...We thought they'd never end...

Labour Day, one of the very few days of the year when everything is closed. I like it, it's like a moment out of time, time standing still.

We are into the very best time of year around here, a month or two of absolutely perfect weather. The unbearable heat of summer is done, the miserable cold of winter still in the future. And the gardens and farm markets bursting with tomatoes and corn and squashes and everything else. The students are back and celebrating the way students do, the streets are lively and sometimes too lively. This year the students in my neighbourhood seem not to be the "party hearty" types so we all get to sleep at night.

This is good for Hapi too. She can just barely handle the heat of summer, the cooler days are perking her up. I was supposed to take her to the groomer to get all her matted fur cleaned up but I totally forgot and now the next available appointment is a month away. She's going to be a terrible mess by then. Under normal circumstances it takes hours and hours to clean her up but now that she is old I am reluctant to put her through that. I told the groomer I just want "quick and dirty" and if that means she comes out still a matted mess then so be it.

She had a bad episode of diarrhea necessitating leaving the back door open at night so she could get out rather than do it in the kitchen, when that cleared up (yay rice and apples!) she then became incontinent. So she has decided not to sleep indoors at all. I miss her being by my bed but on the other hand I get to sleep through the night.

She is losing the fur on her tail, her once beautiful billowing flag. The vet checked her out and thought it was not a sign of something worse, she was otherwise healthy enough, and recommended trying melatonin. So we're doing that. I now sympathize with men going bald, I hate seeing her ratty tail.

Birthday gift, one of the tea towels I wove in the spring

Last Wednesday was a friend's 65th birthday. I've known L for 46 years, she was a teenager when I first met her. On Wednesday a bunch of us met at her sister-in-law's for a birthday lunch and then on Saturday her husband threw her a "surprise" birthday party at home. It wasn't really a surprise, when he phoned to invite me to the party L happened to be there and I had the phone on speaker (I usually do that automatically): so much for surprise. But he invited all of the old gang, all of us who have known L almost since she arrived in this province.

She arrived a year before I did, in 1972. There was only one other person at the surprise party who knew L longer than I did, M. He told a story from back in the day, a story that until this Saturday he had not told in its entirety. As L told me later, if M had told the truth about the incident before now she would have killed him. She always knew he wasn't telling the truth, fortunately she no longer wished to kill him for it. It was a good story, I'd never heard the whole story either, just his severely edited version of it. L and I rehashed the story on Sunday and we decided that even now he was not telling the whole truth, parts of the story just didn't ring true. Oh well, we all self-edit.

Now you're intensely curious as to what the story is, I'll just say that it involved drugs and the RCMP and hiding stuff behind L's back. In the end nobody got hurt and nobody went to jail, sort of an Alice's Restaurant tale. I guess that tale was M's birthday gift to L.

At one point in the party L's husband sat down beside me with their old photo albums and started turning the pages. Talk about Memory Lane!! Between the photo album and M's tale it was an evening spent in the past, almost half a century ago.

L's mother died when she was quite young and her father was no great shakes at parenting. So at 16 she took off with her boyfriend on his motorbike and on a whim they headed to Nova Scotia. Shortly after arriving here he was killed in a road accident, leaving L and another friend who travelled with them behind. They had found an abandoned house way back on the mountain, near some other hippies also squatting in an abandoned house. So she met some of the local freaks that way. There quickly grew up quite a community of young people, including some new arrivals from out west, the three guys who set up Trinity Farm ("the three guys"). My husband and I and our 2 kids arrived the following year, we had lived in a house with the three guys in Vancouver. We had parted ways for our own adventures, but for one reason and another we decided to follow the guys to Nova Scotia a year later. M was the cousin of one of the three guys and used to hang out at Trinity Farm, and so did L. My little family arrived at Trinity Farm on the Labour Day weekend of 1973.

When M told his story we weren't sure exactly when it happened, but piecing together the bits that each of us remembered from those days we decided that it was it was either the fall of 1974 or the early winter of '75. I was preoccupied with my own drama (family breakup) so I was only dimly aware of other people's dramas. Those were definitely the days, my friend.

Weaving done, for now

It's a solid downpour outside, complete with thunder and presumably lightning, and it is supposed to last into the night. Hapi is sleeping in the basement, hopefully oblivious to the thunder.

I finished my weaving project on Wednesday night. I had to go into the city every other day for a week and on the final day I was weaving for eight hours. By the time I got my project off the loom my back was almost completely destroyed.

I was feeding loonies into a parking meter during the day, but it turned out that the meter was broken and I got a parking ticket. Fortunately the "meter maid" (in this case, a guy) was nearby and I managed to explain to him what was happening so he tore up the ticket and gave me free parking for the rest of the day.

The dogsitter that I lined up for the time I was in the city called me on the weekend to say that he was in the hospital and about to be moved to the city for major surgery. So much for dogsitting. His illness is progressing rapidly and I don't know how much longer he will survive, he is dying piecemeal. It's a tragic situation and my own disappointment at suddenly losing my dogsitter pales in comparison.

