Another quiet day in the Corbieres!

Another quiet day in the Corbieres!: 4th December and still cosmos in flowe..............r

2011-12-05T12:00:00.000+01:00

Another quiet day in the Corbieres!: 4th December and still cosmos in flowe..............r

4th December and still cosmos in flowe..............r

2011-12-04T16:05:00.001+01:00

We have had such a mild autumn here. South of France, what's new you might say? Well we are at altitude in the foothills of the Pyrenees and the growing season can be quite short with early frosts and snow. This year we were still picking aubergines and beetroots last week. Cosmos is an annual plant, as my avatar, and to still have flowers even after our first frosts is amazing. Although the flowers are about half the size of the ones shown on the left.Pandy the new kitten who was abandonned 'chez nous' this summer is growing fast, she is on the Pussy Pill at the moment as we do not have time to go get her fixed, and do not want any more little paws running around here.A friend's dog has just produced a litter of 10 puppies, spaniel crosses, but not spaniels as we know them, in France the breed épagneul has much shorter ears. We agreed to take a female spaniel-type, they will be ready to go at Christmas, but everyone wants females so do not know yet if we will get one. We can only take a female at the moment as our old Japanese Akita male is now nearly blind and deaf and a bit aggressive to other male dogs. When he goes we will be looking for a large guard dog, a Patou - Pyreneen Mountain dog or another Akita would be good.As usual I am having problems uploading photos, I think I have to learn how to reduce the number of pixels, so this message will be lacking in photos.We are bracing ourselves for a bad winter according to the locals, and snow is forecast for the Alps today, but only a little for the Pyrenees. We may buy snow shoes this winter to go feed the animals as walking was very difficult in soft deep snow last year.Photos coming soon.... à bientôt!!

Paragraphs ? Have they B.O. Bugged Off?

2011-11-02T15:42:00.000+01:00

Maybe I am missing something on the new layout of French Blogger, I don't know but even when pressing enter/return twice while writing the post, the paragraphs do not appear on line.Hey ho, must be going the way of all grammar, it has taken me ages to decifer some text message from my son because of the abbreviations. No need now to remember things like: Because = Big Elephants Can Always Annoy Small Elephants.......So I guess I shall have to use photographs to split up my 'new' thoughts.

We have had a very dry summer, hardly any rain at all, but when it arrives to make up for lost time, we had a flood last week, although not quite as bad as the one above. If we ever had to protect this place I think we should remove the bridge and put in a drawbridge..

The veg garden was a bit of a disaster this spring as I was unfortunately ill with shingles followed by a skin infection which seemed to go on for ages. Miraculously the garden still produced loads of tomatoes and potatoes, and lots of salad for the tortoises. Last week we took off the final aubergines and chillies. I have never planted anything for the winter but maybe I should as we have more time available to care for the garden in the winter.

This picture of Frida and Marmy from last winter is just how they were last night. This week we lit the wood burner for the first time since April which is quite a saving on wood and kerosene for the Rayburn. We bought in 2 piles of wood from a neighbour's son as he was earning money to pay for his next term at college, and Dave cut down several trees in our wood in the spring, so they will also be dry enough to burn, we just have to drag them from the wood and cut them up. Did I say 'We' - I mean Dave, although I ought to learn to use the chainsaw, but it frightens me.I recently become interested in 'Preparedness', TEOTWAWKI - the end of the world as we know it, and feel living where we do is halfway to being safer than in a large town, but where would anyone run to in Europe? The only wilderness would be in or near to the arctic circle, and I do not think I will be walking there with my Bug Out Bag.....:o) I have just been updating first aid kits, clothes, my seed bank of collected seed for veg next year. We always have enough staple foods here to last months and we only go shopping once a month anyway. Let's hope things do not go even more pearshaped in Europe financially with Greece etc. and Iran stays 'cool'.

Am I becoming a Preppie, with my BOB,BOV and BOL ?

2011-10-30T17:45:00.002+01:00

I have been reading about BVs, BOBs, BOLs for WTSHTF (when the s... Hits the Fan), i.e. a major disaster resulting in having to leave quickly - to Bug Out.I know where we live we will probably be Bugging In, as we are in a self sufficient (or could be) situation.Ray Mears is my hero, I love his programmes and films for the scenery mainly, but living on few resources and your own skills and knowledge in a crisis situation has always interested me.In the USA it seems to be big business with loads of blogs, mainly by guys, about Bugging Out and survival. I am not knocking these blogs and related sites as there is a wealth of information on them, but the selling side of things I can avoid.A great deal of these sites cater for people bugging out to the Wilderness and surviving on berries, living in home made shelters and fishing with the basic items brought with them in a tobacco sized tin, in an Every Day Carry bag with concealed weapons, but what about the townies, people in big cities or in the suburbs. The Wilderness is not very close to Wimbledon, and in the UK we cannot legally carry guns and machetes! Where would we have bugged out to if we had still been living in the UK? Some of the blogs/sites cater for suburban and city Bugging Out, but not all, remember the chaos after Hurricane Katerina and the length of time it took before some people were rescued. We have already had to survived being cut off several times here by floods and snow. The last time we were cut off for 4 days with no electricity, no phone, no mobile phone and out only way out was by tractor as the snowplough had effectively compounded our situation, had we needed to get out, by ploughing past our exit onto the main road and piling up the snow. We are lucky, we had stores of food and the building is a watermill with a well, and we had prepared when things started to look bad, by filling the bath with water etc, taking a shovel inside, propping the main door shutter open a bit as they open out and snowdrifts could block us. We have a wood burning stove and loads of cut wood which we brought inside before the snow was 2ft high, found the candles, filled up all the oil lamps. In a way we were prepared and survived with a lot of humor. The mayor and a councillor walked the kilometer from the village in a blizzard to see if we were OK on the third day, I was a little concerned about there being no form of external contact whatsoever for so long in case one of us had been ill etc. and it would have been difficult to walk out (add snow racquets to our list for this year).Having a Bug Out bag has always been sensible to me, I have always had a 'Hospital Bag' packed and ready to go, with a list of all my medications, wash stuff, my medical history written in French (husband does not speak much french), some money, etc. The bag is located in view where my husband can find it, this 'HB' came about after I was rushed into hospital in the UK and my husband ran around like a headless chicken, and a day later brought in a large black plastic bin bag stuffed with T shirts and socks some of which were dirty, no wash things. The riots and looting in the UK were terrible this year, but think how they would have been compounded had the reason for them been survival, and not just looting designer jeans and trainers after, for example a 4 day cut off from power, no food deliveries, no fresh water being pumped and no money from cash machines, no petrol in the pumps, many people shop from day to day and have no stores and there would be no fresh water, surviving a major disaster would be much harder in a town. During the Athens earthquake in 1981 my friend and I rushed out of her basement flat terrified, and spent the next two nights under tarpaulins and tents in a nearby park, it was cold even in Athens in February and would have been more bearable if we had had a Bug Out Bag to take with us, we did however, soften the hardship by consuming rather large amounts of Metaxa brandy.I picked up some very useful ideas from these US sites and blogs am now in the process of making up a decent Bug Out Bag and improved first aid kit for the house and both the vehicles. One of the best ideas/necessities I am preparing now is to scan all valuable documents, deeds, ID, driving licence, heath number, family photos, etc. onto a 4Gb USB key to carry with me at all times, together with a list of contact numbers for family and friends.The torrential rain this week set me off on this new obsession........Be Prepared, Dib, Dib, Dib.........www.faliaphotography.com a woman on her own in a van, is the site I stumbled upon while researching camper vans, which started me linking to other survival sites that she lists. http://survivalgoddess.blogspot.com http://youtu.be/DOo9bjLtL3Q this will frighten you, so what is the point of storing stuff

My Empress Tree is flowering!!!!!

2011-09-25T12:31:00.000+02:00

No photo yet as I have a new camera and have not yet managed to learn how to upload photos, but was pretty excited when I saw the buds. Let's just hope they manage to survive the cold nights, and that we do not get a frost yet. Temp was 7 degrees C a few nights ago, but it has been up to 29 degrees C in the day, an Indian SUmmer for us.

See entry and video about Empress Trees below or in the archives.

Will add to this post later.

Never a Quiet Day in The Corbières......................

2011-08-29T13:25:00.000+02:00

Seriously, I have just been reading another inspiring blog and when I left a comment I realised I have not posted on here for nearly a year.

Too busy I suppose with enless visitors, and various crafts, and involved with the village community.

So, I am off outside to take some piccies to bring everyone up to date again.

We are starting our winter preparations, Dave is chopping up the trees he cut down in April, so that we can bring it nearer the house before the trail gets too muddy or too deep in snow.

We have another new arrival, Pandy, an kitten with a panda face......more later.

We are considering selling our village house, buying a camper van (RV) and travelling up to see the Northern Lights..............but what to do with the animals?

Shiro is showing his age now, he is bery wobbly on his legs and when he wags his tail he falls over, he is deaf and nearly blind, but he still manages to run away towards the village.......

Spinning with a drop spindle

2010-10-30T16:01:00.000+02:00

Thank you Abby Franquemont

NUNO FELTING SCARF 2 - Laminate felting

2010-09-02T14:53:00.001+02:00

1. Lay silk or silk chiffon, or muslin material along a table covered in plastic.
2. Pull very light pieces of wool from the wool roving and place around the edge - overhanging the edge.
3. Place some wool in the opposite direction along the edge

4. Start adding your design, these are pink dyed Wenslydale curls. It is always best to place some very light pieces of roving wool across addition like this to ensure they are well anchored onto the piece.

5. Don't breath , open a window or let in the cats it could be disastrous!!

6. When you have completed your design cover with nylon mesh - if the scarf is long this is a two person job and needs to be done slowly to avoid moving the design.

7. Now the messy bit.......mix up a bowl of hot soapy water - washing up liquid or Lux soap flakes for wool until the mixture is very slippery. Start springkling this onto the design covered with the nylon mesh and as you do so, gently tap down the wet design. Continue the length of the piece, do not miss any areas.

8. Smooth over with fingers and gently rub all along the edges of your design.

9. Place another layer of bubble wrap over the piece.

10. Start to roll up from one end, quite tightly.

11. Ties bundle with old tights in several places.

12. Wrap in old towel

13. Start rolling quite hard, keep elbows into sides to avoid over working your shoulders.

14. After 20 minutes, un-roll and roll up again from the other end - repeat 20 minutes rolling.

15. After this, unroll gently and make sure the edges are well felted, if not gently fold the edge over and rub with fingers. Check the whole length of piece.

16. Roll up again and repeat 5 minutes of rolling.

17. Unroll and discard bubble wrap and towel.

18. NOW ABUSE YOUR WORK :D - gather it together and repeatedly throw it down on the table - this will start the shrinking process. Do this for abot 10 minutes

19. Rinse your piece in hot water squeeze gently, then again, in the sink throw the piece down into the bowl about 15 times.

20. Check the shrinkage is to your liking - check the edges have not felted against each other, they make need pulling apart to even design.

21. Rinse work in cold water, squeeze out and hang up, again adjust any over felting and straighten any edges that are too felted. Hang up to dry.

21. The wool will have shrunk and the silk will crinkle up enhancing your original design.

22. Feel free to add embroidery or sequins - anything you fancy.

HAPPY NUNO FELTING

Summer in the Corbieres - a busy, varied time as usual......

2010-08-17T13:34:00.003+02:00

Pixie finds time to relax in the sun on the swing bed, all she needs is someone to swing her........

MLC Blues band from Tournissan came to play at our first village fete in June - great eveing!!

We had an 'open day' on the Journee de Patrimoine' Heritage day in France and met many interesting people with more information for us about our medieval mill.

Seems to be a bumper year for large crickets - there are about 6 in this photo, all on a spindle tree.

Feline Termenes plant fete and marche gourmande, usually the first outing of the 'season', this year, after snow in May some people lost the plants they bought here.

We had a very interesting day here with an archaeologist, Frederick Loppe and an historian. They confirmed the base of the walls at the back of the mill date back to 1200, which confirms the history we have already discovered. I laid out all the 'finds' we had made over the years and they identified them for me, a piece of roman glass, pottery from the 16th, 17th and 15th centuries, and a 'cannon ball' that our son found 15 years ago which we always thought was an ancient 'boule' for petanque!!! This will form the basis of another posting on this blog and the blog dedicated to the Moulin de St Jean - link in right hand column.

