Friday's Hunt v 2.17

Almost didn't make it under the time limit this week.  Again, it's been a busy week and I was away this past weekend at a yarn spinning retreat.  I just got home, and here's my Friday's Hunt post, to keep myself going on the meme hosted by Eden Hills!  The three prompts for this week are "Starts with Q," "Week's Favourite" and "Fall or Spring."

Starts with Q
As I mentioned, I was at the Maritime Spinners' Retreat this weekend, and I had a great time connecting with fellow spinners and knitters.  We were able to participate in a fibre challenge by spinning 4 oz of merino fibre any way we wanted, and then creating a project with the yarn we had spun.  I needed to make something QUICK because I received my fibre quite late, and then had very little time to get it finished.  Spinning coiled yarn is fairly quick, but it also makes a short amount of yardage due to the structure of the yarn.  Short yardage meant a smaller project, and thus a quicker project!  I decided to use my rigid heddle loom to weave the coiled yarn into a short runner or even a neck scarf, just to emphasize the nature of the coiled yarn.  So, this was my quick project.  I'm hoping to do a blog post soon showing all the other projects made with the same fibre.

I like the way it turned out - it makes me think of ocean waves or ripples in a pond.  I might use the woven fabric to make something else eventually, when I have more time.

Week's Favourite
While in PEI for the retreat, I visited McAusland's Woollen Mill, where they make yarn as well as a lovely blankets.  The mill was built in 1868.  It was originally a lumber mill and then became a wool mill.  One of my favourite pictures is this shot showing bobbins of maroon coloured 3-ply yarn which are waiting to be skeined.  I love the contrast of the maroon and the steel and the wood of the empty bobbin.

Here's a bonus shot of the skeining machine where those bobbins are headed next!

Fall
Since I'm in the northern hemisphere, it's definitely fall for me!  Here's a picture of a young maple on our slope in the front of the house.  I do love the fall colours!  I had hoped to take some nice fall pictures at the retreat but it rained buckets all weekend - not very conducive to pictures outside.

Friday's Hunt v 2.16

I'm late again with Friday's Hunt.  I almost didn't get to it this week - just super busy!  This is going to be a quick one!

As usual, we have three prompts provided by Eden Hills:  Starts with P, Week's Favourite, and Whole.

Starts with P
I am a pajama kind of girl.  I love pajamas - especially warm, fuzzy, fluffy ones.  It's that time of year when I get out the warmer pajamas because the temperatures are dipping down at night and we've already had a few frosts.  Sometimes, I even work in my pajamas, because they're comfortable, and because I work from home, so nobody minds!

I was at Walmart recently (I really dislike shopping at Walmart because I don't like their business practices and ethics, but I do make the occasional foray there for a certain brand of cappuccino mix that I can't buy at any other store).  I do not normally buy clothing at Walmart, but these pajamas were there and...well, I could not resist.  So, for the letter P, I give you me, in my new raccoon pajamas, sort of pretending to be a raccoon.  They even have a tail, and you can see the raccoon face on the hood, complete with ears!

Really, I love them!  They are so warm and cozy!

Week's Favourite
I have been so busy this week that I haven't taken many pictures.  I took this one on Monday when I took the pictures of the tree that fell down.  The fall colours are really beautiful now.  This picture is one of my burning bushes (Euonymus alatus) that has turned a gorgeous shade of deep reddish-pink, and there were some yellow birch leaves caught in spider webs that really contrasted with the red.  I thought it made a lovely shot.

Here's a bonus shot of the driveway with fall colours so you can see how it looks now.

Whole
I was really stumped for this one, especially with not having taken many pictures this week and being so busy with work - my creative ideas are at a bit of a standstill.  Marc brought home more pallets from work this week.  He has been taking them apart to get wood to build the inside walls of his workshop.  All I can think of for "whole" is that we have a WHOLE LOT of pallets right now, as well as barn boards that he collected from an old shed!  And pallets start with P, too.  Double points!

 There are pallets against the house as shown above, and others in separate piles.

There are also some nice organized piles of pallet boards from those already taken apart.  That is a WHOLE LOT of wood!

Wind Casualty

My work has been really busy lately, and I've been missing my regular bird and plant walks around the garden.  Today I decided to take one of those walks, even though I felt like I didn't have time.  I was pleased to be back from my trip and able to feed the chickadees again.  I noticed a lot of leaves and small branches on the ground as I began walking.  We had some extremely strong winds, and other parts of the Maritime provinces have been very badly damaged by the storm that was the tail end of Hurricane Matthew passing by.  There were record-breaking rainfall totals in several provinces and many power outages.  New Brunswick fared better than Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, but we still had the damaging winds and fairly heavy rain.  I wandered around to the front yard and discovered, much to my surprise, that we had a tree fall down during the night!

The tree was an old spruce that was positioned along the lower edge of our driveway.  When it fell, it broke with about 2 or 3 feet of stump left in the ground.

The tree fell outwards, towards the road, and spans between the road and the bottom curve of our driveway.  The wood doesn't look rotten, so I think it was just the heavy winds combined with the height of the tree.

It's probably a 75 foot long tree, or thereabouts.  These tall spruce have branches without many needles along most of their length, with the green and vibrant part right up at the top where it gets the sunlight.  I wonder if that also makes them a bit top-heavy.

I noticed that it also took down a large bough from a pine tree in its fall.  Here you can see the top (green) part of the spruce pointing to the left, and the pine bough underneath it.

When he came home after work, Marc was able to help me move the pine bough and the top part of the downed tree into the goat and sheep area, so that they could snack on the pine and spruce needles, which they love to eat!  They also eat the lichen on the branches.  Now there is a bit of an open patch where the sunlight comes through - no doubt it will lead to a new tree being able to grow up into the space that has been left.

I was sad to see that we'd lost this tree, but it's part of the natural cycle of woodlands, and many creatures will benefit from the old wood as it decays.   We will have to cut up some of the largest portions and move them, but some of the branches and smaller pieces will stay on the ground.  Here's a young spruce just starting out in the area that the old one was shading - maybe this one will be the next towering tree!