However, my wonderful mechanic who has kept my vehicles roadworthy over the years at a fraction of what it might cost elsewhere, stepped up and said he'd have no problem staying with Hapi as long as needed. He loves her and Hapi loves him almost as much as she loves me. I think he reminds her of my son, her former owner.

After the marathon weaving session on Wednesday I was a zombie on Thursday. My back felt like I'd broken something and my brain was barely capable of reading a magazine, let alone carrying on a conversation. Today is better though, the brain functions and the back tries to. But I am glad it is raining, it means one more day of staying indoors resting.

I am already thinking about my next weaving project. I have a couple of ideas and can't decide which one to pursue. Today I was reading a book on tapestry weaving and wondering if I should tackle that. But it is a whole different skill set so it's going to depend on whether I am up for something simple or complicated. I am just beginning to feel like I am getting somewhere with textile weaving, I should probably postpone the tapestry weaving for a bit. But it is tempting.

In the meantime I still have to do some finishing work on the current project. There are a few ends to needle-weave in and cutting and hemming and fringe-knotting to be done. It's more tedious than interesting, so it could take a while.

My weaving project and other stories

The duck that lost her nest and her two bodyguards left the Reservoir for a few days after the nest was destroyed but they are back now. Looks like the threesome are a thing now, tragedy has cemented their relationship. There are lots of fish nests all around the edges of both ponds with fishes guarding them. I'd love to get a photo of a fish guarding its nest but they see me coming and move away from the nest before I can snap a picture.

The parks people lower the water level on one pond in order to put a string of buoys around the beach swimming area, but over the years we dogwalkers have protested this action because it puts the fish nests in jeopardy. Some of us have gone so far as to volunteer to put in the line of buoys ourselves without lowering the water level, but I guess the town is not up for the risk of a bunch of seniors doing the work of paid staff. This year the guy who puts in the buoys did it without lowering the water level so far as to destroy the nests. He's a nice guy with a great sense of humour. We are always complaining to him about town policy with regards to the Reservoir and he passes on our complaints because as he says, it's job security for himself. As long as we complain he has enough work to remediate the park to our specifications for the foreseeable future.

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The warp...

My weaving course ended last Wednesday but none of us completed our projects. Our work has to be off the looms before the 24th because the looms are needed over the summer. Our instructor says this has never happened before and it seems to be the result of the Centre reducing the length of the course from 10 weeks to 8 and each of us having to take evenings off for personal reasons (funeral, wedding, writing competition, etc). So now I have to go into the city every other day for a week in order to finish. Road work season has started and there is now a half hour wait on the highway for that so my commute time is now two hours each way. And, I have to get a dogsitter for Hapi because it is now too warm to leave her in the car while I am in class.

...and the weft

In addition to all that, I had previously committed to doing some volunteer ushering this weekend for a show put on by one of the local high schools. So this is the weekend from hell, non-stop busyness. That's my idea of hell, busyness. By the time my project is finished I am going to be a basket case.

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Last Wednesday I took advantage of having to get a dogsitter by going into the city a little early to stroll the harbourfront boardwalk. The Bluenose II happens to be in town for a couple of days before decamping to Ontario for the summer. That ship is pretty controversial, being a classic example of a hole in the water to pour money into. However it is very beautiful and I feel like I have a personal connection to it because I once met its original builder at his boatyard just outside of Lunenburg, and back in the '80s I took my kids for a cruise around the harbour on it.

Another time I was taking the ferry from Chester to Tancook Island (see story here) and the Bluenose II happened to be in Chester then. Our ferryboat captain, as a joke, pretended to ram the ship. At the last minute he veered off, to the great relief of the Bluenose II crew lined up on deck and all of us passengers on the ferryboat.

The Mower Starts and Other News

Weaving at home: a rug

Turns out the lawn mower works just fine, the problem is me. I don't have the upper body strength any more to pull that starter cord hard and fast enough. I don't know which is worse, having a mower that won't start or not having a body that can start it. Well, at least I have a work around: my buddy J can drop by on his way home from work to start the mower so I can mow. I think he'd even mow for me if I asked him to. It may come to that one day, but not yet.

Anyway, I did manage to mow the lawn on Thursday. We seem to be in a weather pattern of rain downpours every other day and if I wait till the end of the day between downpours the grass is a little drier. Momentarily.

I've had many suggestions from sympathetic former mowers to get an electric or even a battery-powered mower. I did look into those possibilities on the internet, but the big problem with the alternatives to a gas-powered mower is that they do not do well with wet grass. I could use one for several months in the summer and fall, but in the spring the grass grows like crazy and the ground is soggy (and so is the grass).

One of my neighbours suggested I get a scythe. She confessed that she cuts her grass with a bread knife!

I said, "That must take forever!"

She said, "Yup, all summer."

I'll stick with getting J to start the mower on his way home from work.

I joined a potluck group and there was a potluck dinner last night, my second with the group. I avoided this group in the past because of my dislike of and lack of talent in cooking. Lately I have been facing down my concerns in that area with a phone app recommended by one of my sons. So I thought I should give it a shot. The first dinner I didn't know anyone and I brought an old standby, a sort of fruit crisp made with blueberries and strawberries. It wasn't great, and I took half of it home with me. Oh well.