Art Holiday in France

2010-06-23T07:49:00.001+02:00

Fancy eating well and having fun learning new skills with artist Kate Hardy in the Pyrenees mountains? A friend of mine is running an art week at her beautiful secluded farmhouse in the foothills of the Pyrenees - fantastic views......check it out here:

http://artholidayfrance.posterous.com

There are only two places left now.

New llama - Carabar Lily

2010-06-20T00:41:00.000+02:00

This is Carabar Lily, a new arrival on our little farm. Her name Carabar is the name of a witch in France, so we have named her Lily. She has settled in with our old male, castrated llama, Larry, in fact she is now the dominant llama in the pen, but no aggression.

Unfortunately Carabar Lily has produced two handicapped crias (llama baby), so the owners asked me to home her while they had an entire male llama visiting their other females, to ensure she did not become pregnant. I am happy to say that she may stay permanently with us. We already love her and she eats from my hand. Female llamas are known to be harder than males to train, but when things have calmed down here after the summer run of tourists and visitors, I will get down to some serious training with her.

Llamas are often used to 'guard' herds of sheep against dogs, wolves and cougars (not many of them i the Corbieres I am glad to say!!). They need to have some training to do this efficiently but they do seem to have some natural instinct. Carabar Lily is already very possessive about the chickens. The coop is in the llamas pen and when I let the chooks out to free range every afternoon, Carabar Lily hums her little warning noise when they go out of her sight, and when they come back to roost at dusk she often 'herds' them into the coop by touching her nose on their tails - this is very endearing.

The 'S' Word again......I don't believe it.......

2010-06-20T00:21:00.002+02:00

Snow? In June - I had to 'phone a friend' to coonfirm that I had just heard the weather forecaster on TF1 mention the 'S'Word and Pyrenees in the same sentence - Not again, please......all my pants are late this year.

Update on the Empress Trees - they are doing very well, lots of leaves but they are not enormous, however the Empress Tree I moved that was not doing well had gone completely mad, and when we get some sun it will be providing shade for the tortoise.

Picture shows latest excavations inside our ruined mill that dates from before the Knights Templar occupied the area (before 1200)

Fete de Pays Corbieres - A good day, our village was hosting an historical walk along the river, probably pointing out the 'lack' of wildlife........ Just before lunch the group reached our mill and we actually learnt more historical facts from one of the visitors. He is coming back to see us tomorrow - La Journee des Moulins 20 juin - when we have an open day - Porte Ouverte. Today was the first day of a weekend of Patrimoine - heritage - when most museums and national monuments are open for free, we had about 10 visitors which I think was good considering we have had driving torrential rain......

I will add some photos later, Blogger seems to have changed its layout and it is not clear how to add photos now......

Empress trees on their way!!!

2010-03-22T18:38:00.002+01:00

Here is a video of what an Empress tree looks like, trying to think where to put them now.......

Another quiet day in the Corbieres!: Quelque 'flocking' flocons

2010-03-08T13:51:00.000+01:00

Another quiet day in the Corbieres!: Quelque 'flocking' flocons

Quelque 'flocking' flocons

2010-03-08T13:49:00.000+01:00

Here we go again.......more snow........at least this time they forecast we could get a metre....we are up to 60cms already...........

Larry didn't seem bothered at all.

About an hour ago, before we started having power cuts which has made uploading pictures difficult.

About 50 cms of snow on top of the bird flight which had to be knocked down to save the netting from breaking.

Glad to have the old Land Rover back on the road for this fall of snow in case of emergencies.

It passed its control technique (MOT) on Friday to our surprise!!!

I spotted this just before the snow started yesterday, it is now under a heap of snow......

My first attempt at Nuno felting

2010-03-08T13:19:00.000+01:00

Here are the pictures of my first attempt at Nuno felting.

I used a silk chiffon scarf for the base, which I had previously knotted and dyed in Australian Landscape dye - wild raspberry.

I laid out towels and bubble wrap on the table the length of the scarf. Placed the scarf on top of the bubble wrap.

I did not put a layer of wool as a base before the scarf as I wanted a very light almost cobweb scarf.

The carefully pull out very whispy pieces from a short length of merrino wool roving and make a fine layer over the scarf. I worked from one end until I thought I was running out of dark pink, then I started at the other end, intending to use another colour in the middle and change the design I had in my head. As it happened I had enough dark pink to make a fine layer (about an inch high - sounds a lot but it is miniscule).

I then used the bright pink to make a design on the dark pink, added some pre dyed and pulled thin silk carrier rods (see previous articles on here). I also placed some light pink Wenslydale curls on both ends of the scarf.

As I was not sure if the silk and curls would felt enough and attach I placed small amounts of the light pink merino roving across them to hold them in place.

When I was happy with the design, also holding my breath as the whisps of wool are so light I was afraid they would blow away. I had a dodgy moment when a cat jumped on the table……

The place the nylon netting gently over the top of your scarf…..very s l o w l y so as not move the design.

I mixed some savon de Marseilles soap with warm water in a bowl, then gently sprinkled the mixture on the scarf on top of the nylon netting. Olive oil soap is wonderful for your hands, avoid using specific wool soap as this may in some way prevent the felting process. Gradually wet all the surface of the scarf/netting, but not too much. If you press your hand down on the work there should be no water seeping out between your fingers.

Place another layer of bubble wrap on top of the wet work. Roll up a small towel to the width of the bubble wrap which is bigger than the scarf. Roll your work round this from one end and secure with cut off pieces of tights (panty hose). Start rolling - good description of this in the video below. After at least 100 rolls, unwrap and roll up in opposite direction. Repeat 100 rolls, unwrap and flip over, roll up again from one end and yes…..another 100 rolls.

At this stage you can unroll and check your work. It will have stuck a little to the netting, peel this off very gently, and check the wool has felted through the silk scarf to the other side. If you hold the fabric up you will see a halo of whispy hairs on the reverse of the scarf.

Peel off the netting, gently rub your hands over the work to start the process of shrinkage and fulling to finish your work. At this stage spread the scarf out and check the edges are as you want them, I had to trim off some odd ends, but you can fold excess under the edges and rub for a couple of minutes to felt the ends together. At this point you can pull the piece into the shape you want, or as I did I left the scarf pulled out to points at the end which I liked.

Now abuse your work………gather up together and put in a bowl of hot water, squeeze and swish about - in fact everything you are told not to do when washing wool. The plunge into cold water, then squeeze out excess water and throw the work down onto your work surface a few times, repeat these processes until you are happy that the fibres are as fulled as you want them.

At this stage some of the edges of my piece had stuck together where I did not want the to be stuck so I had to gently prise them apart. I spread out the work to dry and dried it really quickly on the heated towel rail in the bathroon as I was impatient to wear the scarf that evening. I wore it and it ‘felt’ (sorry) great, and was greatly admired.

The finished scarf was difficut to photograph but it is lovely to wear.

NUNO FELTING - my next experiment

2010-03-03T10:44:00.002+01:00

Araucana blue eggs - my first

2010-02-13T12:26:00.001+01:00

Lovely aurprise just now amidst all this horisontal snow and blizzards, my first blue Araucana chicken eggs.

Very hard to photograph - they are a sort of beige blue, and they are larger than I had expected as the chickens are quite small.

I think they look more blue in the photo below which is of our complete colour range of eggs!!

From the left - small bantam egg, two Araucana eggs, two dark brown Marans Froment (wheaten) eggs, they started laying at the end of the summer.

the Araucana eggs are such different shapes that I thought the ducks had nipped upstairs to lay an egg, but the breed of duck I have Khaki Campbells apparently lay white eggs, so the variation is in the Araucana.

Short posting I am afraid as we have to drive down the mountain to collect one of our cats from the Vet, more about Billy later.

Chickens in the kitchen - blackbirds in with the ducks?

2010-02-13T00:10:00.001+01:00

This is 'Chatty' a young hen hatched in November which is late for here, she has two sisters, Lucky and Morse. I found Chatty this morning crouched under the horse box unable to move. It had been minus 6 here last night and had risen to a tropical minus 3 by 9am, and as it was sunny we gave the chickens the option to come out or not. Chickens are stupid but not that stupid, most of them tumbled outside and quickly went back inside where we had fed them....all except Chatty who we found half an hour later. She seems to like it in my jacket????

Anyway she is tucked up with Lucky now in a cat box in the kitchen and she has not stopped tweeting since. She is much bigger than Lucky and should do well. Lucky I think I mentioned is called Lucky as she was in a similar situation to Chatty a few days ago and was picked up by our french hunting dog, Frida, and deposited on the road up to the house. She survived but since then seems to think she should be up at the house, inside, and every day at 5.30 pm she trotts up to the house when all the other chickens are making their way home, and pecks on the kitchen door until we let her inside. So for the last couple of days she has been inside as the weather has been attrocious, blizzard conditions with 110Kph gusts of wind. Only 'chutes de neige faibles' - light snow showers were forecast we have another foot deep drift against our doors and all along the path to the main road.

I have a video of this but this french blog does not seem to allow videos in the middle of blog postings, so will try to replace the spinning video in the right hand column with my video.

Terrible weather conditions here again.

As I had my face pressed against the window videoing this the tiniest bird I have ever seen with quite a long pointed beak landed on the 'owl' door bell we have just outside, it was so close to me I tried not to move but I wanted to try and photograph it, but I moved and it flew away, it might have been a wren but it seemed to be investigating the hanging plant pots we have between the shutters and the french windows to get out of the wind.

This is a lucky blackbird, lucky Dave found him that is in the flight with the ducks and Araucana chickens, we checked him out before releasing him, he was fine.

Since this second round of extreme weather is due to last until Tuesday I am glad I put some hyacinth bulbs in pots in October, they are just right to cheer us up at the moment.

Silk Noil and Carrier Rods - results of dyeing

2010-02-08T09:56:00.001+01:00

Here are the results of my dyeing experiments yesterday.

The first thing I suggest is that you split the rods after dyeing, as the ones that I split beforehand became very stringy during the rinsing process.

The rods dyed in the Dylon dye were very dark, I made up this dye some months ago and I believe it had become concentrated, but still colours I will use.

The four Landscape dyes at the right of the picture all dyed extremely well, but I think I could have been even more economical with the dye to make lighter colours from the start.

The two rods on the left were dyed in the old concentrated Dylon dye, and the noil on the right was put into the saved dye from this process, totally different colour!! It was difficult to get the noil to submerge and absorb any dye at first, but I persevered and kept pushing it down, reheated the pot in the microwave as before.

Although the 'rose' dye looked pretty weak after the second process with the noil, I popped in a little piece of wool roving which has purple Angelina fibres already mixed in http://www.worldofwool.com ended up with a beautiful baby pink and nothing happened to the Angelina fibres in the microwave.

All the other dye pots I have kept as the dyes still look full of pigment, so I will use them again.

I am very pleased with all of these results, even the cocoon dyed well, sorry no photo, it was flat after I strained it so when it was nearly dry I blew gently into the 'worm hole' and it inflated perfectly.

Now what to do with them all........?

Silk Carrier Rods - Dyeing with Landscape dyes

2010-02-07T13:08:00.006+01:00

The photos above are: carrier rods flattened from the pack.
Rods split and one being split - hard to do and hold camera.....
A silk cocoon complete with little worm waving from his escape hatch - didn't make it huh?
5 pots of dye on Rayburn and one cup of coffee - thirsty work but don't drink the dye

I obtained some small packets of Australian Landscape (elements) dyes from UK Ebay recently - they are as their name suggests 'landscape', earthy colours with some lovely bright yellows, and bright pinks and blues. A little goes a long way for dyeing things like carrier rods and cocoons. Silk carrier rods are the scrapings from the poles that guide the silk being extracted from the cocoons. These poles get covered in a mixture of silk and sericin, which is the gum that the silk worm uses to hold the cocoon together. Periodically they are cut and discarded, they are now sold and crafters love them for adding to embroidery, weaving and spinning or collage work etc. They dye beautifully and this is my description of how I dyed a selection of silk carrier rods, mistakes and successes.

I collected jam jars all the same size so I could dispense with measuring - just fill to same level, about half, each time. The shorter, fatter jam jars (Lidl marmelade) fit better into the microwave.

