Spinning wheel

Earlier this year my mother moved to a smaller apartment in a retirement home. That meant, that a lot of her things could not go along. My brother and sister-in-law were very good in getting a big box ready with things for me. And an excellent job they did! Nothing got damaged, not even the dishes.
Included was this chip carved box, made by my great grandfather around 1920. It is about 30 cm across and was used by my grandmother, his daughter, as sewing box. He made one of these for all his children.
This spinning wheel was also included.
I had my eye on that since I was a small child. I remember it standing in the hall on the farm. I loved to see how fast I could make the wheel go around. My mother had been after me to take it along years ago, but it would have been very difficult to take in a plane with me.

My brother took it carefully apart and at the same time took pictures. Once it was here, it did not take long to put it together again.
I never knew where it came from, but when I asked my mother it had an interesting history.
During the second world war my grandfather was supervisor for part of the sea dikes in Friesland. He would receive large logs that were used as pilings to be driven in the sea. Groups of these logs were held together by large pieces of oak. Since things were scarce at that time, he would keep these pieces of lumber and take them to the furniture maker in town. Now this was not just any town. This was Hindelopen with a long seafaring history.
Ideas from the long journeys were used to paint the furniture. You can see some of this if you google Hindeloopen
My grandfather ordered a spinning wheel from this furniture maker and friend of his. They had the sheep and it would be my mother's job to spin the wool to be used to knit the socks for her father and 5 brothers. So each evening she sat there spinning away. After the war, when she got married she could take the spinning wheel with her. But by that time she could not stand even the sight of it, so as long as I can remember it stood out of the way, upstairs in a corner.
So now it is here in Canada. I have nver done any spinning, but it would be fun to give it a try. I could spin the wool and Jeannette could knit it. So the roles would be reversed.
In 1/2 hour the corn harvest will start, so it will be busy around here for a few weeks.
I do hope to get some machine quilting done though. 2 small landscapes are ready to go. They will be my practice pieces before I will start with the farm, but that one is also ready to go.

Finally......

I feel like I have accomplished something......finally. The farm is ready for quilting. The foliage of the trees is missing, but I will machine quilt the sky and the tree trunks first. It will be easier that way. Than put the foliage on and quilt the rest. The orchids are also ready for quilting. This morning I took the rest of the paper out of the back and pressed the top. I have not quite decided, but I think that hand quilting would look better. At first I thought some more sashiko in the dark areas of the border might work, but now I think that it might get too busy. Maybe some sashiko with a light colored regular quilting thread. So you can see it, but just barely.

Yesterday I took my quilts in for our bi-annual quilt show and on my way home stopped at the Creative Sisters quilt store in Kitchener. They had their monthly "full moon madness sale"
I did very well and found fabric for the back of the orchid quilt, red and green batiks for the Marnier Compass quilt I will make for our son's wedding and blue batiks for the project below.
I also picked up 3 more returned postcards at the MCC office for my next project. The total now is 53 returned from the 80- send out in the spring. A few straglers might show up, but next week I will start with this project.







These pictures show you the back and front of the 3 cards I picked up.
I have it all figured out in my head, but now we will see if it is possible. The first step is to make a piece in the "trip around the worls" pattern and have that quilted for a base.

It has been a dry year

Yesterday my friend Betty came for a chat. She has moved further away, so we do not see each other very often. But she will stop on her way to Kitchenere once in while. Since her husband and her travel a lot, she decided to store her threads in plastic boxes. That meant, that these 2 (yes, there is a second one) beautiful, wooden spool racks were not used anymore. And they are mine to do with what I please.
I will not have any problems filling them ,though it will not all be threads, once I get Laurence convinced to get the drill out and put some screws in the wall.
She had some beautiful quilts along also. These will be in our bi-annual show next week.
The Waterloo County Quilters Guild will have their quilt show next week, September 28 and 29 at the RIM Center in Waterloo.

