Happy and blessed Resurrection Day to all.  This is the wonderful day we celebrate as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ rose from the grave after defeating death. 

He willingly went to the cross to suffer and die, not for his own sin as He was sinless.  But for our sins.  And folks, not just for our sins we have already committed, but for our sins we haven't done yet. 

He knows everything.  He knows how weak our bodies are.  He knows what we need and it is Him and only Him.

Thank you Lord for your sacrifice on my behalf.  Thank you for your mercy and your grace to me, a hopeless sinner.  Thank you Lord for dying in my place so that I don't have to.  Thank you Lord for loving me so much you want me to be with you for eternity.

Praise the Lord, oh my soul.

Nearly finished with my pygora / rayon scarf this week.  I've finished weaving it and just have to hem the end, then cut it off the loom and twist the fringe.  After that washing, ironing and its done.  It is pretty and I hope it will look nice when finished.  Pix later.

We worked out in the yard a little today.  I was telling a friend how much I loved being over in the pasture today, walking the fence line with the dogs, checking out the barn and everything else.  We've had several deer over there nearly every day and saw a lot of deer sign (poop) in various places.  We also saw some poop that looked similar to deer but much larger and a very light color.  Wondering what might have been there.  Whoever (whatever) it was had to jump the fence (about 5' tall), so I don't think it was a moose as I've seen them step over our fence when we had a lot of snow, but never on bare ground.  Checked the internet to see what kind it might have been and I guess it is moose.  Unsure how it got over there though.  

According to the internet, some people even make earrings out of it.  Not me, thanks!   Eeeuuuuuuuu!

When I told my friend about how much we enjoyed being outside after a long winter and how one of my favorite things is the first time I can mow the grass, being the cartoonist he promptly sent me the following picture he drew.  He got it right on!  Right down to my hat, scarf, boots and best of all Bella sleeping on my bed.   Too funny.  Thanks Jerry!

My hand dyed pygora scarf is coming along, slowly but nicely.  The pink in the picture is where it was space dyed and it turns out like planned stripes.   The yarn doesn't feel quite as soft as I'd like, even though I used the black rayon accent yarn.  I'm really hoping it will soften up a lot after its washed.  But I always say that.  And it does.

I'm only able to weave about an hour a day, maybe three days per week.  So many other things to do now that spring is right around the corner.  Also a trip into town takes us nearly all day with errands.  Then we have to eat, of course.  We've discovered some really great places to eat this year.  Not all are restaurants, but more like the Costco food court.  They have got to have the very best pizza!  And hot dogs!  And berry parfaits.  Guess I'm hungry.

A received a gift of a mangle iron from a friend today.  No pix yet, I don't have it in my studio but it is an older model and works good.  This will save a lot of time when making scarves so I don't have to keep running back to the house to iron, then back to the studio.  We will be able to use it on woven scarves after washing them and also for silk scarves that we've hand painted.  I usually iron the silk ones twice, once to set the paint and the last time to iron out the wrinkles.

My daughter and I got our new chicken coop assembled.  I took this picture before I got the roof on but its very cute and the same color as our house and studio.  :-)

It said it was large enough for four chickens, but I'm thinking two, possibly three.  Two nesting boxes in the rear, the small section with the little door is for roosting,  the rest of it is open all underneath so they don't feel so much like they are locked up.  We put it in the fenced garden and I hope to let them out to run around but we'll need to put some chicken wire along the bottom so they can't get through those large squares in the field fence.  Right now we don't have any chickens yet and we covered it up with a tarp, since we are still having snow / rain / wind / sun / gropple (those little tiny snow balls that fall like rain).  No roosters this year so no baby chicks either.  We've got too many hawks that swoop down to eat our chicks.  A couple years ago we lost every one of our hens.  I guess those silly roosters (seven!) were too fast for the hawks because they never caught any of them unfortunately.  And the roosters wake us up at 3:30am every morning.  Waaay too early for me.  But we will have lots and lots of eggs.

Hopefully our egg storage will work out.  Don't wash off the bloom from the eggs, just the poopy if there is any.  Then rub them with mineral oil and they should keep a long time without refrigeration.  We shall see, I'll let you know.

Now that spring is right around the corner I'm feeling so much more energetic these days.  Finally finished tying some lace weight hand dyed pygora yarn to what was left of the merino / silk warp from my last scarf, the white one.  I miss my pygora goats very much, but they would call to us so early in the morning.  It is nice and peaceful these days without them.  But their fiber is beautiful and soft, much like cashmere. 


For once, I've remembered to take pictures as I progress with the weaving process.  Here's a picture of what is involved in tying a new warp to an old one.  I don't believe I will do this again as it seems so much more work than just putting on a new warp.  Since the old warp was just plain weave, I may be incorrect about that if it was an intricately designed project.



Also did more silk scarves this week with a friend.  Here is her scarf.  It always seems like an experiment when trying a new technique.  This was her first time painting silk.  She is the go-to person if you want to do any tie dye, but she was anxious to give the silk a try.  These scarves are hand painted, not hand dyed.  There's a huge difference.

Its about a two day process and you don't need to cook the paint like is done with dye.  Just a little drying in between to give the paint a chance to adhere well to the silk fibers.  Then iron to really set the paint, wash, iron again.  They are so soft and beautiful.

Got a shipment of some new interesting yarns today.  I'm thinking of doing some woven scarves of a plain color and using a few strands of one of these for an accent.  It will be a while before I do this as I'm still working on getting the merino / silk / pygora warp on my loom.  I'm not very fast but love doing it.