Carding Bliss

I cannot believe the thought of making my own wool blends is keeping me up at night.  I got a new toy yesterday.  My dear friend Sheila Mann (alpacabarrio.com) happened to have a drum carder which she rarely uses and said I could store it here and use it if I wanted too.  She brought it to me yesterday!

I knew it would be cool but I had no idea how fun it would be.  Sid was also over the moon carding wool until 9:30 last night!  We took a bag of bits of scrap wool and started running it through the carder.  We ended up with beautiful purple and green rainbow wool.  We carded some uncarded green dyed lamb locks and got a huge bat of beautiful grass green!  First thing this morning, the little one woke up and said "Mom, do you want to card some more wool?"

We picked brown, red and orange shades to create a colour I want to use for some chickens I plan to make.

This is the batt after the first run through.

We carded it about 3 times to get this blend.

Now the possibilities are endless!  I can create custom batts, custom colours and I have to admit that this morning I was shopping on line and found a local distributor of environmentally dyes.  Yup, I am going to start dying my own wool too.  If I can get the hang of this, I might even start selling some hand dyed, and hand carded wool in my shop on facebook.   My supplier over at Caanan Mohair (Shirley) is happy to sell me washed fleece for 10.00 a lb.  I will need an extension on the house to keep my fibres :)  I will not buy a sheep, I will not buy a sheep, I will not buy a sheep ;)

Here is my newest mobile, commissioned and created for a good friend. 

 Branch is 16", rocket is 10" and earth is the size of a baseball!

Must go do some school stuff then the little one and I are going to play with the wool again.

Have a great day!

Another Tourney Under Her Belt

Wow this tournament was awesome.   A long drive to Gracefield but one of those experiences you cannot replace.  First of all, the kids paid one entrance fee and could compete in kata, kumite (fighting) and synchro kata.  The kids have never competed in synchro kata before but Sigung put the kids in groups of three and said,

"Do your stuff!". 

Tristan, Sidney and Reece were to do Kata one for the judges.  A few run throughs before the start of the competition and they were as ready as they were going to be.

How did they do?  Awesome!  Check out the video here:  Synchro Kata 1 

They took 4th place out of 6 teams.   Here is the amazing video of the first place team (our kajukenbo girls of course!)  First Place synchro kata

Team R. S. T. (reece, sid and tristan) after their 4th place finish.  Tristan is a homeschooling friend of Sid's and Reece is one of Sid's best friends.  They make a great team and they look super sharp!

Next up was kata and fighting.  In this picture the girl on the left is Sid's arch Nemesis.... Jade.  She is the girl who beat Sid by .1 in the last tourney in Kata's and who totally dominated the fighting.  Sid was very concerned to see her in this division again. 

Sid was called second for Kata and was so perfect and precise until she lost her balance and stumbled.  She smoothed over it beautifully and carried on.

Due to the stumble she did not place for the first time.  Next was fighting and it was a direct elimination fight.  The first two fighters out of a group of 8 were Sid versus..... Jade. 

Jade scored her 3 points in the first minute and the fight was over.   Mentally Sid was beat before the Kata's and fighting started.  She was upset that Jade was there and Jade was too good and Jade shouldn't be in her division and it's not fair!!!!  So this brought about some really core life lesson conversations.  It turned out to be really cool and Sid now has a game plan for the next tourney in two weeks.

Regardless of her own disappointment, Sid was still really happy for Reece who scored second in Kata and fourth in fighting.  The lessons she walked away with this past weekend were: 

 It's always good to have a girlfriend by your side

and more importantly,

 There will always be a Jade. 

There will always be someone better than you but how you handle that is up to you.  You can avoid them or you can learn from them.  Sid has decided that instead of just waiting for Jade to move up a category, she will train to do a more difficult kata next tournament so she can try to score more points than Jade!  With her motivation and intensity I am sure Sid will give her best effort!

