were good and had fun... nobody died or even got grumpy!

ATFARAOSWL

The ladies down here get together each month for a fiber group they call Dye'n to Ply, though it could also be called All Things Fiber Arts Related And Other Stuff We Like - which includes beadwork, videos, and of course, lunch menus that would impress even Ina Garten!

Projects on the calendar for this year include sheep shearing, dyeing spun yarn, beading, learning mitten patterns, button project and Christmas Party. Cheers!

My own fiber arts projects have been in full swing in preparation for the Caid A&S Pentathalon. I'm going to enter two fiber arts projects: The first is a recreation of the Coppergate sock(s). I ordered some raw Romney fleece from a nice lady in Michigan (www.willowfarmwool.com) for the project. I used synthetic urea mixed at 3 grams for each 1.5 quart of filtered water (18g and 10qt total). After heating the water till steaming, I mixed in the urea and let it cool till I could stand to hold my hand against the side of the pot. The wool went in at this point and sat for about 5 hours (till it cooled to almost room temp). I dipped and gently swished it several times to rinse it without felting. Then I combed the still intact locks with my Indigo Hound Viking single-row combs. Shaun was nice enough to buy me clamps, as holding one comb down with my boot up on the table while drawing the rest off through my seashell diz wasn't very economical time-wise...

Then I spun it all up fine as a semi-worsted yarn and plied it on my soapstone whirl dropspindle (S-spun and Z-plied). I can't find the guage of the yarn in the original sock, but I do have a guage for the naalbinding: about 3.6 rows per cm. My two test pieces done in Hald type I (same as the Coopergate sock, with each loop connecting with 1 overlap across the row) and Hald type II (each loop connecting with 2 overlaps across the row) are about 2 rows per cm.

Hald I: (both sides the same)

  

Hald II: (front and reverse)

My other other project is tablet weaving. I bought a 610yd skein of 2/12 weaver's silk from Halcyon. Although cochineal wasn't available in period (other scale insects in Europe and Western Asia produced the same carminic acid or a lac dye, such as kermes), the chemical dye compound is the same as the traditional insect dyestuffs so I used it anyways. I used J.N. Lile's recipe for "crimson" on silk. I made up an alum mordant bath - which was mixed warm and allowed to cool to room temp. The silk went in and sat 6 hours (instead of the 2 dippings at 3 hours each which he suggests). The alum mix was: 3 oz alum sulfate in 2 gallons of filtered water. After this, the skein was rinsed, rung out, and 'wuzzed' till no more water could be extracted. I put it in a ziplock overnight while preparing the dye. To make the cochineal dyebath, 1 oz of cochineal was ground to dust and steeped in a gallon ziplock in 2 quarts of filtered water overnight. The next afternoon, I poured it out of the bag (careful not to pour in the slurry) into 2 gallons warm filtered water. I worked in the still damp skein till it was completely colored in the bath and slowly brought up the temp to 160F over half an hour. I held it at this temp for 1 hour, then turned off the heat and let it cool just till I could pull out the skein. This got rinsed and a light wash in Eucalan, then rung out and wuzzed. It was an amazing wine-dark puple when wet and a lovely plum purple when dry. Liles made his cochineal silk crimson by using a post-mordant dip in tin. I like the purple color and don't want to fuss with tin, so I'm calling it good here. 

I will post more on these projects as they progress.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I had Valentine's Day off, though the kids were still in school. Well, having found that the Getty research library houses several of the NESAT volumes, I took the opportunity to get them reserved so that I could get some info about textile manufacture/use in Medieval Europe, especially over naalbinding. Uncle Bear volunteered to be my research assistant, so we made a grand day of it.

At the end of the day, Aunt Pat, Carlean, Uncle Bear, Shaun and I had dinner at Gales in PAsadena. Aunt Pat commented that the place was very "New Orleans Square Disneyland"... it could have been the 3' tall false plaster head of David up over the stove, next to the pizza carry-out boxes. But the food was very tasty. We had roasted olives and amazingly fluffy and crunchy bread with oil and balsamic vinegar, flat-iron chicken and chicken Parmesan, delicious pastas, and Italian cheesecake, creme brulee, and petis fours for dessert.

Apples and Oranges

These apple tarts are adapted from the Good Huswifes Jewell (1596):

To bake Quinces, Peares and Wardens.
 Take and pare and coare them, then make your paste with faire water and butter, and the yolke of an egge, then set your Oringes into the paste, and then bake it well, fill your paste almost full with Sinamon, Ginger and Suger.

Also Apples must be taken after the same sorte, saving that whereas the core should be cut out they must be filled with Butter every one, the hardest Apples are best, and likewise are Peares and Wardens, and none of them all but the wardens may be perboyled, and the Oven must be of a temperate heat, two houres to stand is enough.

I also preserved oranges using sugar syrop, and some by another, fairly complicated and obscure recipe (for preserving them whole) from the same manuscript. Then, with these oranges and some apples, I made a tart following a recipe from the Good Huswifes Handmaid for Cookery in her Kitchin (1588):

For a tarte of apples and orange pilles.

 Take your orenges and lay them in water a day and a night, then seeth them in faire water and honey and let seeth till they be soft; then let them soak in the sirrop a day and a night: then take forth and cut them small and then make your tart and season your apples with suger, synamon and ginger and put in a piece of butter and lay a course of apples and between the same course of apples a course of orenges, and so, course by course, and season your orenges as you seasoned your apples with somewhat more sugar; then lay on the lid and put it in the oven and when it is almost baked, take Rosewater and sugar and boyle them together till it be somewhat thick, then take out the Tart and take a feather and spread the rosewater and sugar on the lid and let it not burn.

I glazed it with Rose Water Syrop boiled to almost a hard ball stage, which made almost a candy like topping. Everyone who helped taste-test it said it was sooooo good!

Weekend Walks

Shaun and Eli discovered the nice walking paths throughout our subdivision a couple of weeks ago. Conveniently enough, there's a Wendy's right at the corner of our subdivision, and one of the paths goes almost directly to it. The kids and I took a liesurely walk Saturday while Shaun was getting the ribs going on the BBQ.

 

 

 That's Abi's school in the background - just at the other end of the subdivision from our house.

Then Eli got to walk some more with Shaun today. They hiked up to the top of Aunt Pat's hill where the helipad is. It was a gorgeous day, culminating in a gorgeous sunset (though I didn't get pictures of that, unfortunately)

Cavalia

Aunt Pat and Uncle Bear treated a whole group of us to Cavalia on Saturday night. It's basically Cirque du Soliel with horses. We all enjoyed the show a lot - the horses were beautiful, the tumblers and riders were very graceful and fun, and the music was absolutely gorgeous.

http://www.cavalia.net/pages/upComingShows/los-angeles.aspx