Apart from jars you will need - teaspoon - hot water - salt - white vinegar - sticks or metal spoons to stir - plastic gloves unless you are careful or like me don't care about having multicoloured hands - and a note pad to jot down quantities iin case you want to repeat colours. Paper towels for drying rods on (can be reused), or wire cake rack.

Today I have used some old Dylon dyes that I mixed a couple of months ago - Dyes can be used more than once until all the dye is exhausted, but successive dyeings will be progressively lighter.

You will also need a spare, empty jam jar to strain the finished articles into to save the dye.

The Dylon dyes were rose and peach also bought very cheaply on Ebay. The Landscape Dyes from Australia were - Wild Raspberry - Marine - Plum and Sage.

Half fill the jam jars with hot water and put table spoons of salt into each jar, and 2 tablespoons of clear vinegar to each.

Add dye to hot water, I used 1 1/2 (one and a half) teaspoons of dye per jar - cleaning the spoon between dyes.

Mix and set aside - I put the pots on top of the Rayburn to keep them warm.

Prepare carrier rods - I bought 100gms £2.50 UK) from World of Wool (UK) Link in the side panel to the right.

World of Wool has a shop on Ebay called qualityfibres. I buy direct from W of W.

Depending on your source you may or may not have to flatten them and split them. The ones from World of Wool are quite screwed up and need some flattening and there are also worms and cocoons mixed in with them, but the rods are quite thick and I was able to split some of them twice.

IMPORTANT: The first batch I did I put through a 'degumming' process - DON'T do it if you want to use the dyed rods as decoration or inclusions - I did this process so well the silk separated into strands good enough to card and spin !!

The rods can successfully be plit into one or two layers - to do this do them dry, straight out of the pack, flatten out and gently pull along the length of the rod then rub an edge in the middle between your fingers as if you are trying to open a plastic bag at the supermarket!! Push your fingers inside to separate the layers and gently push your fingers to either end - Voila!! 2 or 3 for the price of one and softer to spin.

You could also just throw them into the dye pots without pulling them apart, you will then get a tie-dye effect, with lighter and darker places depending on the folds in the rods. This is why I prefer to buy the 'rougher' rods from World of Wool rather than ones already pulled, split, and dyed.

Save some little bits and pieces you find in the bag for dye testing and throw a few into each pot, they are great addition for firbre work as well.

Immerse the split and flattened rods into the dye pots about 6 to 8 in each but depends on size of rods, so just make sure they are all covered in dye fluid, push down with stick or spoon.

Microwave on HIGH (750) for 1 minute.

Take out - jar will be hot - push down any rods that are above dye level but do NOT stir - the rods are always fragile when hot and wet.

Return to microwave on high for 30 seconds

Remove from microwave and stand in a warm place for 4 hours - this time can be lengthened or shortened by testing - pull out one of the rods or a little test scrap - rinse until water runs clear - if dark enough for your purposes - great - if not return to jar - reheat if necessary. Remember colours will always be slightly lighter when dry.

Gently lift out rods individually if possible and strain - catch the dye in the clean jam jar to use again.

Wash the jam jar to use for catching the dye from the next pot.

Rinse gently in cold water until water runs clear - spread out rods and dry on paper towels or a wire (stainless) cake rack.

I will post photos of the finished rods good or bad on here, I am waiting for them to dye at the moment while I write this article.

For more information on silk, and silk production got to the endearingly named website:

http://www.wormspit.com

For Landscape dyes in the UK: Try Ebay or Wingham Wool Work - link in my list to the right of this article.

Moulin de St Jean - its history

2010-02-02T01:56:00.001+01:00

Our Site Inspector - Maitre d'Oeuvre - Father Christmas - Pere Noel

un lien vers notre blog dedie aux recherches de l'histoire de notre moulin:

http://moulindestjean.over-blog.fr

Thank goodness I was introduced to a local historian, I had been looking in totally the wrong place to research the history of our mill. Because the mill, known locally as the Moulin Degrave, after a previous owner, was a property owned by the Knights Templar, all records are part of the Fonds de Malte, which come under the Haute Garonne and as such are kept at the Archives in Toulouse. I had been making enquiries at our Archives in Carcassonne, and had found nothing. The name Degrave is also a relatively recent name, now that we know the history dates back to at least 1260!!!

What I found incredible was that some of this information came from an ancient, rat-chewed, coverless old book written in 1555, found in the attic of an old local notaire, it was given to a local historian and I was recently pointed in his direction. This book was plonked on the table when I met this historian, I was shocked but fascinated, it was in terrible condition, written partly in latin and partly in Occitain - old local french. The historian taught himself to read this old french in order to read the book as research for a book he is writing. Not only did he have to do this, but he also had to brush up his school boy latin to a very high level and decipher the abbreviations used throughout the book. His main interest started with old place names in the area, which he said gave some of the biggest clues to the history of our mill and the surrounding land.

The historian had been trying to contact us for some time and I had received various messages from him via several other people in our village. I finally managed to arrange a meeting after he had told me to take the signpost down on the main road as the name of my mill was wrong. I needed my wits about me at this meeting, all his 'notes' for me were in miniscule hand writing on a piece of paper about 4ins by 2ins. When he started talking to me about the history I started taking notes - but in what language??? He was rapidly giving me references in, french, Occitain, and latin, my brain was working overtime, and when I tried to look over the table at his notes I could not read them they were so small. I wrote a very rapid time line for the mill which is a list of previous owners made up from ancient notaire's records. All the notaires are named and quotations from documents seen in Toulouse by the historian are clearly recorded. As this ancient book was in the local man's possession I was able to ask for an immediate photocopy of the document of 1555, which I will scan when possible and add to this blog, for now, here is a timeline for our mill.

MOULIN DE ST JEAN - LARQOUE DE FA

The following list of relevant dates for the mill were the result of detailed research over many years by a historian in the next village.
Additional information traced by the owners in the records of births, deaths and marriages for the village since 1600

1263
Olivier de Termes sold a great deal of property to the Templars, including the Moulin de St Jean, but the mill was not yet named in documents.
This document is written on a hand sewn roll of parchment, in the archives des Fonds de Malte at the Archives de Haute Garonne in Toulouse - a copy of which was given to the historian in Felines.

“ Quandam pecia terre in termineo sti martini de vilario ubi voccatur ad lamaloledam affrontat de meridie in recho molindini” this is a reference to the Moulin de St Jean

The mill and the land were part of the 'reserves' of the seigneurs - Knight’s Templar - the 'Condamine' - the land between our mill and the other mill linked to us is where the farmers, employed by the Knights and the people who rented the land, grew their fruits and vegetables.

1407
Terrier de Laroque - old records name the Molin Na'mira (literally the Mill of Mrs. Mira)
Which is now known as the Moulin de Cabrol, the next mill along from ours, and is also owned privately.

        At this time there was a depression in the region after the plague which killed half
        the population, this probably contributed to the fact that the mill is not named before
        1555.

1555
in the archives of Maitre Matthieu Graffan - Notaire in Villerouge - original book now in the possession of local historian, given to him by Maitre Oustric of
        Fabrezan - I saw this original document, partly eaten by rats ! And have a copy of
        the relevant page for 3rd June.
        “Le molin bladier du seigneur commandeur de Holms ( now Homps) nome le Molin
        de St Jehan. M. de Badans - Lord of Laroque." - “Grain mill owned by the Lord                 commander of Homps - called the Mill of St. Jehan (Jean)”

        The two mills were owned by the same lord and were often rented out to the same person.

1587
        Rental agreement for the Moulin de St Jean in Laroque de Fa
        Notaire Me. Francois Graffan

1685
   In the archives of the Fond de Malte - “Chemin que font les habitants de Davejan
        pour aller au Molin de St Jehan” - “A track used by the residents from Davejean to
        the Moulin de St. Jean”.

1608        In the archives of the Fond de Malte
         - “un ylhe a la passiere )pronounced Pashier) du molin St Jehan” refers
        To an ‘island’ of land in the mill race of St. Jean’s mill - possible reference to the dam

1608        26 may: again in the archives of the Fonds de Malte.
        “chemin des Molins de Namira et du Commandeur” the road to the mills of Namira
        And the Commandeur (Moulin de St. Jean)

There is a much larger list of references that I have in fact just deleted as they name families still living in the village and we have not yet asked permissions, needless to say the list of information is amazing.

       The mill has then been known over the years by four different names:

        Molin de St Jehan
        Moulin de St Jean
        Moulin Roquenoire
        Moulin Degrave

2010        January - The present owners, have reverted to the original Templar name of Moulin de St Jean
                Moulin de St Jean, and with the knowledge of these names and notaires we can probably obtain
further references and maybe documents from other local Archives.We are totally endebted to this
                local historian, now a friend. I have not named him here yet as I have not asked his permission. A
                copy of this history in french is on our other French blog dedicated to the research and
                renovation of the mill.

Here is a link to the blog:
http://moulindestjean.over-blog.fr

I have some daffodils up in a tub........is the end of the cold weather in sight?

2010-01-25T09:03:00.000+01:00

This has to be the most boring photo I have put on this blog so far! It did make me feel good, however to see this little daffodil shoot, after all that snow. I have not blogged lately due maily to sore hands from the cold and snow, I could not spin either with all the little cuts and chilblains on my hands, but they are nearly better now. This has been the longest cold snap in France for a long time, not only that, it has been so grey and now wet, normally the winters here are very mild and when it is cold the days are sunny and warm and only the nights are cold, this year is has been really hard, but there are some signs of spring now.

I did manage to knit something and finished a hat in the purple spinning from merino wool and silk, photopgraphed in an earlier posting. I did not use a pattern and the hat was a little too short, so I picked up stitches all around the bottom and knitted a few moe rows in the opposite direction !! LOL :o) it does not show at all, but the hat was too big for me so it has been passed on to my husband. I have a photo but it is to scarry to post.....I will make some adjustments in Photoshop and post later.

We have had a hectic weekend of eating and drinking.......all the New Year celebrations and 'aperos' had been cancelled due to the bad weather and this weekend they all seem to be on together, from Friday through Sunday, so Sunday evening was spent asleep on the sofa, after lurching from one drinks party and lunch to another.

I found another good spinning website and blog : http://blog.houndscroftfarm.com and have put a link and a feed on here. Spin in Public is an event in September 2010 worldwide, www.spininpublic.com mainly publicised on US webs but I hope to be able to get something going around here for that date.

Our mill is also on the Route des Moulins, on the FFAM website (Federation Francaise des Amis des Moulins) http://www.moulinsdefrance.org even though it is still very much a ruin, and will be open to the public for the weekend of 19/20 June, the French national Journee des Moulins (National mill open day). As our mill is now known by its original name, the Moulin de St Jean, and the fete of st Jean is the 24th June, and our first village fete of the 'season' is around this date, we will be having a celebration here probably a barbeque and a 'bring-your-own picnic and tent' type of event, so watch here for details - it might even turn into a 70's style arty, spinning 'Happening'.

Sitting in the sun today - such a difference!!

2010-01-14T14:13:00.001+01:00

The snow was shrinking fast yesterday and it poured with rain. The ground is sodden and the mud is horrible again - oh the joys of living in the country.

Very sunny and 'tropical' temperatures of 13 degrees C, so we have just come in from eating our soup out in the sun.

The chickens made it up to the front door again for the first time in a week. We were able to go out and have dinner with friends last night, after I made sure all the snow had been cleared from the stone stairways. The village is built on the rock in the name and all the houses are perched on this rock, so it is not easy getting up and down for me, but the are little alley ways and steps hidden all over the 'rock'.

After the snow, the floods.......we have another weather warning about rain, the forecasters were warning about us having a month's rain in 24 hours......It takes about 12 hours of stair rod rain for our bridge to be compromised. As the bridge is already damaged and sitting at an angle we do not go out, not for fear of the bridge giving way, but for fear of not being able to get back on to our property. It has sometimes been over 5 foot high of water above the bridge. If there is lots of driftwood brought down from upstream the bridge looks like an enormouse beaver dam, then the rushing water digs out big holes under the dam to continue on its way. So after a storm it is always interesting to go out and see the new paths and shapes created by the water. So again, we are on a warning and will stay in the dry, the house is on a high spot but we have a small stream opposite the house which only runs in extreme conditions and if this overflows the water level can creep up near the front door......we shall see.......