Here is another video of one of the kids from the club in his final fight.  I had to post this!  He was being taunted all fight by the kid in white.  The kid in white had no sportsmanship and was just rude.  Watch how Kaleb scored the winning point!  kalebs awsome final point

An now for a cute quite moment....

I have not posted anything with the dogs lately so I wanted to post Sid and Lilly.  I love these two together!

Dog School Elementary

See you soon!

Mysteries of the Bog

A very balmy day in the bog provided us with much needed outdoor time and several interesting mysteries!

Why does the fungus LOVE this tree so much?

 Why does this Chickadee like bread but not bacon?

 Why is my lens so awesome that it can almost see the people smiling in the windows?

Why are catails so versatile?

 What is she shooting her cattail bow and arrow at?

 Why is Sidney's horse, Aireda, invisible?

 What huge bird made these incredibly large foot prints?

 And the best mystery of all?   Who now lives in this once active bee hive?  (original pic taken May 2012)

Thanks for the awesome day and awesome company my friends!

Getting Through the February Blahs

We are sort of done with winter.  I hasn't been a cold one or an icy one but come this time of year as the days start to get longer, I long to be outside more.

When life gives you snow.... get out and enjoy!

I shall conquer you!

 King of the castle!

Leading the charge

C'mon Mom, try and take our hill

Meanwhile at Karate, training continues.  Sid can climb anything and made it to the top of Mr. Kick Me.  Sigung was so impressed her duct taped her there.  Then Justin got on top and the two of them were duct taped together. 

Sid has been training a lot against bigger kids and is starting to find holes.  She fought Naomi, a 10 year old, twice yesterday and won both fights.

Here she shows her flying front jump kick!

Kata's and fighting are just part of karate.  They also do lots of conditioning and balance games.  There is always something new and fun going on.

At home we have been working really hard on school.  Lots of science, math, English and art.  Above is a clay cat Sid made as a pencil holder.  It has been glazed and fired and is the centerpiece on our table.

Valentines is just around the corner so we have been doing a few Valentines crafts too.  We still LOVE the chalk pastels. Such intense colours.

And while Sid does her Karate I have been bringing my felting.  This is the most recent creation which should be up in the store today.  Rainbow Sheep Mobile!

More training this week for this weekends big tourney.  More school, more friend time, more felting and more fun!

Another Neighbour!

We used to visit Bearbrook farms when they were at their other location but it wasn't often because it was a bit out of the way.  Then they moved really close.  We were able to ride our bikes down the road and see the farm but the last time we did that they still had not moved the animals.  This week we needed some elderberry and thought we'd pick up some sausage at the same time so we trekked over to the farm.

What we quickly discovered are amazing neighbours who have welcomed us to come and visit anytime and drive or walk around all the enclosures to visit with their animals.  How could we pass up a wonderful invitation like that?!  The next day we dressed in our woolies and drove up the road for some chilly fun.

Above are Elk, from the deer family.  They are ruminants (they have 4 stomachs) like their close cousins but the males grow to be about 700lbs unlike deer who reach about 300lbs.  The Elk also get a thicker winter coat so they can handle the open fields and wind a bit better than our regular white tailed deer.  The male elk are called bulls not bucks and the females and babies are cows and calves not does and fawns. 

 We also had the opportunity to visit the buffalo.  They look so fluffy and warm even though it was -20 with the wind.  The little guy above is super small, he had a rough go of it when he was born.  His mom was too young to have babies but accidentally got pregnant and gave birth in the fall instead of the spring.  He was born the fall of 2011 but is still super tiny.  They had to winter him and his mom in the barn last year so this is his first full winter outside.

This little buffalo was born this past fall.  I love the little horns.  These guys will stay on the farm until they are four years old then they will.... well let's not think about that.

There are peacocks, geese, ducks, rabbits and many more wonderful animals to visit at the farm.  Once it gets warm enough I can see us visiting weekly.  It is great having country neighbours!