The last week has been very busy with other things than quilting. I did get a few orchids done, but there are still 3 more and a few buds.
We are busy with the harvest. The yields have been disappointing, but this morning we heard on the radio, that this year has been the dryest on record in our area, not a surprise really. Going by that, it could have been worse.
The white beans are off and next will be the soybeans and the planting of winterwheat.
The harvest is about 2 to 3 weeks earlier than normal. I try to stay home as much as possible during that time. Mid September has been a safe time to book a trunkshow/workshop, but not this year. In a few hours I will be on my way to Chattam for a trunkshow tonight and a workshop tomorrow.
Got to run. The call to help move equipment from one place to the other just came.
One thing we cannot complain about this week, is the weather. Sunny and up to 28C

Woodstock, Ontario that is

We are in the second week of September and that means for the farmers in this area one thing, the Outdoor Farm Show near Woodstock.Today was our day and we left early, because we had free entry tickets and free breakfasts, thanks to hubbie's involvement with the Soil and Crop Association and a sponsoring Company. And a good breakfast it was! Later it was for lunch to a special, and free, BBQ lunch for poultry producers, also good. In between we could get water, coffee, apples, popcorn, candies, all free. And in the afternoon the wheelbarrows with peanuts in the shell were placed all over the grounds. By missing the cup playing a golf game, I even got a ticket for a free ice cream cone.
Total cost for the three of us ( a niece went along for the day), was 75 cents to upgrate to a waffle cone for the ice cream.
And what did I learn? Not much, just that things change fast in agriculture, just like everywhere else. The machinery is getting bigger and more expensive. More computers and GPS. More rules and regulations.
And hubby had a good look at some pieces of equipment, that he thinks need to be upgraded, but that will have to wait till winter.
It looks like tomorrow will be a sunny day and that means the start of the bean harvest. So more time outside for me.
I have been working on the last orchid and this is what I have accomplished so far. There are 8 more flowers to do.

Last days of summer

We can notice, that summer is nearing the end. Evenings are cooler and at times a jacket comes in handy. Saturday I picked some flowers and leaves around the house. Jenny gave me a handy tool for using with flower arrangements, that I had not used yet.
It did work very well. It fits in the large vase and holds the flowers and leaves straight.
Around it,but inside the vase, I put some hosta leaves to conceal it.
The begonias are at their best, but they are better left outside.
Back to quilting. Whatever I had in mind for the front of the farm did not work. Instead I appliqued one piece along the front, what seems to work much better. I cut the pieces for the border and pinned them on the board. And there it will sit for a few weeks, while I will be looking at it. I wonder if I should quilt the sky, before I will sew the foliage of the trees down. It would make it much easier.


I think I have to machine quilt it, because in places there are a lot of layers of fabric.
And it will need some more hand embroidery.
While I'm taking a break from this one, I picked up the quilt with the orchids. The 2 orchids at the bottom were finished a while ago and by that time I had run out of steam. This time I managed to come up with suitable orchids for the top. This one is a pansy orchid and as the name implies, it looks a lot like a pansy. The leaves and stems are sashiko, done with 2 different kinds of variegated thread. It looks nice, but the extra thickness made it hard to pull the needle through the fabric. I hope to get this side done this week. Than it is one to the last side, all ready to go.

My goal is to get both tops ready for quilting by the end of the month. We have our guild quilt show (Waterloo County Quilters Guild) on the last week-end in September and after that's all behind me, I want to start on the "postcard" quilt for the MCC sale. I'm just hoping for a few more cards to return!

Another quilt to make

A week ago our son phoned us. He let us know, that he was engaged and that we could expect a wedding next year. Great news!
It will be here in Ontario and they are busy planning.
That also means for me that I will have to make another quilt. At least I have almost a year to get it done. This is a picture of the quilt I made for Jeanette and Tony. It is called Raspberry Parfait and Jeanette saw the pattern in Quilters Newsletter Magazine.I realized that I have not a good digital picture. I tried to scan one in, but it just did not work for me. This one was taken at their shower at our church with grandma inspecting my work.
Shawn and Emily are trying to come up with something they would like.
Last week I spend a few days at the YMCA Center in Orillia. The Ontario Quilting Connection had their bi-annual conference there.