What can get damaged by these flood waters are all the fences, the fence to the llama paddock was demolished once and we woke to find two llamas and two goats looking in at the kitchen door, but there is plenty of high ground for them to climb up to, and they never go far, they always want to see what we are doing.

Hopefully now all this is calming down I can get back to doing some spinning, I have been unable to do so because of little cuts on my thumbs which catch on the threads, and my hands have been cold.

I also hope that the flood waters, if any, reduce before tomorrow evening as I have a council meeting to attend. This meeting is probably going to be contentious as it needs to address the ongoing problem of famers, lack of fences, lack of electrification, and cows everywhere, so we need all the non-agriculteurs on the council to attend.

The Mayor walked over to see if we were OK !!!

2010-01-10T14:35:00.000+01:00

We had visitors at 6pm last night, the mayor and one of the deputies walked half a mile from the main road to make sure we were OK. I was impressed, they had trudged through snow up past their knees. The track to the main road is still blocked by a five foot snow drift, a farmer on a tractor tried to get through it earlier yesterday and tipped his tractor over the edge. Another farmer succeeded to get in and out in a v ery large tractor, but it is impossible to get the snowplough down the road, so we are still prisoners.....no great problem for us as we have plenty of stocks of food and animal feed and while the electricity is on we still have news on the TV. At least our village is on a main avex road in the department and the snowploughs go up and down continuously, other small villages are worse off than us, and nothing is getting through. This weather is all over France and down to sea level, the UK is also very bad in places.

We now have the phone back on which is a relief. We also have beautiful sunshine and clear skies, we had a cup of coffee outside, it was like being in a ski resort cafe, lovely. However the temperature is due to drop and then there is more snow forecast for Tuesday, so if I disappear from here and Facebook you will know why.

A bientot!!

Quelques flocons - A Few Flakes !!!!

2010-01-10T14:20:00.001+01:00

Saturday 9 January

Quelques flocons is the phrase the French use for just a little snow 'A Few Flakes' - a dramatic understatement today, read on……

I was abrupty cut off on Facebook yesterday as I started a ‘conversation’ with an old friend, I apologise for that, we lost all types of phone connection.

We still have no telephone, nor mobile network which is a little disturbing as we would find it extremely hard to walk out of here to get help if one of us had an accident. So we are conscientiously being careful, I suffer from chronic arthritis and walk with difficulty anyway, add to that the fact that I am prone to falling over and dislocating shoulders, and you will understand why we are being careful. Dave is doing all the animal care at the moment.

Our neighbour is on her own at the moment and her husband is in hospital some 60Km away on icy road, thi been bad enough for the last couple of days but this has been compounded by the lack of phones of any sort, so she cannot even ring the hospital and the hospital cannot contact her. Yesterday this department, the Aude, was on an orange alert for snow and ice, this morning they lifted this alert, why? I have not a clue, conditions out there are dangerous.

Minus 4 degrees last night and at mid day it has only risen one degree. We have gale force winds with gusts up to 120Kph, so we have snow going up, down and horizontal at high speeds. I have tried to photograph the tornados of snow that are whisking around us.

We are in a valley so all the snow is blowing from the tops of the hills around us down onto us. It is four foot deep outside the door to the chicken shed and hip deep along the track to the llama and goat shelter, the goats had difficulty running out to get their granules just now. The llama is, as usual, not bothered, when I spoke before about him sitting out in the snow and frost and leaving a dry bare patch underneath him, I forgot to say that when he got up and we heard the ripping noise, we looked at his imprint and he had left an oval of fleece behind.

The chickens we fed inside and fortunately thrit water pots had not frozen inside, so they seem to be happy.

The ducks are loving it, trying to ‘swim’ around in the very deep snow, slip sliding down the snow drifts quacking all the time, they then make little indentations in the snow and sit there quite happily. We have not broken the ice in their bath as we felt it dangerous if they happened to not be able to get out on the ice and slippery bath sides. We also have a stupid Araucana chicken who thinks she is a duck and I would hate to think she might go into the icy water, so we have put a basin of water in the pen as they are dabbling ducks and take their food with water.

Add to all this an invasion of desperately hungry cows yesterday afternoon. I felt so sorry for them, they headed straight for part of our stock of hay and tucked in, we left them a while before chasing them down towards the river. The farmer was taken into hospital with a kidney stone on Thursday, he came out of hospital yesterday afternoon, but he could ask one of the other farmers to take a bale or two of hay to them by tractor,no excuse really and the snow is so deep for the calves, even under the trees
so there is nothing for them to eat at all. We have had a 16 year battle with this farmer.

At least for the moment we still have electricity, there are about 50 thousand homes in France with no power, and they have been like this for over a week now. I was amazed this morning that the first item on the news was only indirectly connected to the weather. The sales started on January 6th and the news item was about the lack of customers in the shops!!!!!

It is nearly 13:00 and the temperature has not risen more than 1 degree so far, and is due to get even colder tonight for the foreseeable future.

I found this amazing video on another blog

2010-01-07T23:39:00.002+01:00

Putting chickens to bed

2010-01-07T19:20:00.000+01:00

We don't look elegant, but then chasing chickens in a blizzardis not conducive to looking good.

The chickens that had passed the day on the doorstep refused to walk in the snow back to the coop so we had to chase them and pick them up to take them home. One white hen ( would be white???) was missing and we eventually found her trying to hide under some brambles in a 'snow cave' in the mill race, so Dave had to fish for her with the net. We still have Fanny in the house with us as she chose the last month to moult and has hardly any feathers, so she is in a cat box by the fire. The three baby chicks are in another cat box......one of them tweets all the time (clever thing)....so she is called Tweety Pie, another constantly does four quick tweets followed by some tapping on the floor, so she is called Morse.....there's a connection in there somewhere ..........

Next job was to knock some of the snow from the netting on the peacock pen and the duck and Araucana flight. Dave had the big pen to do and I had the camera, which was lucky for me as I attempted to knock the snow from the netting with my umbrella only to break the umbrella and be covered in snow. It was nearly dark when we finished.

It is still snowing heavily, we have no picture on French or english satellite tv systems, and power cuts are forecast for tonight. The weather forecast is for snow, snow and more snow, all night and all day tomorrow, then a big freeze, maximum minus 5 in the day, and if that is based on Perpignan that means it will be minus 8 for us up here at altittude.

Just a reminder for me as well as anyone else........this is the South of France, and it has snowed right down to the mediterranean coast all day today.

Must send this quickly and get some candles out for imminent power cuts, they always seem to come when most of France sits down to eat and watch the news at 8pm.

Even the chickens want to come inside..........

2010-01-07T16:59:00.000+01:00

It has been snowing heavily all day here, so another corner of France grinds to a halt. We had an orange warning this morning for heavy snow, and the weather girl on FR2 said the snow would start between 11 and midi - and for once she was right. It started slowly at first with tiny little icy round balls of snow, then the temperature went up a degree to 1 degree !! and it started to snow in massive big flakes. It had been minus 9 degrees Celsius last night so the ground was hard and has formed a good base.

It took us ages to sort out the animals this morning as all the drinking bowls were frozen solid. No point in breaking the ice on the duck's pink bath as it would just have refrozen quickly so we filled pans with luke warm water for them, Jemima duck tried to get in the bowl but she didn't fit. The Araucana chickens who are house with the ducks came out, made a lot of fuss and then went back in, I fed them in their house. The ducks were sitting quite happily out in the heavy snow.

Larry llama is sitting out in the snow, chewing the cud and the snow is mounting up on is back, we usually have to brush it off him if it gets too thick, so will be going down to check him again soon. Another snowy day he sat out for ages and it started to freeze, we went down to put the chickens away and he was sparkling in the torchlight, then he tried with a little difficulty to get up and we heard a ripping noise, it appeared he had melted some of the snow around him and it had frozen his long fleece into the snow....!! He came over for a kiss and left an oval shaped clear patch of grass, he returned to it after we left.

Most of the chickens followed us up to the house as usual but headed straight for the doorstep and they have sat there all day looking in, scattering occasionally if we let dogs or cats in and out. Frida our hunting dog, a Bruno de Jura, refuses to go out at all, this morning we pushed her out and she turned round immediately and barked at the door. Shiro of sourse being a snow dog, loved it and turned into a puppy again and tried to jump about biting snow flakes.

The snow is quite light now as the temperatures are dropping again, we are on an orange alert until tomorrow evening, so we could have quite a bit of snow by then, we have 5 inches now, but there are 110Kmp gales forecast for tomorrow as well.

So I am off to check Larry's snow level and brush him off, I hope the chickens follow me, but as the snow is quite deep I have visions of us having to pick them all up and take them to the coop. I will let you know how we get on.....

Mad cows.....and I cannot even spin them..........

2010-01-02T21:46:00.000+01:00

A whole herd of cows in my vegetable plot this morning.........I awoke to see them out of the bedroom window, they were so quiet, these do not have bells on and can sneak up on us.....Dave had to chase then back into their own field, the first picture was taken about half an hour after the others when this really skitty cow was back in the garden, she did not appreciate being chase down into the river, but that is the direction she came from. This has been a problem ever since we moved here. The farmer does not have adequate fences, usually only a single electric wire that never has power running through it. Our land is in the middle of the pastures used by two farmers and the 'fences' criss cross the river and the communal roads, which is against the law. Neither the mayor nor the gendarmes will get involved, they say it is a 'neighbour problem' unless of course there is an accident. I suppose the farmer knows this and never makes any effort to put up more substantial fencing. However, at the moment there is a big argument between the town hall and another farmer for exactly the same reason, but the town hall can deal with it as the land being invaded by the animals (in this case sheep), is owned by the commune. This has had a good effect on my neighbour who is frightenes he is going to get the same treatment and have his rental agreements revoked, so he is grovelling around fixing fences, and tells me a friend is coming to erect better fences with him this month......we will see if this happens.

Meanwhile I do love these cows and there are calves at all times of the year and at least they have a reasonable life here, free range in the mountains and are not crated up cruely for veal, I just wish they were not SO free range and did not have a liking for my vegetables.......

Spinning - my first 'Art Yarn'

2010-01-02T21:09:00.001+01:00

Pic. 1 The two finished singles on my old Haldand castle wheel, single treadle, double drive.

Pic. 2 The two bobbins close up, the purple is a mix of purple, pink and turquoise merino, combed with silk.

The turquoise bobbin is again a mix of merino and silk.

Pic. 3 Good planning, more by luck than judgement......The purple yarn is more slubby and I tried to estimate the amount of turquoise, in the end I just spun what I had carded and hoped for the best. I had a yard left, which I used to tie the skein on the kniddy knoddy.

Pic. 4 The very full bobbin. Just had enough space on he bobbin after I plied the singles together....!! Only just.

The skein is still on the kinddy knoddy at the moment, I will wash it and beat it before I go to bed and it will dry on the Rayburn - these was 100 yards in total plied, not as much as I had hoped for but as a beginner it is really difficult to estimate how much yarn I will make. I have checked on ravelry http://ravelry.com for patterns for 100 yards of bulky and I have seen a neckwarmer I could adapt a little. The purple and silk I have blogged about previously on here (see archives), was a similar amount but it was not enough to even make a hat, so I compromised and used up some scrap fluffy acrylic in a toning purple, now I have a pixie hat with ear flaps - photo to follow.

Have you had a look at the You Tube video in the right column of links yet? It seems such an easy way to put beads into yarn that I am going to try this, probably my next project. In fact I am unfortunately on my own at the moment as we had an urgent call from our new neighbours about an hour ago, her husband had been taken to Narbonne hospital by the pompiers (firemen and emergency service) this morning, with complete kidney failure and has since been transferred to Perpignan, so my husband has taken her to Perpignan, about an hour and a half from here. So I will be sitting up waiting for them to get back, I have made up a bed for the neighbour in case she does not want to be on her own in her own house. So while I am waiting I will be threading beads on to little pieces of wool roving.

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM WINDY FRANCE

2010-01-01T13:19:00.000+01:00

Dave and Josie would like to wish all their family and friends a very Happy New Year and welcome to the 'Tens', the new decade........

We were at quite a bizzare New Year Party last night....watch this space later for some photos of our Christmas and New Year.

A BIENTOT........