Last night I made something from my phone app. First off it was way too big and second I again brought home at least half of it. Someone else made something similar that was way better. They also made a much smaller quantity so they didn't take any of it home with them. I ate and drank too much and ended up waking in the night due to that, and spent too much time fretting about my poor cooking skills.

Not even a phone app is going to improve my cooking skills. Either I have to quit the group or get my head around the fact that my contributions will be less than stellar.

The warp on my home loom

But in other news I got a lot of weaving and writing done this past week, due to the crappy weather. With a bit of luck I'll have the current project off my loom at home before the end of my weaving course. The last class I went to I was the only student and the instructor and I exchanged life stories while working on our respective projects. I finished threading the heddles and am halfway through sleying the reed.

I won't be going to class this week because of the writing competition awards and I will almost certainly have to come in one weekend to finish the weaving before the end of the course. But the instructor sold me a warping mill and I ordered some 2/8 cotton for weaving. I love looking through the catalog for colours. I ordered Cherry Red, Dark Orange, Old Gold (yellow), Magenta and Royal Blue. The catalog itself costs $40, one day I'll invest in one of my own. I look forward to using the warping mill for the next project.

An expletive deleted children's story

The weaving project in progress

My big news this week is that I got shortlisted for a prize in children's lit. Actually happened over a month ago but I was sworn to secrecy until they published the official list, which just happened. It's terrible to be sworn to secrecy on something so exciting, and the release was palpable. I immediately fired off emails to friends and family and all of the friends—every last one of them—was just as excited as I was.

Deafening silence from family. A prophet in one's own land sort of thing I guess.

Eventually one brother, the one with the awful diagnosis, broke silence and the three sons one by one also chimed in over the next few days. Have not heard from brother #2, but I believe he does not check email regularly, or so I tell myself.

Anyway, I won't know till the end of the month whether it goes any further than being shortlisted and I don't really expect it will, but the shortlist is exciting enough. There's going to be an awards ceremony (multiple prizes in different categories) which conflicts with my weaving class and I almost feel like skipping the awards but that wouldn't really be kosher. Show up and congratulate the winners, hobnob with 'real' writers. Risk not finishing my weaving project due to too many skipped classes.

Being a 'children's writer' was not really what I was aspiring to but hey! I'll take it.

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The new couch

In other news I have rearranged and refurnished my living room. I was at a local building supply place a month ago to purchase a tool that was on sale and happened to see a couch there that interested me. It was in the paint and flooring department and there were a couple of customers sitting on it contemplating some flooring samples. I sat down beside them and decided it was comfy. My only issue was whether it would actually fit in my living room which is small and already overcrowded with furniture. So I took measurements and went home, took some more measurements and concluded that if I got rid of a couple of furniture pieces I might be able to fit the building supply couch in.

The old table

One of the furniture pieces that would have to go is my large dining table. It's a good table but it is too large for the small room and really only gets used for piling books and papers on. If it had a leaf that I could remove it would be fine but it doesn't. So I did a bit of moving stuff around and bought the couch. Huge effort to get it home and set up but worth it, I love the couch. Then some internet browsing to find a smaller table and thought I found the right table at the IKEA in the city. A trip to the city with a friend to look at it in real life, combined with a browse of the best Chinese grocery store in the city (or that's what the newspaper review of Chinese grocery stores said) and I came home with a Norden gateleg table (and dark dark soy sauce, noodles and dried mushrooms). The table's principal feature is that it has two huge hinged leaves so that it folds down to almost nothing.

This week I assembled the table. I had forgotten what IKEA assembly projects were like.

The instructions have no words, only pictures. There was a whole separate document of warnings, all in pictures only and some of them quite incomprehensible. At a certain point I was stymied, the hinge screws would not screw in. I tried an electric drill/driver but that did not help. The warnings document had a picture of a person phoning the IKEA store (as opposed to standing there with the manual in hand and a big question mark in a balloon above their head) so I did that.

The person with the heavy accent (I had to get him to repeat what he was saying numerous times because I couldn't understand him) told me to try harder. After huffily telling him that I had already done that (I think I used the F-word) he then told me to bring the table back to the store. I thanked him for his assistance and ended the call. The question mark was now multiple exclamation marks.

The electric drill was lying on the floor next to the offending hinges so I picked it up and selected an appropriate bit and reamed out the pre-drilled screw holes until the screws would go in. I may regret that in the future but for now it works.

I am happy with my new smaller table and the building supply couch. Hapi on the other hand is not, she hates change. She comes into the house and stands at the doorway to the living room and looks around with a big frown, then she turns and goes back outside. Aside from two brief inspections of the living room she has stayed outside ever since. Doggy disapproval is clearly communicated.

Getting stuff done and moving on

I completed one rug on the loom, two more to go. Towards the end it was quite frustrating because one of the warp threads kept breaking.

I spent the day weeding and pruning. It was the same temperature as the day before but far less humid; it felt cooler. Nevertheless all that weeding and pruning was sweaty work and I had a bath afterward. Some annoying stuff that I won't describe here and now was on my mind so I fumed and fussed in the bath. Often I cry in the bath but this time I was more angry than sad. The good thing is that when I get out of the tub whatever was bothering me washes away with the dirt. The feelings that is, not necessarily whatever spurred those feelings.