The classes were small, but we had a lot of fun. Here they are working hard on the sashiko pieces.
And the food......great. It was good for my waistline that I did not stay any longer.
Once home again I worked on the farm and appliqued the field in the front. I did not really like, it, but kept on, just in case more would be better. Of course it did not improve . I put it up on the wall last night with the hope that it would look better this morning, but surprise, it looked just as bad. So out came the ripper and I took it all out, even before doing the chores. Now it will stay on the wall, till I have found a better solution.

Plodding on

Only 50 more pieces to applique and the top is finished. It is getting time, because there are other projects to start.Last winter I taught 2 postcard workshops for my guild and as a result 80 cards were made and send to volunteers from the Mennonite Central Committee all over the world. They were asked to put a stamp on the card and pop it in the mail Yesterday I picked up more cards and 50 have come back. I do hope that a few more will return.
I have a few ideas and as soon the farm is done, I will start on that project.
I'm busy getting ready to go up north for a few days. I will be teaching at the Ontario Quilting Connection in Orillia. I was there once before and I enjoyed it very much.
But right now we have another emergency. I broke the top of the kitchen faucet and we cannot find a new one that will fill the hole. For the time being we can manage with a vice grip attached to the broken end, but it is not very handy.Laurence has gone to town, again, to see what he can come up with.

Back to the farm

Wheat weaving is out of my system for the time being, so it is back to the farm quilt. I'm finished with most of the embroidery. The next step was the trees. The trunks were cut out of one varigated brown batik, a lot of fiddly work, but not hard. But how to do the foliage? Solid fabric would be too much and snippits of fabric just did not do it.
So the next to try was thread painting. I had done a little of that before , but only very small pieces.
I did have a good variety of green threads on hand and I found some water soluble stabilizer. I made a few small samples and it seemed to work.
I drew the outline on the stabilizer and starting with the darkest thread I would fill in the bottom, using a zig-zag stitch and later a straight stitch. By using these 5 colors I got the results I wanted. The small holes will let some of the sky through I hope.
Once finished I cut around each shape and put it in luke warm water for 15 minutes. By that time the stabilizer has disappeared and, after drying, I can use the pieces on the quilt.


Most of these pieces I did today, so I have not had time to put them in the water. That's why some of the stabilizer is still showing.
Next up will be the biggest tree and I will use a few different colors for that one.
The front is not done yet.
There will be a fence, small meadow and a ditch.

Wheat weavings

Last week I showed you a picture of the different kinds of wheat I had picked on our farm. This was the week to make something with the wheat.
I was at Jeanette's for the week-end to look after the cat and dog, so I figured I had lots of time. What I did not figure on was the cat. She wanted to eat, play, scratch in the wheat. And when I pulled her away, she seemed to be mad at me for the rest of the week-end.
I did manage to get a few done though.
Starting on the left, the first is a 5 and a 6 braid out of unbearded wheat, The next is a small 3 braid ( that's all I had), than 2 out of bearded winter wheat both with 6 braids, just put together different.
This one is out of barley. The straw was very fine and it was hard to work with, but the result is very nice with those long "beards"
This one is also with 6 braids.
It will take some tender loving care. One drop on the floor and it will not look nice anymore( don't ask me how I know).
The last 2 are out of spring wheat. These are larger, because the straw was longer.
The one on the left is made with a flat 7 braid, the one on the right is a double "modiford" an old name for a heart shaped weaving. This one is also done with 6 braids.
There is some wheat left, but I have put it away. It is out of my system, so it is back to applique. Next week I should have some more to show.I'm working on the trees around the farm.
The trunks are easy, but I have to decide how to do the foliage. Thread painting might be the way to go, but I do not have much experience with that.