Sunday Dec. 27th. Spinning and animal care day

2009-12-27T15:30:00.003+01:00

This is a cat bed.....? Frida the hunting dog adopted the bed as soon as she came to live with us. The following month Spitty the cat and her three tiny kittens moved in. The cat above is Marmy, one of those kittens, he has always been bold and the first of these wild kittens to venture into the house. He has always made a fuss of Frida and often lays along the dog's back on the sofa. Frida was in the cat bed asleep and Marmy just pushed his way into a tiny corner, there are never any complaints from Frida, she never growls, and lets the cats sit all over her.

Today has been wonderfully sunny and a heady 11 degrees, so we have been out cleaning chicken coops and making some urgent repairs. Termites or ants have softened one of the big oak posts that hold up the roof to the llama and goat shelter, and the goats have eaten all the wood, so there is just the outline of the post now!! Fortunately we made the shelter on 'earthship' principles, using old car tyres filled with drink cans and sand, covered with soil. This goes up to roof level and protects the whole structure from wind. Some of the soil has erroded away now and of course the llama and goats have trodden paths all over it now, and perch on various levels in the evening sun. We had to clean out the remains of the old oak beam and tidy up a little to prepare for a new post.

Dennis Hopper the actor has a fantastic home in California built in 'earthship' style, check it out on the internet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship

http://www.fabprefab.com/fabfiles/containerbayhome.htm

We also 'liberated our 3 latest chicks. They are about 6 weeks old, hatched very late by BTM a silly chicken who hid in the canal for 3 weeks to brood them, we did not find them until they all trooped out behind her one day and it was a race to get to them and catch them before the cats heard them, we managed it and put them into a cage with the mother inside the chicken coop. Today as it was warm and sunny we let them out into the coop and waited. It was ages until one of them, a black bantam hen, ventured out and she was completely stunned by the pea fowl in the next enclosure, and the pea hen was mesmerised by her and displayed her tail feathers to her, I have only seen peacocks do this. We stayed close to the chicks for a while as we were recovering some of our hay from the hay stack which had got wet in the extreme weather we have been having. We put it in the sun out of the reach of the goats.

The next job was to trim the hoof of one of the goats, he limps because of arthritis and the hoof or nail on this leg always grows faster than the others as he does not put enough pressure on the leg to wear the nail down quick enough.

It is 3pm now and will only be warm for about another hour so time for a cup of tea, then before we realise it it will be time to shut all the animals away for the night. We will need to so this early tonight as soon as it is dusk to make sure the new chicks go in safely, we will probably have to put them up on a perch this evening unless they go back in their cage.

I have been wanting to spin some yarn for a few days now and yesterday evening I prepared a batch of turquoise, magenta and pink merino with some pink banana fibres and some silk, by combing the colours together on my hand carders. I was able to do this quite quickly as all the fibres we already bought as prepared rovings. I divided the colours and brushed them together to make about 14 rolags ready to spin.

I had also bought some pink and orange rovings from Etsy (www.etsy.com) in the US which had arrived just before Christmas. It had been hand dyed by the seller and I was a little disappointed in the colour and it seemed to be slightly felted, but it may have been just because it had been squashed and packed for a week or so. Anyway I decided not to recomb it and spit it into finger-width pencil rovings instead, something I have never done before. I will spin this as thick and thin and experiment with it as I am not too keen on the fibre.

Christmas Eve - HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OUT THERE

2009-12-24T01:12:00.002+01:00

Dave and Josie wish all their family

and friends a very Happy Christmas

and New Year

If this is the first time you have visited this blog feel free to trawl through the archives and see what we have been up to for the last few months.

There is also a link to You Tube you can use from this site.

If you want to keep up with postings on this blog then click the 'Follow' button and you will be notified of new postings.

There is a list of blogs and sites I use, mainly for information on peacocks, glass fusing and spinning, I add and change these regularly. You will also find a silly gadget to feed some fish.

Today I have been working at the town hall trying to get the municipal bulletin out before Christmas Day, and there was also a big discussion about the usual problems of cows wandering about everywhere, which is one of my pet hates. Tomorrow I have offered to go in early to help staple and distribute the bulletin, then we will have cackes at the Mairie before getting home to start the short holiday. There is no 'Boxing Day' in France, and so the day after Christmas Day is not a holiday, although this year being a Saturday most people will not be at work. In France, if a public holiday falls on a weekend, tough, there is no day given in lieu.

The snow situation in northern France is as bad as in the UK and just as in the UK there will be many people on the roads today trying to get to their families, and heaven knows how Eurostar are going to get their backlog shifted in time. Easy Jet was ready to make flights on Christmas Day and was calling in staff, but apparently the Civil Aviation Authority say that the airports will not be open.....well maybe they will be this year to get people home. Just like there was never any tennis played on the middle Sunday at Wimbledon until one year when there was so much rain they needed the time to finish all the matches.

We had to retrieve one of our hens from under the haystack this evening. We were one hen short when we counted yesterday and thought she had been taken by a fox or something, but she was out eating this morning when I fed the cats. When she was not in the coop today we went to look for her and found her sitting on a clutch of about 15 eggs under the plastic tarpaulin covering the hay. She protested when we picked her up and took her to the coop, and as it was dark in there we had to actually place her up on a perch, this always causes some clucking and shifting about in the coop as all the other chickens had already chosen their places for the night.

We are waiting now for our first blue eggs from the Araucana hens we have. Very strange hens these, they have no tails and they have horizontal feathers on their 'cheeks that stick out giving them quite a comical look. All this and they lay blue eggs. They are approximately 18 weeks old now and should be at point of lay at 20 weeks but this of course may be delayed because of the cold weather. We have not had any 'wind' eggs yet from them - these are thgeir first strange efforts at laying eggs and can be small soft shelled things. I'll post some photos of these hens after Christmas.

Time for bed I think, I have promised to be at the town hall before 9am and I am not usually awake befor that time, and it is Christmas Eve after all.

Don't forget to put a drink out for Father Christmas and carrots for the reindeers.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE

2009-12-23T15:33:00.008+01:00

Dave and Josie wish everyone

a very Happy Christmas

and New Year

Thankfully, we spoke to Andrew last night and during the conversation we realised that Christmas Day is actually on Friday, we had thought it was Thursday......this is what happens to people who retire to the wilds and rarely check the date on the telly.

Our snow has disappeared for the moment but I hear you are having a white Christmas in the UK nearly everywhere. We are having a very quiet Christmas here this year, on our own for the first time in 26 years!!

This has not stopped us buying in enough food for a 6 week seige, and we have not forgotten the wild birds, we went out of our way yesterday to go to a hunting/fishing department to buy some mealworms for the robins.......mad or what?

Bookmark this blog if you want to periodically catch up on our news out here, look on the right in the archives, there are plenty of articles about us and the animals, we will post more news and pictures on Boxing Day, in the meantime eat loads but stay in the warm.

Purple,magenta and glitz mix.......and a trailer of snow to Narbonne.....

2009-12-19T15:38:00.003+01:00

The purple and magenta with glitz that I spun last week turned out very well, and is soft and glitzy. This trial square means I can match it to a pattern. I knitted it upstraight away but just didn't quite have enough to finish the hat, so I unpicked it (frogged it in the US!), I can still knit the same pattern but will make a band of fluffy mohair on the brim just so that I have enough wool.

On Thursday we went to Narbonne Christmas shopping, which is about 50Km away, down on the coast of the Mediterranean. We attached the trailer to our car as we intended to bring back our Christmas tree. We parked in the main Carrefour car park at the Tridome in Narbonne but our car and trailer were causing a stir. Everyone was staring and commenting on the snow on the roof of the car, and then people spotted the trailer which had loads of snow in it. We though it would be much warmer in Narbonne but it was still minus 1 degree so all the snow stayed int he trailer. We came out with our trolley load of shopping to find the trailer surrounded by kids poking the snow and some were making snowballs. One mother nearby said her daughter aged 3 had never seen snow and was fascinated. LOL :o) made our day......

Since then we have had further snow showers and temperatures have not risen above 2 degrees maximum all week.....thank goodness for Ugg boots. This evening is the carol concert in the old church - which has no heating.....Hmmm...I am wearing a large cape to hid the hot water bottle I will have underneath - taking no chances. Made a big pot of vin chaude, spiced wine today and the smell has permeated through the whole house.....very Christmassy.

It has just started to snow again but we think it is really too cold for it to be much, but who knows, it will add to the atmosphere of the carol concert anyway. Off to chase chickens and ducks into coops now before we go out, it is still light so it may be hard but always good for a laugh, they may all be inside because it is so cold.

21:50

Just returned from the carol concert and supper at Rik and Christel's in the village, and we are in a blizzard again, the roads covered in about half an hour. The neighbour's cows and calves were all sat on the road to our property, they moved as we drove past which was a shame as they needed to be there under the trees to be out of the snow, one little calf was only born yesterday - hard life this being born into a blizzard and then the first human you see comes and inflicts pain clipping a tag in each ear.

The Christmas tree is up, it has survived half a day without a cat climbing it, but give it time. Last year we had just brought the tree inside and had to go quickly to the village, when we got back there was a chicken sitting in the christmas tree, 'Dave, there's a chicken in the Chritmas tree', is not a phrase you hear very often, not in normal household's anyway.

It certainly snowed..........and more to come

2009-12-15T13:53:00.000+01:00

The animals were not impressed.......except Larry the llama who is always happy. The chickens were all crushed up behind the one or two blocking the door and they eventually pushed their way back in. The ducks jumped in their pink bath and skidden on the ice - missed that shot.........and the cows were looking for grass near the trees.

Will write more later but I have to go out to the village to our craft workshops, we are finishing boxes to sell and wrapping presents for the village tree.

Let it snow.....Let it snow....stay in the warm and card fibre

2009-12-14T02:16:00.000+01:00

I carded up a mixture of merino rovings in several shades of purple and magenta together with a little silk and some Glitz in each. I do not have a drum carder but as there was no hard work involved I quite enjoyed doing this mix. I spun a little but it was really too late to carry on. I plan to make this a 2 ply with itself, so I will have to try and guess to make each half a bobbin. I only have three bobbins at the moment, all the same size. To ply a decent quantity it would be better to have a jumbo flyer and bobbin able to take double the normal bobbin quantity. The old Haldane wheel I have which is so old, was made before art yarns became fashionable. It would be great for lace weight spinning, and for spinning singles, but I can see plying and core spinning becoming a problem. Hey I am only a beginner so this is great to learn control.

Majacraft spinning wheels in New Zealand make a Wild Flyer attachment for all their wheels, it has a large ceramic lined guide for the wool which is very big, capable of letting silk worm cocoons pass through, and comes with a jumbo bobbin. There is one on their website which has the wheel and whorls painted deep purple, I have saved a copy as my screensaver so I can drool over it.......In fact Majacraft wheels do not have a normal orifice for the yarn to pass through, they have a Delta orifice which is a 'V' of metal, so spinning chunky yarns is possible on most of their wheels, and for really wild spinners, spinning really wild things into their yarn, there is the aptly named Wild Flyer - great.

There is a group on Ravelry for Majacraft Fans worth looking at if considering a Majacraft wheel.

It has been snowing hard this evening. We are in a sort of Bermuda Triangle here for weather forecasting. We are situated in the middle of a triangle drawn from Narbonne to Toulouse to Perpignan on the Spanish border, I suppose with the Pyrenees mountain range it might be difficult to make accurate forecasts, but Meteo France are always wrong. Let's see if they are right in the next few days. Meteo France yesterday showed heavy snow, this was changed for 'quelque flocons' - a few flakes (!), now they are showing light snow turning to rain. Sky News and CNN have just said Spain and France will get heavy snow for 48 hours.....let's see who's right. We have taken the snow shovel inside tonight just in case. Trouble is it becomes difficult for us to get off our property even if there is only a small amount of snow as the snow ploughs come along the road and push it all up against our exit, so a shovel in the car is essential............

Marmy the cat is back.....!

2009-12-13T12:58:00.000+01:00

It has just occured to me that I do not have a recent photo of him, so must rectify that in case he goes missing again. He just walked in this morning as if nothing had happened, he looks well fed, and no signs of any fighting, so I guess he may just have been visiting some neighbours.........Or maybe the cold weather and snow forecast made him think of his lovely warm bed by the stove.....who knows? Cats choose who they live with after all.