Good news from my youngest son. As I mentioned earlier he had a rather devastating time of it this past month and I had promised to help him out financially if he needed it. So when I got his text to set up a Skype call I expected that was what it was about. Instead it was the opposite, his situation almost completely reversed itself and he didn't need help at all. He was just calling to let me know his good news. I am happy for him.

Winter sports I have survived

One of my sons gave me a year's subscription to the New Yorker for Christmas, the first issue arrived this week. I'm not sure I want to be reading about what is happening south of the border this coming year but hopefully there will be lots of other stuff to read in the magazine.

Came in from X-country skiing quite exhausted. I'm a terrible skier with unsuitable skis (too fast), but stupidly determined to master them. Sorry, no photos. Too busy trying not to fall (fell three times) and then struggling to get back up again. And of course I was out with a very good skier who had to keep doubling back to see what had happened to me. It was definitely a workout for me but not so much for her.

On the other hand I went skating on a pond yesterday, that was great. Haven't skated in a few years and I'm only marginally better at it than I am at skiing, but it was good. Hapi went with me, she kept pace with me trotting along in the snow beside the ice until it got boring and she went off into the woods to look for more interesting things.

Somebody cleared an oval skating path and a hockey rink inside the oval. I think this must be the first time anyone has done that, I've never seen anyone skating on this pond, although people tell me it has been done before.

Parts of the ice were very smooth, others a little bumpy. The hockey rink was freshly cleared and I tried skating on it, but the ice made these horrible noises like it was about to break up and I did not feel safe in the middle of the pond. I was told that it was perfectly safe, the noise was just the ice freezing after being exposed to the cold air after the insulating snow was removed.

Falling on ice is harder than falling on snow, but somehow more manageable (I didn't fall). At least I don't have to deal with big sticks attached to my feet. We were only out on the ice for less than an hour, when I got home and was taking off the clothes and emptying the pockets I realized I had lost my driver's licence. It was in the same pocket as my cell phone, and I took the cell out several times to take photos. One of those times the licence must have fallen out. So I had to go back to the pond and look for the licence. A little white card somewhere in the snow. Amazingly I did find it without too much effort! I backtracked to the places I had stopped to take photos and it was at the second spot I checked, just sitting there on top of the snow.

Got the warp on the loom and started weaving. I don't know if you can see the pattern in this picture, but it is called Goose Eyes. I also cut up the previous warp (see this post for a photo) into three pieces (three tea towels), and pinned the hems ready for sewing. Any day now I'll finish them...

All dressed up and ready to go

The warp is on the loom. All dressed up and ready to go!

There were a few issues--missing warp threads, misplaced warp threads, tangling--but they are hopefully resolved. The remaining issue is that the warp is wider than the loom (30" on 27" loom). I am hoping that 10% shrinkage (the rule of thumb for such things) will take care of that. We shall see.

Right now I am just very pleased that it is on the loom.

Trying to find balance

Busy week socially, so did not make much progress on the loom. Still sleying the reed although with a bit of luck I may finish that tonight. Only 30 threads to go.

I had my needlework group, my book club, my walking group and the writing group all meeting this week, plus a visit to the massage therapist, a book reading by Lisa Moore and a trip out to Waterville to get kindling for the woodstove.

In the needlework group I took a piece of knitting that I have been working on forever, or at least since 2001. That's almost forever. I had not been at the group for quite some time so there was some catching up to do with old knitter friends. One person asked about the weaving and then it turned out that one of the newer members of the group is a retired professional weaver who offered to help me wind the warp on my loom. Winding the warp can be done singlehandedly but is better done with another person, so that offer is fabulous. Hope she's not holding her breath for me to call because I'm nowhere near ready for that step.

In the book club we discussed Room, a novel about a fairly awful situation that does not dwell on the unpleasant details and is in fact quite uplifting. Some members did not want to read the book because they knew the topic and couldn't bear to have to read about it, and then were pleasantly surprised that the book itself just wasn't that awful. A sensitive and insightful look at how one adjusts to "normal life" after having lived a very abnormal life for an extended period of time. Our next book is History's People by Margaret MacMillan which I have already started reading. The second chapter is called Hubris and is about leaders who are so convinced of their own rightness that they cannot brook any compromise or opposition. I've just started that chapter and I have to say the individuals described remind me of no one so much as Donald Trump. The book was written well before the last American presidential election campaign so I'm pretty sure the author did not have that intention, but it is interesting.

The walking group went to the KenWo golf course and we did a circuit that avoided the worst of the ice. Hapi loved it. Someone else brought their dog, a little dog that she kept on leash at first but eventually let loose and he charged after Hapi. He seemed to enjoy following the much bigger dog around.

The massage therapist seems to be doing me some good, at least for several days after the appointment the pain was much reduced. I'll be going back in a few days.

A whole bunch of us from the needlework, book club and walking groups met at the book reading and decided to go out for a drink afterward, it was quite fun. I haven't been out with a group of people for drinks in a very long time.