Wheat harvest

Last week-end was very busy. We should have been in 2 places at the same time. First there was the yearly antique tractor show in Drayton. Since we lacked the time, only this J.D A got to go. If you have a good look you can see the roses behind the tractor. They have been blooming for over a month now.
We did go to a wedding in Algonquin Park, a 41/2 hour drive up north from here.
The weather was beautiful and still is.
Once home again we had to get to work. The wheat was ready, so was the c0mbine.
After the dew was gone on Monday morning, Laurence started to combine.By now, Wednesday, he is almost finished at home. He usually does some custom work for neighbours next.
This year the yield and the price is good. Most years it is one or the other.
But that was not all the harvesting that got done.
It must be about 25 years ago ,that I saw a small decoration made out of straw. When an evening course was offered at the local High School I took it. I wanted to know more, but could not find any more information. I knew that it was an old English craft, so I send a letter to the Women's Institute in England. They got me into contact with Janet Brewin, a teacher /judge. She has been a very good friend ever since. And so the journey started. She kept me up to date and send me books. I even managed to go to England twice. Once I made it to the Wheat Gathering of England. Then about 1o years ago I developed more problems with my back and shoulders and it got harder to do. Slowly quilting took over.
But I never totally forgot about wheat weaving( in North America) or corn dollies (England)
I usually gather at least a few handfulls of grain. Here you can see this years crop.
There are 2 different kinds of wheat. Winter wheat is planted in the fall, stays in the ground over the winter and is harvested the next summer. Springwheat is planted in the spring and harvested also during the summer, usually a week or so later.
There are also a lot of varieties. Most noticable are the long "hairs" on some. These are called beards.

So starting from the left we have:
winter wheat, beardless
red winter wheat, bearded
winter wheat, bearded
barley, very long beards ( taken from a neighbour's field. Promised them to make something)
spring wheat, bearded. I cut this before it was ripe. It will keep a soft green tinge.
spring wheat, bearded.
This coming week-end I will be at Jenny's and I have everthing ready to make at least one weaving out of each variety. I hope to show you some results next week.

Apples

This week I was able to work some more on the farm. It is all done by hand, so it is slow going. The applique is done and now I will have to start the embroidery. It is hard to do it from only one picture and my memory. This farm was build on clay and over the years the front part sank down in the clay. This type of farm is called the "body,neck and head" farm In the late 50s, early 60s the neck and head were torn down and a new house was build in the same place. I have lots of pictures of this house, but not of the old. Growing up we did not have a camera, so there are not many pictures. And since I was quite young when this all happened, I really have a tough time remembering. But I do know, that my 90 year old mother in Friesland will keep an eye on me and correct me if necessary. She recently moved to a nursing home and found out that there are volunteers available, who can help her get on the Internet.

We had some more rain in the last week. Enough to be unable to combine the wheat. It does not stop the apples on our harvest apple tree from ripening. The big tree stands between the house and barn and is loaded with apples. I do not like to eat them. For me they are not sweet enough , but they make excellent apple sause, so that will be one off my jobs this week.

We will need only a small part of the apples, so a call will go out to the neighbours. It is" Come and pick your own"

Back to work

A few months ago I had started this landscape of my home farm in Holland. Once I got to the roof I had no idea how to continue, so I put it away. This week it was time to give it another try and up to now everything has worked. To get the idea of the clay roof tiles I sewed with the machine narrow rows of blanket stitch. The piece I used was small, but by cutting very carefull I can get all the pieces out. The next step will be the rest of the barn. Around the farm there will be a lot of trees. The foreground will be grass with a small ditch at the front. And I will have to do a lot of embroidery in the windows and doors to make it come more to life.



I finished the second orchid on my other quilt. The result looks o.k., but I think that to applique 6 more orchids around the center will be too busy. Maybe 2 more in the top corners would do it.
Now I have to start looking for orchids, where the flowers hang down in sprays. Smaller flowers might look better. It is a quiet time around here. Laurence is getting the combine ready and by next week we might be able to do a field of wheat.
We did get the rain, mixed with hail. We were lucky to miss the baseball size stones that fell one concession over. There was a lot of damage with windows breaking and dints in cars.
But things are looking green again and I have to get ready to mow the grass.