The water in the barrel next to one of the chicken coops froze last night, and we had to break a thin layer of ice on the old washing sink that is a water trough for the llamas and goat, so it seems winter may have arrived at last. Some ski resorts in France have been closed for two years due to the lack of snow, but some resorts were open earlier than usual in November because of early snow falls, the villages want to make the most of what may now be shortened seasons.

Meteorites and strange clouds.....and a chicken with an identity crisis.......

2009-12-12T23:52:00.000+01:00

I photographed these clouds a couple of days ago. The photo does not do the scene justice as the clouds were edged with lovely morning red. I think this formation is called a pile of plates??? Can someone correct me?

At the moment the earth is in the path of a meteor show called the Geminides, because they emanate from the area of the Gemini constelation. Don't ask me where this is as I am not sure. If you look for Orion's belt , the three quite bright stars close together in a line, then look up and to the left, the Gemini constellation is a defined square of stars???? I cannot work it out either, but just look in the direction of Orion's belt. Last night in the freezing cold I was wrapped in a blanket, hat, coat and gloves and stood out for only 10 minutes and saw three shooting stars, two of a golden colour and a white one very low on the horizon (for us anyway in the mountains!). They were at least worth getting cold for. The shower reaches it's most intense period on the 14th in the early hours of the morning. So get your quilts out and your hot water bottles and have a look......I'll be tucked up in bed. :o)

It is exactly 4 degrees C outside at the moment, 23:15, which usually means snow for us, and it is forecast. I have just looked out and it is cloudy so no shooting star spotting tonight - thank goodness........

One of our cats is missing at the moment, I expect he is looking in the village for a girlfriend, he has been missing for 4 days now and we have been walking around the village calling for him, hoping he is not shut inside someone's garage. Maybe he will come back now the weather has turned so cold. It is also worrying that we heard a fox screaming at about 2am this morning, he was around for quite a while, no evidence this morning and thankfully no damage to the chicken runs.

The peacocks were making their warning honk noise today but I saw nothing when I went to check, Tony peacock was sat on his perch looking up the long field. My husband was in the canal out of sight, throwing out the oak logs he had cut down in August, so maybe the peacock could only see the logs flying out of the trees.

The pen where the peacocks are housed at the moment is next to the flight where the ducks and Araucana chickens live. All these birds seem to congregate in the back corner of their respective pens. The ducks have an elegant pink bath in this corner for a pond, and the peafowl have an old bench to sit on. Today all four hens were in the corner, the duck were in their bath and the peafowl on the bench.

The Araucana chickens arrived in the post from a breeder in Northern France who I met through a web forum. They were about 4 weeks old, three of them, we already had one Araucana that we had hatched from eggs also sent in the post. We put the all together in a small pen inside the duck flight and they were great. After 2 days we let them out into the main pen and they were very comical running around chasing the ducks etc. One of the chicks was infatuated by the ducks and followed them about all day, then every evening when we went to shut the coops at dusk this one Araucana chick would not go into the coop with the three others. She sat on the edge of the pink bath while the ducks flapped about, then the duck obediently hopped out and went to bed, but the chicken had to be picked up every evening and put inside the coop.

One evening, the peafowl were 'honking' loudly, we were on our way down to put everything away, but it took us a long time to realise the Araucana chick was actually in the bath, she was standing on the stones we had put in to help the ducks get out, and she was squeaking. So I had to pick her up, stuff her inside my jacket and bring her up to the house. I dried her off, put her in a cat box and sat her by the fire. She eventually stopped shaking, I thought she would die as she was so cold, but she perked up and the next morning we put her back with the others. She did the same thing for the next 3 nights......I think she liked being in the house, or she was just stupid. All the hens are so similar, I put a green ring on her so that we could see which one was the mad one! She does go in at night now, but sometimes she is still out when we get there and she seems to enjoy being picked up and cuddled for a minute. We need an appropriate name for her now????? Must begin with the letter 'A for Araucana, all the Marans have names starting with 'M', ordinary chickens which we may eat are named accordingly, Tandoori, Cous Cous, Coq au vin etc.....

Araucanas lay blue eggs and in France the breed standard has no tail, in the US and UK I believe tail feathers are allowed, but I am not sure.

I have been spinning all evening, yesterday I blended and carded by hand two lots of lovely mixes of wool, (Masham), banana fibre, bamboo fibre, and glitz, one a peach colour that I dyed myself and the other made up from a selection of Merino wool in shades of purple and pink that I found in the bag of Botany lap waste scraps. I had 15 rollags of each colour combination and I thought it was so much, they filled a pillow case. I was very disappointed in how much wool I ended up with after plying (2 ply). I tried to spin as lightly and finely as possible, to learn more control, the purple made up 100yds and the peach 70 yards. So I could probably make a purple hat and the peach neck warmer, I will have to look up some patterns on Ravelry, they have a great pattern section, some are free to download, and thankfully in the US the wool quantities are given in yards, not number of balls.

A bit fed up today as my relatively new camera (6 months old) is dead as a Dodo today, nothing. I checked out the 'Troubleshooting' section in the handbook. It was laughable.....'If the camera will not switch on.....switch it on and off'. If the camera will not switch off......switch if off'......Doh I will have to find the bill and take it back on Monday.

Time for bed said Zebedee.........

Here is my stash at last.......and strange noises in the woods.....

2009-12-08T12:20:00.001+01:00

Actually this is not all of it as I hae three enormous paper sacks of quite dirty fleece which are years old and from the old Wool marketing board. I hae been washing the cheiot fleece and some of the better parts of the jacob's fleece to learn to spin with and they are really quite good to use but such a lot of work.

The ginger, pink, shocking pink and bright blue at the front of the table are Wenslydale locks I bought on Ebay, they are sooooo soft and I hope to do some tail spinning with these, but I hae to make a decent core fibre first.

Extreme left are the green blue fleece and banana fibres I bought from Blonde Chicken Boutique on Etsy.

The small pile of pinky colours at the front between the Wenslydale locks I bought from someone in France I met on the Ravelry Anglophones in France group. Some silk and some hand dyed rovings, I want to get better at spinning before I attempt these as they are 'special'.

Behind the pinks to the back of the table is a mass of different colour rovings, black, blues, greys, reds and a load of glitz. This was an amazing bundle I bought from World of Wool, it was listed under special offers, as 'Botany lap waste', it was just a jumble of colours when it arried but after I sat down and separated the different fibres and wound them into soft balls I realised what a bargain the pack was. I do not like all of the colours but I hae been blending them with the Cheiot I hae prepared to make the cheviot softer and more interesting.

At the right hand end of the table behind the blue locks are several rollags I have made from Cheviot wool which has been hand dyed in walnut husks (ginger colour) and red wine (light purple colour).....well wine stains clothes if it is spilt, so why not use it to dye with?????

So I think I have enough to keep me busy at the moment...LOL

I should be writing Christmas cards.......last minute again. I have to take a photo for the card yet, in fact I have just taken one of the two dogs asleep together on the sofa wrapped up by my husband in a red blanket, it may just do for the Christmas photo....we'll see. I cant put it on here yet if I am going to use it, can I???

I will post my experiments with dyeing as soon as I have a moment.

The wierd warm weather we are having is upsetting the equilibrium of everything here....I have crocuses and snow drops up already, and the Mimosa is very advanced for December, the future flowers are starting to turn from green to a dull yellow. Birds are getting amorous and certain wild flowers have not stopped flowing as they usually do. I picked fresh dandelions yesterday for our tortoise (Hermans) who is still awake, and the grass is still growing. All mt chickens are laying daily as if it were spring. The stopped briefly when we had a cold snap a few weeks ago.

If I tell you we are also at an altitude of 500 mtrs in the foothills of the Pyrenees you may find all this even more astounding. We have turned the Rayburn off again and have used very little wood so far this 'winter'.

Early this morning we heard a very strange animal sound and all our cats were hiding, this could either have been an amorous female cat from the village or the wild, or a female fox calling, either way this is early for both animals. We are still confused by this noise and will keep a watch on all our animals, we have had sightings of an Iberian Lynx on our property. We always
have wild boar around at dusk and dawn, which is hardly surprising really as the river which runs across our land is the only river that runs all year, and the only one accessible by these animals in the surrounding area.

I love all this nature around us and have always wanted a pair of night vision binoculars.......Dear Father Christmas.....I have been very good this year.......

Un lien parfait en France

2009-12-02T16:19:00.000+01:00

Voici un lien parfait pour mes amis francophone (et des autres, parce qu'il y a bcp de photographies).

http://bedoandco.canalblog.com/archives/2009/11/09/15735044.html#comments

C'est un blog que je vien de trouver ecrit par une passionee de filage et tricotage.....a ne pas manquer.........

Today I won another auction on Ebay for some llama fibre, I must stop buying fiber now and start spinning some........I have a 'Stash' as they say in the States, so I put it all outside in the weak winter sun and took a photo - It will be uploaded here later.

A video that changed my spinning style.....

2009-11-30T21:43:00.000+01:00

This is how I was using the drive band and the scottish tension - in fact I had it on the bobbin, the whorl AND the Scottish tension on once - impossible.

I found Spindlicity from a link on Abbys Yarns, and on this page there are two videos which have helped me to spin the way I want to now.

http://beebonnet.typepad.com/spindlicity/current-affairs

Just one second in the first video made the penny drop for me about ratios. Reading about ratios did not enthral me and I found it hard to understand, now I know which whorl to use and to put the drive band on my bobbin as well. I had been struggling with the Haldane wheel I have using it as a single drive wheel. I had the double length drive band on the small groove on the whorl and used the Scottish tension. So I was spinning very fast and found it impossible to spin big yarn and pronouced thick and thin yarn.

The second video and the photographed instructions for spindle spinning down fibres, like camel and yak and I suppose my Akita dog. I had had a go at spinning my dog's fibre and the air was blue with me swearing at the wheel. Now I know that it is better to use long draw and because the fibres are so short and have a lot of air between them it is actually better to squash up the fibres and roll them in your hands before you spin.

I spent more than an hour hand carding some of the Cheviot fleece I had washed myself, with a royal blue merino roving, mainly to try and soften the Cheviot a little, and for interest. I made about a dozen large rolags of fibre. When I changed the ratios on my wheel so that I could attempt spinning 'big' again, I used all the rolags in about 15 minutes - I need a drum carder NOW !!

Why call the blog 'Another quiet day in the Corbieres' ?

2009-11-28T10:48:00.001+01:00

Because there is no such thing as a quiet day in the Corbieres'. This was a phrase coined by our group of friends here. We retired (!) to France about 7 years ago now and have not had a quiet moment since.........

We have loads of animals which occupy a lot of our time and are themselves highly amusing. The neighbours cows are always invading our territory.....time for a chase.....

Shiro the white Akita dog above is now nearly blind and totally deaf, but this does not stop him 'escaping' with our other dog, Frida, to pillage the local village.

Plenty of wildlife to watch, buzzards, Golden eagles (Aigle Royal), flamingoes on the salt flats when the weather is bad out at sea, and of course crows (Corbeaux) which is where the Corbieres gets its name from.

Local fetes with noisy 'bandas' walking around the villages in competition with each other.

Bull running between horses in a nearby village.

A fete in all the local villages every weekend from May to October. Meals, wine and entertainment for around 12 euros.

Flower and plant fetes.

The list goes on, but mainly just enjoying a change of life here. A day may start off quietly, then one thing leads to another..........someone needs help with a project, a lift somewhere, an impromptu invitation to a barbecue, or just a chance meeting in the one local shop.....and things mushroom from there..........

So unless we shut the shutters, turn off the lights, unplug the phone and don't answer the door, there is never, 'A quiet day in the Corbieres'.

The Corbieres is a very varied area of southern France near the sea and the Pyrenees mountains.

Spin it......or....... Eat it?????

2009-11-27T20:30:00.000+01:00

The top picture is banana fibre !!!!! ......Amazing stuff, it is shiny, looks like candyfloss, feels like silk and is so light and fluffy.
It arrived from the States today from blondechicken on Etsy - there is a link in my lists on the left. It smells fantastic as well but that must be the dye and the washing product the seller used.

I plan to card it into a batt for spinning made from the other fibre that arrived with it, second picture, these are locks from Blondechicken's own sheep Shera, but I might wait for a little bit of Angelina fibre to arrive for that added bit of sparkle.