With all the socializing I just didn't have much time for weaving or writing, so those things are stalled for the moment. It is hard to find the right balance of socializing and getting stuff done that requires a certain amount of solitude. I did meet with the writing group but I didn't read anything. It is just about as interesting to listen to other people's stories. It's like having a bunch of soap operas on the go, I want to hear the next installment.

The trip to pick up kindling also involved walking Hapi in a new location. We were following the rail trail which is long and straight and boring, but there was a side trail onto a large farm. Basically the roads that the farmer uses to get around to his various fields, all posted with signs: Private Property, Stay On Trail. So I turned northward in hopes that this farm extended to the river and the trail would take us there. It actually extended across the river but I only went as far as the bridge and then looped back to the rail trail. It was a cloudy day, not quite foggy but with low clouds that obscured the view so I actually got disoriented by the twisting of the farm roads. I ended up back on the rail trail but headed the wrong direction before I figured out my mistake. On the way back to the car we passed several industrial sites--scrap yards, storage yards, truck depots, the rear sides of woodworking and other establishments. Hapi left the trail to explore those places. Industrial wasteland is more interesting to her than a narrow straight trail from point A to B. I'd catch glimpses of her between the trees loping along looking like a wolf. She got back to the car before I did and was waiting for me.

I didn't get much sleep last night because Hapi decided to sleep on my bed and she takes up a lot of space. If I try to kick her off she waits until I have fallen asleep and then jumps back on, waking me up in the process. I tried to sleep in another room but couldn't do it, I woke up after a few hours and just couldn't get back to sleep until I moved back to the other bed. She could easily sleep in her doghouse outdoors because her fur coat is so thick, but then she would think I was punishing her for something. The older she gets the more she wants to just be with me. The first couple of years that I had her she never came indoors and aside from walking and feeding her it didn't really feel like I had a dog, just a canine presence in the backyard.

Today I am simmering the carcass of a Christmas turkey that a neighbour gave me. She was going to throw it out so I asked for it. It's not nearly done yet but smells wonderful. There was quite a lot of meat left on the carcass so I will probably eat some of that tonight, maybe make a couple of turkey sandwiches and then throw the rest back into the broth after I've removed the bones.

The Wolf Moon

We had a blizzard with lots of snow. I went snowshoeing.

Then we had a thaw and it all melted. I went walking.

This latest full moon was called the Wolf Moon. Full moons always bring higher high tides, this afternoon I was out on the dike along the Cornwallis River with my dog and took some photos of the high tide.

This was higher upriver than I usually go, it is strange to see the river almost overflowing its banks due to a high tide.

I was there for the turning of the tide, shortly after I photographed the high water I could see it visibly ebbing and the current of the river became quite strong again.

My latest weaving project is still progressing slowly. I have threaded the heddles and have started sleying the reed. That is going only marginally faster than threading the heddles.

I am working on my fantasy story again, I wrote a chapter for my last writing group meeting and started a following chapter but quickly bogged down. My main character is confused about what to do next and apparently so am I. However I got some encouragement and suggestions from the group which I will work on.

One of our members started this morning's session by telling us what happened to him last week. He read his story to us and then he says he remembered nothing after that until he was standing outside looking for his car. He said he was confused about where he was, what he was doing, even what day it was. He managed to get home and told his wife about it, she was concerned. Then he phoned one of our writing group and asked her if he had been behaving oddly, because he had no memory at all of how our meeting went after his turn reading out loud. She encouraged him to call his doctor which he did, and the doctor thought he had had a mini-stroke. He has decided to do nothing about it; aside from the memory loss he doesn't feel anything else happened to him. His doctor thinks the mini-stroke may have been triggered by stress due to the nature of the material he was reading to us.

I don't remember anything odd about his behaviour or appearance last week. I was sitting beside him and I noticed nothing. I know we spoke briefly to each other but I can't actually say whether it was before or after he read his piece. It is disconcerting to think that he was having a significant health event only a few feet away from me and I noticed nothing.

Watershed

Hapi on the earthen dam of the Wolfville watershed lake

I often take Hapi to the Wolfville Reservoir, which is really only an emergency reservoir now as Wolfville gets its water from drilled wells near the dykes. When I lived here in the '70s and '80s there was no public access because it really was the town water reservoir. But the real source of water was the Wolfville Reservoir up on Gaspereau Mountain, which was piped down the mountain, across the Gaspereau Valley and the Wolfville Ridge to the town. I don't know if it fed the in-town reservoir or went somewhere else, but the pipe is no longer maintained and the old reservoir on Gaspereau Mountain became the Nature Conservancy, or Wolfville Watershed.

The photo above is the Old Wolfville Reservoir at the heart of the Conservancy/Watershed, which Hapi and I visited yesterday. We followed a couple of trails along the lake and into the woods. It was a cold clear day and there were quite a lot of other people (and dogs) there too. The trails were quite icy. I met three people and their two dogs on one trail, they asked if the trail circled around the lake and I told them that it did not. I've been on this trail several times, initially in hopes that it did circle around the lake but now I know that it does not. So they said that in that case they would head back to the lake and follow the Havey Trail. I'd never heard of that trail so I asked them where it was and they gave me directions. We didn't go, but I made a note of it for another time.