Garden improvements

Jeanette and Tony decided a few months ago, that the yard at the back of their house could stand some improvements. One would be to put big rough cut blocks along the outside, fill the space with soil and plant a variety of plants, shrubs and small trees.
Since they live in the Niagara region it was easy for them to go to a local quary and select the limestone blocks. On Tuesday over 13 tonnes were delivered and dumped on the front yard.
Since this is not a one man's job, Laurence was asked to come for the day and run the' rented' Bobcat. I had to come along for the extra jobs, that might pop up and do the driving
Since the way in and out of the yard was 48 inches wide and the Bobcat over 42, it was tough to get the , somethimes,even wider blocks in place.
For a while there was extra help.
But it all worked out and by 6 in the afternoon most of the blocks were in place. The left overs were piled neatly along the front to be used in the future.
Now it is up to the younger generation to do the rest of the work.
After a 15 hour day we were home again.
And we were told ,that in 3 weeks the favor will be returned. I have this bare spot, that needs plants and we need to do a lot of mulching.
Today it is back to normal. I hope to finish some of the orchids I'm appliqueing.

Go West

This is the time of year, when it is quiet on our farm. Time to visit our son in Alberta. We found a beautifull country with the Alberta flower, the wild rose, blooming along the fence rows.

A lot of fields looked very wet and while we were there, thunder storms added more water to the saturated soil. That while at home it stayed dry.
We tried to go a different direction each day.So from a drive to the west to see the mountains it was to the museum in Wetaskiwin with all kinds of old cars ( here is the oldest numbered Chevrolet known to be in excistence) to planes to old tractors.
This was very much to Laurence's liking, but the next day I was in for a treat. We had tickets for the rodeo and chuck wagon races in Ponoka.
Lots of horses and lots of fun. This is a lot different than the English style riding I grew up with.
The next day it was to the south to visit the Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller. It was packed, but the dinasaurs are so big that even with that many people there we could see most of the exhibits.



And each evening we would be greeted by little Abner, one of the friendliest puppies I know.
Now it is back to work. From a very wet part of the country we came home to a very dry farm. The once promising looking crops are starting to look stressed. We do hope for some rain soon.
And yes, quilting was not totally forgotten . I managed to visit 3 quilt stores while away and came home with some nice pieces of fabric. But no time for applique right now. It is strawberry time, so this morning I bought my yearly supply to make jam. Whatever is left will go in the freezer.

Yellow rose

I'm not much for roses. They are too much work and I have trouble keeping them over the cold winter here in our area
But I do have a few shrub roses and they seem to thrive under my lack of attention. Even with all the dry weather we are having they bloom in profusion. I do have one rose and I would not do without that one.
In 1996 my family came over to Canada from Holland to celebrate my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. It was a very hectic time. We were still in the dairy business and a week before they all arrived my husband had back surgery. But it all worked out very well.
Lois, a very good friend of mine opened her beautifull garden for a party.Everybody who

had met my parents over in Canada was invited.
Afterwards my parents wanted to give Lois a token of appreciation. When my dad went to the nursery to find a rose bush he stumbled across one with the name of "Friesland" Even with his lack of English, he could understand that word. My whole family has lived there for a long as we can remember. So my dad had to get this yellow rose.
The next day he went back and got one for me.I can still see him planting it, wearing his wooden shoes. He always kept a pair of wooden shoes here and they had to stand, ready for use in the garage.
This rose has survived the cold winters and my (at times)lack of care for 11 years now. This spring it looked like it had not survived, but I was wrong.
Right now it is in full bloom. Each time I pass and see the roses it remembers me of my father, who passed away over 2 years ago.
Lots of things going on right now, so applique sits on the back burner
I made some more orchids. This kind has a frilly lip. At first I had no clue how to approach it, but finally I decided to use shaded wired ribbon and that did the trick.