Living in a particularly wild part of the Pyrenees we rather depend on web purchases within France as well as international. Mind you we are not easy to find, this week I have had to meet two delivery trucks in the village because they could not get down our track ( or didn't fancy driving over our little bridge?).

I willl upload a picture of my 'stash' tomorrow. I now have a stash worth photographing, since I have been collecting all these different fibres by stalking the auction sites and other web sites.

My husband is asking me to knit him another hat with some of my yarn....does he realise I have been reading 'Intertwined' by Lexi Boeger???? His hat could be spun with beads, bottle tops, plants, feathers, paper, old Beatles cassettes or anything else I happen to grab. LOL

My Old Haldane Spinning wheel

2009-11-27T17:48:00.000+01:00

This is the very old Haldane wheel that I am trying to teach myself to spin on. My main problem has been with the Scottish tension - in fact it did not even have a spring or wire and I was trying to use it. I managed to spin something before I realised there was anything wrong.......

I have my eye on an Ashford Country wheel as I know I want to spin chunky, art yarns.

The cat in the background is Pookie.

I have to go and bid on something now. I Will add to this later.

Cat in a Hat

2009-11-26T18:49:00.000+01:00

Did not take any yarny photos today so here is one of our 11 cats in a hat.....

When ever I start an new craze I am glued to the web researching. I have 4 old fleeces, Cheviot and Jacobs which are in great condition so have started with these for practice, but it is a load of work, washing, drying, carding etc.

Bored with the colours already I started dyeing with plants as you have seen, today I won three Ebay auctions for dyes, including some lovely Australian Landscape dyes.

The wool in my first skein is Cheviot natural and Cheviot dyed with walnut husks.

Today another Ebay purchase arrived......Amazon UK have Lexi Boeger's book 'Intertwined' in hardback edition for about £12 ! Had to have it......only took 48 hours to get to me in France - great, it is sooooooo inspiring.

I have just been snipping up holographic Christmas decorations to use in my first wild spinning.....I am learning in reverse....starting with the hard stuff, in at the deep end. Lovely instruction pictures in Lexi's book, very simple. I also watched a YouTube video - Extreme tail Spinning. I don't have a link but if you put that into the search you will find it, after you sift through the tail spin clips for bikers.......

I am adding a list of links I have found in France, in case I have people linking from the Ravelry francophone group as finding unusual supplies in France is quite hard but getting better - finding Wacky supplies that I want is impossible, but hell I am creative, nothing will be safe here, if it stands still I'll spin it up!

My first skein of handspun yarn........

2009-11-25T00:34:00.000+01:00

My very first skein of arty yarn. I skirted it, washed it, carded and combed it, spun it, plied it, washed it, beat it about......and twisted it into a skein. Quite a lot of work.

The peach colour is the result of the walnut husk dye, the white ply was another spool of single white Cheviot. Cheviot wool I find quite rough and it is recommended for outer wear and rugs, so you will understand that I am now searching the web for some different wools.

I ordered several different types of wool from www.worldofwool.co.uk, including what they call Botany lap waste which is just ends of runs of various colours and it was a great big bag and very cheap, great for beginners. Also ordered some Wenslydale because I like the long curly locks, and some angora to try out as I am looking for an angora goat now........

I have collected some oak leaves to make another dye.

Dyeing with natural dyes - walnuts part 2

2009-11-25T00:23:00.001+01:00

This picture shows the dye and wool in the jam jar, pushed down with a plastic fork until all wool is covered. It looked really dark.

Top picture is of the wool drying on the stove, I couldn't wait for it to dry naturally.

Dyeing with walnut husks

2009-11-25T00:04:00.000+01:00

Now this spinning bug has gripped me I was very soon bored with spinning the white cheviot fleece and wanted to experiment. I loked on Google and found some recipes for walnut dye. So out I went to search for husks, found plenty caught in the netting of the peacock enclosure. I peeled them from the nuts and my fingers became very black.....hmmmmm...remeber gloves next time.

I covered the husks with a mix of water and red wine vinegar about 50/50. Red wine vinegar was all I had at the time and so I expect this influenced the colour as well....remember to buy some white. Heated all together to boiling point and let simmer for an hour on very low temperature. Added 3 tablespoons of coarse salt stirred to disolve. Strained mixture and put into glass jar that would fit in the microwave.

I had previously washed some fleece and dried it, I have dyed clothes before and have always put them into the dye bath wet, so I gently wetted the wool again in quite hot water so that it was of similar temperature to the dye bath which had cooled a little. If the temperatures are not the same then there is a danger of the wool felting. Also do not stir or pour any other water on top of any wool in a dye bath or while washing.

Gently put the wool, about 100gms into the jam jar, I say 'about because I was not following a precise recipe, just put in enough wool so that the dye covers all the wool Slowly and gently push the wool down into the dye to make sure dye goes through all the wool. Do not pack too tight as result could be patchy.

Microwave on high for a minute, let cool a little and repeat. Now I was frightened when it started to boil so did not continue. There is a very good video by www.blondechickenboutique.com showing the microwave method. I left the wool in the jar of dye over night. The next morning I strained the wool from the dye - keep the mixture to dye some more wool a paler shade - amd slowly and gently rinsed the wool, this time in cold water as the jar of water had cooled over night.

Squeeze out gently and tease the wool apart to spread out to dry.

See results on next posting.

Dichroic glass or spinning this afternoon????What a choice.....

2009-11-16T12:49:00.000+01:00

This piece uses an etched design of bamboo leaves (CBS glass I think) on a background of Bullseye black glass, with some tiny strips of turquoise dichroic glass along the edges, topped off with a slice of crystal clear thin glass - sounds yummy....good enough to eat.......

Time to make some more dichroic jewellery.....for Christmas, I have already been asked to show some more items to friends........so I am putting down the spinning this afternoon to make up a kiln load. I only have a small Paragon kiln but it is just right for the amount of work I do, some of my pendants are quite large but I can still get about 15 on the small kiln shelves. If I put in another shelf on stilts it seems to affect the firing temperatures and usually items on the bottom shelf towards the back do not fire properly. Sometimes it is still worth loading the kiln like this, I put my best items on the top shelf and my experiments on the bottom shelf. Items can always be fired again, especially if they are looking good.

This summer I was filling all the little spaces on the shelves with tiny 1/4 inch pieces of dichroic glass with a slightly larger piece of clear on top, these made some brilliant cabochons which I intend to use eventually to construct some three dimensional pieces. I will use a background made as I would normally make a dichroic pendant in several layers and then change the firing programme to a 'Tack Fuse' firing and balance the little cabochons on top. Hopefully they will just attach to the base piece and add even more interest to my pendants.

Help.......my husband has just collected the post, disturbing a buzzard on the way back which we have just rushed out to look at, and to make noise to keep it away from our chickens.......now I am torn between spinning or glass work......the packet contained some Wenslydale locks in some wild colours.......question is....can I keep my hands off it long enough to do some glass??????

I can't spin chunky.........

2009-11-13T19:11:00.000+01:00

I thought it was going to be really difficult to spin fine thread, but I cannot stop. That's OK you might think but I really want to spin chunky Arty yarns. Maybe I am too tense and pinching the draft too hard preentling more from slipping through, who knows? I have had some advice from the www.ravelry.com forum so will try out the suggestions.

I also have difficulty keeping one of my cats, Jack, away from the roving that is hanging at my side and moving as I spin, so I end up with lots of little short pieces.

Jack is the beige cat next to Frida the dog, the other cat is a stray from the village!!....seems to have moved in now.........

Right I am off to paint grapes, autumn leaves and pumpkins on the wall in the village hall for a meal and dance we are having tomorrow evening, so no spinning tonight.......

I have diversified a little......

2009-11-12T13:25:00.000+01:00

Spinning has taken me by storm.......I dug out my spinnning wheel, a castle form Haldane wheel, for the cupboard it has been hiding sin since we moved to France.

I had been particularly inspired by Tara of www.blondechickenboutique.com on Etsy and her web site/blog, and used her videos on You Tube to help me to self learn again to spin. 10 years ago spinning was very ordinary and I managed to learn to spin and ply some uite reasonable yarns in wool and llama. Now I only want to spin wild, chuky, art yarns but I only seem to be able to spin thin!!!!

I also spin left handed when I do everything else right handed????? Maybe that's because I was looking at people on the net as a sort of mirror image????

I have ordered some different types of yarns and a carding machine is high on my Christmas present want list. I have knitted up all the little scraps I have spun lately and have stuck them in a folder, even my 'failures', or what I consider failures but what now seems to be fashionable and desirable.

Pictures to follow

Autumn is here - time to stay in and get 'crafty'

2009-11-07T16:03:00.000+01:00

Wet and windy here in our southern corner of France. All the autumn leaves are flying around and making a delicious carpet of colours on our drive. This has put me in a creative mood and I have recently posted some new items on www.LibellulaGlass.etsy.com in autumn and winter colours.

I have also dusted off my spinning wheel and found some old fleeces we had stored for 7 years since our move to France. So I have washed, dried, carded and attempted to spin some yarn this week. When I frist leart to spin about 8 years ago, I was taught by an old lady in Wales who taught me to spine quite fine worsted yarns. Now I have really been inspired by a Blonde Chicken!!!!

Blonde Chicken Boutique is also on Etsy and has a website of her own and her yarns are chunky in the extreme...fantastic......so now I want to spin chunky yarns and I want to add in loads of additional texture from silk, banana fibres, locks of fleece, bobbles, etc., the list is as long as I can be inventive.

Today I have been collecting black walnut husks from our trees to make a natural brown dye for some of my Cheviot wool.

So watch this space for a little diversification from glass into fibres.

Up before dawn.........too early for me.....

2009-03-25T06:43:00.000+01:00

Dichroic glass pendant - transluscent green
Green Goddess
www.LibellulaGlass.etsy.com

Up too early this morning - our recent guests from the UK wanted to leave by 6am to drive all the way to the port in the north of France to sail tomorrow. Too early for me, but an early start means I can get down to making some more jewellery today.

Yesterday spring became winter again with wild winds, rain and a drop in temperatures, but we were cosy beside the log burning stove.

We ate lunch at a local restaurant, Chez Divine in Mouthoumet, Corbieres, 11 Aude. The only restaurant for miles around here and fortunately it serves good food and quite cheaply. The decor leaves a little to be desired, having changed the old fashioned chintzy wallpaper for fake plastic beams and stick-on fake stones last year. Ignor this thogh and enjoy the food.

After that I was giving a demonstration to the 'Troisieme Age' - the pensioners group here. They had asked to know how I made canes in Fimo, polymer clay for decorating little yogurt pots for making candle holders. The candle holders will be used on the tables during the village fetes this summer.

I taught myself to make canes by finding links on the web, they can be easy or complicated, either way they make spectacular designs and are really impressive.

I prefer to work in glass now as polymer clay requires too much kneading, pushing and rolling which affects the arthritis in my hands. Glass, once the cut is made is much easier on hands anf joints. I found a pistol shaped glass cutter from a mosaic website here in France which is easy to hold and use. Shop around as the prices are very varied.

Rural postal services...............?

2009-03-23T15:19:00.000+01:00

Dichroic Glass - Slider pendant - Mardi Gras - multicolored dichroic glass mosaic:

www.LibellulaGlass.etsy.com or contact me on www.libellulaglass@yahoo.com

I have a blog on French Blogger and one in english on Blogger.com, they seem to have linked themselves and I have been posting on one and it has come up on the other.

We have visitors here at present and I have not checked any mails for 2 days, so it was a great suprise to look on line and find I had sold three items on Ebay, so I am about to do battle at our little village post office here in France......On saturday I checked the opening times of the post office and went to the next village. The post lady was outside talking to the postman. I went up to the door and she moved aside and said the post office was shut.....she was ill (?) and there was no one to replace her that day.......she had jsut walked across to put a notice on the door.......so no post was sent saturday. I am now about to go again, Monday to the same village, it is supposed to be open today from 3 - 5, of course the post for day has already been collected, before the post office opens, so anything left there today will not even get into the system until tomorrow at 2pm......Oh the joys of country living.......

Hurricanes and power cuts.....

2009-03-04T21:41:00.000+01:00

I had to cut the last posting short as the wind is terrible here and we had three short power cuts, that usually means the next one will cut the power off for the rest of the night.....Oh the joys of living in the wilds.