On the trail

At one point I lost Hapi and had to backtrack to find her. She'd found a frozen rabbit carcass and was busy scarfing it down, ignoring my insistent calls to Come. She did not eat her supper last night and this morning her tummy is growling loudly, I do believe it is the rabbit.

On the way home I deeked into the grocery store one last time in 2016 and met a couple, Peter and Anne, that I hadn't seen in a while. We chatted about various things including weaving (turns out Peter is a weaver which I didn't know before) and various aging issues. They had moved from their farm into town and I asked them how that was working out. They found living in town a big adjustment but the town they moved to was a good choice. Anne invited me to drop in any time, "the tea kettle is always on."

I have survived Christmas and New Years for another year. I was invited to two parties for New Years Eve, one of them was a group of single women and the other a large group of Gaspereau neighbours. I did not have the emotional stamina for a large party of mostly couples so had my heart set on the other party, but unfortunately the host came down with a fever and had to cancel. So I didn't go to any parties. I did go for an hour up the street to a neighbour's place and we shared glasses of The Captain (Captain Morgan rum, her favourite). Edna urged me to drink more and was appalled that I put more coke than rum in the glass, but her son admonished her to stop bullying me and let me set my own limits. He's a teetotaller. He had a late Christmas present for Hapi, a squeaky tennis ball, but it was way past Hapi's bedtime and she was only marginally interested.

I went to bed before midnight and there must have been fireworks because when I woke up at 3.00am she was camped outside my bedroom door (she usually sleeps in the basement) and had peed in the kitchen. I invited her onto my bed, she would never come in or get up on the furniture without being invited. But she did get up on the bed and hung out there for maybe half an hour. Then I guess her courage returned and she spent the rest of the night outside in her doghouse.

Hapi recovering her courage

I have started dressing the loom for another project, I will post photos another time. Basically a warp for two small rugs in a goose eye pattern with a warp in two colours, a dark blue grading into a dark red from one side to the other. It is experimental in several ways: the warp colours, the sett which is tighter than it should be in hopes of making a stiffer rug, and the width which is actually wider than the loom itself but I think will shrink down to the allowable width (27") hopefully before it winds around the cloth roller at the front of the loom. Since the warp is long enough for two rugs, I may vary the basic goose eye pattern for the second one to something else, we'll see.

The ice, the mail and a rug

We had a large amount of snow on the ground last week, I thought we were in for a white Christmas for sure. But over the past weekend we went from -15C to +15C (with rain) and then back to -15C (briefly) so most of the snow is gone and what remained froze. Most of the trails are now quite icy. But with sun and temperatures this side of zero in the daytime I expect we'll lose the remaining little bit of snow before Christmas.

I took the picture above at the reservoir; the pond that used to be full of ducks is now covered by ice so smooth and glassy you can see the reflection of surrounding trees in it.

In October I ordered a used book online that just arrived today. Very disappointing because it is not what it purported to be. I wanted the revised edition of A Handweaver's Pattern Book and got the first edition, which is a very different book. The revised edition is more extensive and errors in the first edition have been corrected. I ordered it form Abe Books but it came from Powell's Books in Portland Oregon. I called their 1-800 number and they apologized for it not being what it was supposed to be and told me they were unable to fulfill the order correctly, so they would refund my money and I could keep the book and perhaps pass it on to someone else who might like it, since I already have a copy. Very nice of them but still disappointing, I was really looking forward to getting my hands on this book.

I have now emailed a place in Ontario that says they have the book, both in new and possibly used copies. The used copies would be cheaper but at this point I am prepared to pay the extra for the newer version. From their online description they at least seem to understand the difference between the first and second editions so I await their response with optimism. Unfortunately they are closed over the holiday season so I doubt I will hear from them before January.

In my town we don't have door-to-door mail delivery, we pick up our mail at the Post Office. I read and hear about the controversy around discontinuing home mail delivery in favour of group postal boxes, and how it will be so hard on disabled and elderly citizens. But here, we have never had home delivery, going to the Post Office is the accepted way to get your mail. And it is such a social occasion: you meet people there, it's a great source of local gossip, and they give biscuits to dogs. My dog is hugely in favour of that. I would be far more concerned it they shut down the local Post Office. A Postal Outlet has opened in the neighbouring drugstore but it is not the same thing at all, all you get is mail and postal supplies, no socializing, no gossip, no dog biscuits.

I have devised a rug pattern in my head for my next weaving project. It is too difficult to draw it on paper (I wish I had software to do it for me) so I can only go by numbers (how many warp threads of each colour in what order, which heddles they must be threaded through) and hope for the best. It will be quite wonderful if it turns out more or less how I imagine it. I was just going to do a short warp—one rug—but then thought I might go for broke and make it a long warp. Once again I may be biting off more than I can chew, but I have a hard time keeping things simple.

I've been sick with a cold the past week and quite lacking in motivation so consequently I have not done the necessary sewing to complete the first project. I should really finish that before starting a new project I guess, but I am concerned that if I leave warping the loom for too long I will forget my hard-earned knowledge of how to do it.

End of season fatigue

Weaving project uncut: this only shows half the length.