This time......tractors

According to Laurence you should do things at least once, so on Saturday we went on an "all day, all colored antique tractor run"
This meant ,that we saw other colored tractors than green and yellow. Chores were done by 7 and soon after Laurence left on his J.D 50. A friend drove the J.D 70. I decided to pass and take one of the wagons. My driving skills are not up to par. For my birthday I received a Nikon D40 camera and this was the time to try it out. 88 tractors and 5 wagons left the J.D. dealership in Elmira at 10.30 for a drive through the country side.
Permission had been asked of 17 farmers, most of them Old Order Mennonite to travel through their properties. On most farms we were greeted by the families, some sitting on the front porch to see the parade go by. We travelled along narrow lanes, went through barn yards and even had to drive through a barn, all cleaned up for the occasion.
I had a lot of fun taking pictures, over 200 in total. I would hop from a wagon, take pictures and take the next one.
Laurence was not so lucky. With all these old tractors the speed was too slow for him. To sit on a hot tractor on a hot day was a little too much. 2 police cruisers kept everybody safe on the roads. It was a long day and we did not get back to the dealership till after 6. By 8 we were home where the chores were still waiting. Will we do it again? We have to wait, because the organizers decided that they had enough. To get all the approvals from county and townships had been tough
What about all the pictures? Here are a few of them I'm still working on getting it all organized.

Potlucks, shaped notes and more

Another week with lots of hot, sunny weather. The shrub roses are in full bloom.All during the summer we will see a few roses, but right now they are at their peak. I started with one and I keep getting little shoots, so I keep planting them as I find room. My favorite peony is this pale pink one with a heavenly scent. I think it is a "Sarah Bernhardt" I received a small piece from my mother in law years ago and it has done well. Grandma had a bad fall just over a week ago. She did not break anything, but she had a lot of bruising and is in a lot of pain. On my last visit I took a few of these peonies along to cheer her up.

It has been a busy week-end. On Saturday I taught a workshop, pansies, to a group at Greenwood Quiltery. On my way home I had to stop at the party/potluck for the 15th anniversary of the Two Cylinder Club. As I have written before, my husband is a avid collector of anything John Deere. Just like other times the food was great. I did observe, that it seems that recipes only come family size, so needless to say that there was an over abundance of food.
On Sunday morning we attended a "shaped note" singing in the oldest stone Mennonite church in the area, build in 1840 and recently restored. We sang out of "Harmonica Sacra", a song book first published over 150 years ago. Each note has a shape, that's why the name. We sang in four part harmony with a song leader up front. As usual there were a lot of very good singers and I enjoyed it tremendously. We had to leave during the lunch hour (yes it was a whole day affair) to attend another potluck, this one a family reunion. And this one also had great food, so neatless to say that I better get walking.
With all this going on I did manage to finish my orchid, except for the roots. Still have not found the right color for the roots. I think I have changed my mind. I have 8 orchids drawn around the center, but this will be too busy, so I will do the one in the right hand corner and maybe stop then.

New look

Both Melissa, my friend who looks after this web site, and I decided that it was due for an update. So from highlighting a Waterloo County Farm we are going to a Japanese crane standing a sashiko water. I'm not able to do all this myself ,so I'm just doing what I'm told. Certain parts still have to have some changes, but as time allows, that will come.
I keep on plodding away with my orchids. The sashiko leaves on this one are done. I have to do the roots yet, but have not found the right color thread, a real light grey/green.
After looking all over on the Internet I found green overdyed cotton thread in the thickness and colors I needed. They arrived in 2 days, so no delay there.
The orchid flowers are kind of fiddly, but I hope to get one done a day. There are 8 different orchids, so....if I can get one done every 2 weeks, it should take me about 4 months.
The weather has been changeable the last few days, from hot to very cold. Last night there was even talk about frost, but that did not happen. I did not cover any of my plants. There are just too many.
What really seems to grow fast in this cooler weather is the grass. I will have to start mowing today again or hire some goats or sheep. So....on the machine we go