Weaving and Writing Fiction classes both ended last week. Managed to get the weaveing project in class done and off the loom. Not totally done, it still needs to be cut up and hemmed, which hasn't happened yet. The instructor insisted that I not try to hem by hand but rather sew it up by machine; I have a sewing machine but have never used it, never learned how to. When I bought it free sewing lessons were thrown in to the deal, but I never took advantage. And never learned in school Home Ec courses either because I was so scared of the machine that I always traded off any necessary machine sewing for hand sewing with classmates. I only bought the sewing machine because I thought I should really come to terms with my fear and learn how to sew, but beyond buying the machine I never took the next obvious step. Until this week.

I told a friend about not knowing how to machine sew and she immediately offered a sewing lesson, going so far as to actually book a time to do it. She came over to my house this week and proceeded to show me how to use the machine. She actually got me kind of excited about the idea of learning to sew, she was looking over my machine and its accompanying manual and expressed admiration for all that it could do. Apparently it is even capable of serging, as well as machine embroidery and regular straight and zigzag stitches. Who knew. So now it sits on my dining table awaiting my attentions, I even have an old bedsheet to practice on before I commit to actually cutting and hemming my weaving project. However it has been a busy week and I have not had the time. I hope I don't lose enthusiasm for the project before I finally have the time to engage with it.

The writing class is one I have been in for several years now. I'm working on a never-ending fantasy story. It is so long that it will have to be a 'trilogy' or some other mode of dividing up a very long story. I wish I could have started my writing 'career' with a short story, or at least a novel with a beginning, middle and end in some sort of real time. My interest in completing it waxes and wanes, but since I have nothing else to write about, it's kind of that or nothing. I am nearing an 'ending' (of the first book of the series), I wake in the middle of the night thinking about how that will happen. I'm planning to take a break from it over the holiday season, too many other things I want to do.

The writing class has now spawned several writing groups, one of which I belong to. We call it The Sobey Sessions, since we meet in the community room of a local grocery store of that name (Sobey's). Initially it was just to keep some of us going between classes (the course runs for a couple of months once a year), but it has taken on a life of its own.

I am not particularly well. I think I know what is wrong and I don't think it is anything a doctor can help me with so I haven't bothered to go. It involves extreme fatigue, which means that I really have limited energy and can accomplish only so much in a day. My dog relishes her long walks and that pretty much uses up the limited energy I have, making me a little resentful of her but also guilty that I can't do more for her. She spends many hours lying around looking bored. I hate that I can't just let her run loose, that I have to be her jailer.

I have been taking her regularly to the reservoir park which is an off-leash dog park with two large ponds. Used to be the town water reservoir but is now kept only as an emergency backup. A whole lot of mallards have been staying there this fall in two groups, one on each pond. The larger pond froze over a week ago, the ducks in that pond moved over to the smaller pond.

Before: the ducks on the small pond before the ducks on the larger pond joined them.

Then it turned quite cold and Hapi and I went elsewhere for her walk. Saturday morning we went back to the reservoir and most of the ducks were gone, maybe twenty or so still left on the small pond (there were hundreds before).

After: all that's left of both ponds of ducks.

There was ice forming around the edge of that pond, it may be frozen over by now. I will miss the ducks, their cheerful quacking brightened my mornings.

A day in the city

I finished the weaving project on my loom at home a few days ago. Took it off the loom, knotted the fringe and cleaned up the loose ends. The loom is empty and ready for a new project. I'm thinking another rug, wider but maybe not as long, not sure yet. I can use at least two more rugs in the house, one for the bathroom and one for the hallway. This one I think will go on the floor of the loom room. And if there is still yarn left, then maybe another one for the bedside in the basement (true confessions: I sleep in the basement because it is dark and cool and it is my dog's preferred sleeping room).

Yesterday I went to the Big City to do some weaving. I realized that I was not going to complete my project by the end of the last class (next Wednesday) and was going to have to come in another day to do that, but parking is only free weekends and evenings and all my weekends in December are spoken for, so that meant I either had to come in the evening or this weekend. I hate driving home late at night, it is the one thing I loathe about going to the city for this class. And Sunday (today) the weather was supposed to be bad, so by process of elimination I had to go yesterday, on Saturday.

I took Hapi with me. She had to stay in the car while I did my weaving, which took about three hours, by the time that I got a snack at the Farmers' Market next door and waited for the centre's doors to open at 11.00 am (the website said 10.00 am so I arrived at 10.30). I got enough weaving done that I think I will be able to finish my project on Wednesday. If not, then I don't know whether I will find time to finish before 2017.

After I completed the weaving I took Hapi for a walk through the city downtown to the NSCAD art supply store to see if they had yarn I could use for weaving at a good price. Specifically, I was looking for 2/8 cotton thread. They did indeed have it but in a limited range of colours. I bought seven half-pound spools.

Hapi pranced regally the whole way, garnering lots of stares. She is a large proud dog, beautiful and she knows it. We returned to the car via the waterfront walkway. Then I drove to Point Pleasant Park, a very large park on a peninsula with views of the harbour and out to sea. The interior of the park is wooded with lots of off-leash trails. In fact, the only place dogs are required to be on leash is the trail along the shore of the park, the rest is pretty much an off leash area. It is wonderful, in my opinion as a dog owner. Dogs run around free and there are many of them of all shapes and sizes. Hapi had never been there and was I think quite amazed. So many dogs, so little time! They all have to check each other out and Hapi was zigzagging from one dog to the next. Lots of garbage bins for disposing of doggie-do, which makes the walk so civilized for owners. Dogs off leash are happy and the whole space has such a joyful air. I can appreciate that non-dog-lovers might not appreciate this but I do.

Finally, to complete the Big City trip, I stopped at the Lebanese Bakery to pick up some food items available only there. The aroma of spices that greets you when you first open the door is wonderful, I browse the shelves slowly to enjoy the scent as long as possible. Since it was late in the day some of the items I wanted were sold out but I expected that. Will have to go back another time, not a hardship. Across the street from the bakery is a Latin cafe that sells Mexican food in a tiny grocery attached to the restaurant. I picked up two packages of frozen corn tortillas, one for me and one for a friend (if she doesn't want the package then I will have to eat them myself, also not a hardship).

I got everything done that I wanted, and I think I made it up to Hapi for having to sit in the car for three hours with a prance through downtown and a social outing in the park. I went home and had pizza and beer to cap off a perfect day.

Oh my aching back, it must be Thursday.

Thursday morning, tired and sore. Got home late, went to bed late with back pain from three hours of driving and three hours of weaving, didn't sleep that well and woke up early hardly able to move. So I'm in no rush to get out the door and walk the dog, even though I have run out of milk and coffee (!!!). Good news is that this past summer I managed to wean myself off of milk in my coffee so running out of milk is not so bad, and there was just enough coffee grounds for this morning and maybe tomorrow. Which means I can postpone the milk (and dog) run until this afternoon :-).

I did remember to take a picture of the weaving project:

Now you can see the plaid. Already I can see "room for improvement", if I do this again I would arrange the colour blocks a little differently. And definitely change the sett to something a little looser. But I guess the day I stop seeing room-for-improvement I'll be dead.

Here are some duck pictures from yesterday's walk:

There were a whole bunch of ducks perched in this tree, but by the time I got the picture set up there were only these there left, The Fearless Three.

My dog is out of the picture frame but that is what these ducks are interested in. They could care less about me, it's all about the dog.

I was watching some of them playing, they like to skip along the surface, as if about to take off flying but they don't. One duck had a variation on the theme, she swam under the surface like a loon between skips. Looked like she was doing the Australian crawl, impressive.

I used to watch duck families in a lagoon on the waterfront of New Westminster, the baby ducks could swim under water but the adults couldn't, all they could do was bob around with their tails in the air. I think as ducklings grow up they become more buoyant and can't swim underwater anymore, so instead they do that bobbing thing, trying to reach down with their bills. So that duck swimming underwater yesterday was very talented, very unusual. Or just not that buoyant.

Weaving at home and away

I am trying to get back into blogging. Have spent way too much time on Facebook and getting a little frustrated at how much of my time I'm pouring into a black hole there. An FB friend recently deactivated his account due to obnoxious comments on his posts, which got me thinking about deactivating too. Not that I get obnoxious comments, but too much time spent following links.

Anyway, the blog. Still here after all these years. I tried to fill in some of the gap with pictures, so if you want you can scroll back to see them. I got out of blogging because basically I didn't think I had anything to say anymore. But apparently I do.

I am taking a weaving course in the big city. There's nothing available locally so I am going once a week into Halifax for this course. It's in the evening and the class itself is three hours plus three hours driving time. At this time of year that driving is mostly in the dark and I am sufficiently old now that driving after dark is not my favourite pastime. Didn't use to bother me but now it does.

So here are some pictures:

This is the warp, on a 45" counterbalance loom. It is just shy of 500 warp ends of 2/8 cotton (tiny) and it was a huge amount of work getting it all threaded on the loom. The warp is long enough to do 3 tea towels. The plan is a plaid pattern in 2/2 twill. Because I went with 28 ends per inch (epi), it may be a bit stiff to function as tea towels, I probably should have gone with 24 epi which would have meant significantly less threading to do. Oh well.

The main reason I am taking this course is to (re)learn warping the loom. The hardest part of weaving is getting the warp onto the loom, and there are multiple methods practiced by different weavers in different places. I have a loom at home and I've taken courses before but I'm a slow learner (plus I think I've learned a different warping method each time, which doesn't help).

While I am taking the course in the city I am also setting up my loom at home, so here are some pictures of that effort. It's a much simpler project so it takes less time and effort but hopefully it reinforces what I am learning in class.

The project at home is going to be a rug, about 2' x 6'. It's also a 2/2 twill, but in wool at 8 epi. Much more manageable. The loom is a 30" counterbalance, I don't have room for anything bigger.

I forgot to take pictures of my weaving in last week's class, hopefully I'll remember this week. I think I bit off way more than I can chew in 10 weeks, I will probably have to go to the city in December or January to finish it. In any case I have woven as much in class as I have at home but that's not nearly enough. As I said, bit off more than I could chew.