Launching shop on ETSY.....www.LibellulaGlass.etsy.com

2009-03-04T21:31:00.000+01:00

Phew, I was holding my breath while adding jewellery items to my new Etsy shop - nerve wracking, and having to invent names for each piece too so much time.....is this essential I ask myself??? I will have to jot names down in a notebook as they come to me.

As my flash on the camera is jammed I had to take the photos outside - surrounded by chickens again.....I have now made up a small 'studio' on the table inside, and the photos can be readjusted on Photoshop, so I think I will get better at it.

I received some new glass pieces from Warm Glass UK yesterday so I will be making up some new items this evening. Etched glass is interesting, but etched, dichroic glass is spectacular. There are some dog tooth check designs and animal prints, which could give me some more masculin designs.....

New Firing in the kiln Now......

2009-02-26T15:52:00.001+01:00

These are all ticking away in the kiln right now - I'm off to build my white box before I have to photograph these.

Gardening Hands

2009-02-26T15:46:00.000+01:00

No that's not the name of this piece....sorry, I have just realised that my hands show that I have also been doing some early planting int he garden this morning......I think the next thing I need to do for my jewellery photography is to make a 'white box' so that I can photograph things in peace away from the chickens and iindoors, more professional......

This pieces is actually a 'slider' it has a hole in it at the top, made at the time of firing, which has a cord threaded through it - no bail needed.

I will soon - glue permitting be able to photograph my finished items displayed on necklaces, then they will all be on my Etsy shop - Libellula Glass Jewellery - www.libellulaglass.etsy.com.

Pink Candyfloss

2009-02-26T15:42:00.000+01:00

I like trying to find names for these pieces..... Pink Candyfloss sums it up, but if I translate that into French it becomes, 'Barbe a Papa Rose', Dad's pink beard - does not somehow conjure up the atmosphere of my piece.......Hmmm, so I'll have to think up two sets of names....I don't think so!!

Blue Heaven

2009-02-26T15:40:00.000+01:00

Translucent blue glass, followed by dichroic glass on clear and topped off with a thick clear Bullseye glass capping.

Translucent red pendant with dichroic glass mosaics

2009-02-26T15:37:00.001+01:00

Excuse the hand in these photos - I was trying to twist the pieces to best show off the colours.
These pieces without holes will all have silver plated or sterling silver bails attached to them, and will be sold with our without necklaces or cords.

Latest Firing of Dichroic Jewellery

2009-02-26T15:33:00.001+01:00

These are the items that were pictured on the shelf ready to fire in a posting a little further back. Dichroic jewellery is very hard to photograph as the 'Dichroic' - 'Two Colour' effect is only really appreciated as the items are moved in sunlight or electric light. Add to that the fact that the colours change whether the pieces are in daylight or electric light and I guess you would have to have about 4 photos of each item to show it off successfully.

Dichroic Chickens........help with the photos

2009-02-26T15:20:00.000+01:00

This was truly a Corbieres moment.....I was trying to photograph my latest fused cabochons and the chickens would give me no peace. The chicken at the front peering into the camera is 'Squeaky'. She was hatched all on her own on the day I brought home the peacocks. I was not expecting any more 'babies' and all the coops and arks were occupied, so she had to pass her first few nights with us in a box in the lounge. Ever since then she has alwasy been very attached to us. If we go outside to do something she is first there and flies up to our shoulders - so did I expect anything else when I went outside to take some photos????

Spring is really here, mind you we had a very heavy frost last night -3 degrees C, this afternoon it has been 15 degrees and wonderful.

My glue to stick my bails on the pendants still has not arrived, so I have prepared another firing. I 'won' an auction on Ebay last Thursday, paid for it by Paypal Thursday night and the parcel of glass arrived from Brimmon Glass UK, on Saturday morning - wonderful....I ordered some E6000 industrial glue from a company just up the road in Montpellier, France, paid the same way 10 days ago and it still has not arrived......

I am going to upload some more photos here of the individual new items, which will soon be on my Etsy shop: www.libellulaglass.etsy.com, just thought I would try selling somewhere other than Ebay, especially when I found out I could put stuff on Etsy for 4 months for the same price as Ebay charges for a week, and the commission is less. It's worth a try but it will be quite strange to coordinate as if things are on Etsy for 4 months I cannot really sell them to anyone else, so I will have to have three boxes, one for jewellery on Ebay, one for Etsy and the other for items I can sell locally at craft fairs etc.

Ready for the kiln

2009-02-19T14:12:00.000+01:00

Here is a shelf load of potential items of jewellery ready to go into the kiln. In fact they are firing now as I write this. I cannot wait for midnight tonight when I can open the kiln. The firing process is quite long as the glass has to be slowly brought upto temperature, held at various points along the way, and then brought very slowly down to room temperature. The final process is called annealing and has to be done to strengthen the glass. If this section is skipped or done too fast, then the glass can crack and craze and can even shatter some time later, this would be particularly dangerous for a piece of jewellery worn close to the skin.

I tried to take the picture at a slight angle to show the different layers of glass, some pieces are two layers and some three. Some use thick glass and some think. I am still experimenting with the glass and my kiln, so I keep careful notes of each firing. As each piece looks so different after firing I draw a plan of the kiln shelf or take a photo when it is set up ready to go, then I number the pieces and describe what I did to make the different layers and I also list each particular glass type that I have used. You can see from the picture that the top layer is larger than the bottom one or two layers. This is so that when it slumps down in the kiln the top layer goes slight round the other layers to get a good seal on the edges. The difference in size is very slight, in fact in the photo the differnce on some of them looks enormous, it is not, that's just the angle and the light. As I am an artist and not builder, engineer or other precise craftsperson, I do not measure anything precisely, I use my 'eye. I do not want pieces to be so perfect and contrived that they look as if they have been made by machine.

Back to glass fusing.....

2009-02-17T09:25:00.000+01:00

Here is another picture from this week's fusing. The backing glass was a transparent Royal Blue which is very dark. When viewed flat this looks like a normal dichroic pendant on black. I wore it with a black T shirt last night and it looked 'ordinary' - if dichro jewellery could EVER look ordinary!! When I took it outside in the sunshine and put it on a piece of white paper it looked completely different, so blue, then I lifted it up and the light that shone through it was spectacular. The middle layer is a mosaic of dichro glass on clear to allow the light to pass through, although this was not my intention when I constructed the pendant.

Making holes for cords in dichroic pendants

I have learnt all my techniques for making fused glass jewellery from the internet. I had been making tansverse holes in pieces for neck cords using ceramic fiber. I only had a very light fiber and sometimes the hole was uneven and actually collapsed on one side once. Now I have purchased FIBER ROPE from www.warmglass.co.uk and the process is much cleaner. They sell the rope in two thicknesses, I bought the larger but when I saw it it was way to 'fat', so I unravelled it, it is in three strands. I now use two strands which I slightly dampen and retwist together to form a slightly more solid rope. I then put a little PVA glue, which is what Elmers Glue is, along the gap between the two pieces of glass where I want the hole. Make sure the rope protrudes at least a quarter inch either side of the glass construction. Now sometimes I have found that the edges of the glass on the top of the hole have melted down slightly which makes a hole that opens a little to the back. I did not think this was ideal so I support the rope during firing (the quarter inch that protrudes) on a tiny square of ceramic fiber - this could also be on another little piece of fibre rope. As you can see from the picture above, the hole is very neat on the edge. The dullness inside the hole is just the remains of the fiber rope, I was too impatient to photograph the pendant as I loved it so much. I have since washed it out with a little detergent and a pipe cleaner.

I now have some large beads with vertical holes lined up for firing - these will be constructed later into larger pendants, so that I can pass the cord right through the 'bead' and add other beads above and below. I am always experimenting. I have not made a bracelet yet using this method but it would be very possible to do so, making two horizontal, parallel holes in the fused glass constructions, then stringing the various fused pieces together with stretch cord.

When I finish these pendants with cords I have found it better to use a cord that tones in or matches with colour of the glass that it passes through, as I use a clear glass capping, the top is always clear which looks a bit strange.........I must buy some Royal Blue for the pendant above as it will look much better. I also think that organza ribbon passed through these holes, again in a matching colour, looks even better, it tends to fill the clear glass hole up more.

By the way I think Spring has sprung here in the south of France, we have had three glorious days of warm sunshine - exceedingly cold frosty nights, but fantastic days.

Happy fusing.

Freddy the tortoise

2009-02-15T22:36:00.000+01:00

Freddy is very old, about maximum for a Herman's tortoise - he is more than 60 years old. He has been in our family for most of his life, having been brought to the UK in the 1940's. No one can remember him having been any smaller than he is now, so we presume he was already adult. A great many tortoises were brough over from europe and north Africa at this time, they were very popular pets. He lived all his life with my husband's Nan until she was too old to look after him, then he was passed on to her daughter, my mother-in-law, until she went into sheltered accomodation. Now he is our responsibility. We repatriated him to France 6 years ago, a year after we moved here, Herman's tortoise are resident down here in the south of France. When we brought him out here we had no idea that there were any restrictions on movements. My husband just put him in the foot well of the passenger seat in the car and drove him here, he was just waking up from hibernation and with the car heating he was very active by the time he arrived.

We took our new responsibility very seriously and I did much research on the internet to give him the best possible retirement. For many years he was subjected to the then Blue Peter hibernation system - pack them away in October until March without lookng at them......I am surprised he survived. Blue Peter is now a much better informed children's TV series I am happy to say.

He has a very large pen, planted with bushes and landscaped with different strata, covered with netting here because of eagles, foxes and martens, he has a Flintsone's type stone hill with a tunnel for shelter underneath when it is very hot, and a shallow pond. In fact it gets so hot here he goes into Estivation, the summer form of hibernation. I had never seen him do this in the UK.

He had a companion until last year, an Iberian tortoise called Benji, who unfortunately died, of old age, having been brought to the UK not long after Freddy, he moved to France with Freddy. We are looking for another companion but do realise Freddy is now very old, we are also retired now and so we are considering the possibility of rehoming him at a tortoise sanctuary near here, just outside Perpignan. Until then he is well loved and has loads of visitors, he is alert and seems to know his name, if we stand in his pen he comes and stands on our feet.

Billy the cat shares with the tortoise........

2009-02-14T20:59:00.000+01:00

It really was cold today and Billy realised the tortoise was under a heat lamp and decided to share with him. He does not show up well in photos as he is so black........The tortoise woke up a couple of weeks ago when we had some really mild weather. It is hard to find a place around these buildings that stays below 50 degrees F all the winter.

First piece of dichroic jewellery on Ebay!!!

2009-02-14T20:14:00.000+01:00

Well daringly I have put this pece of jewellery up for sale on Ebay. www.ebay.fr in fact, ref. number 320341242900, it is probably far too cheap considering the work that goes into a piece of dichroic glass fusing. My next pieces will have silver bails and leather cords so they will have to be more expensive. I am testing the market really, as in France the market seems to have been flooded with cheap mass produced dichroic jewellery from China, and glass fusing is relatively new out here. In the States I think things have happened in reverse. Crafts people have been producing dichroic fused jewellery for some time and it has a good reputation so buyers know the difference and will pay the prices for artisan produced work. Anyway we'll see what happens.

Tomorrow I am going to experiment with glass fusing paper between the glass. I was sent a free sample, but have read that some people have not been too pleased with the outcome as they thought the backing paper would disappear and it doesn't. So again, I will experiment and report back.

My Paragon SC2 kiln went beserk the other day, I switched on and the only programme that would show up was PRO3, not my fusing programme. I discovered the red 'UP' arrow would not work. I was disappointed as I really had to fire something to give to people coming for dinner the following evening. So I labouriously programmed the kiln using only the down arrow......this took ages to do, especially programming in a hold of 10 minutes, when I had to hold my finger on the button all the way down from 999.9.....!!! Then half way through firing the temperature started to drop on its own and I tried to correct it and skip a segment......this did not work so I ended up just standing next to the kiln and watching the final part of the process and adjusting the kiln manually. I emailed the company in the UK that had sold me the kiln and I had a message immediately that Paragon in the US were sending me a new controller, so maybe it's a problem they know about. I hope it arrives soon as I already have two kiln shelves full and ready to be fired.

Today it has been really cold, never getting above 3 degrees. All the cats were inside sleeping in various warm places around the house, the sofa was covered in a heap of cats and dogs and the kittens, I call my 'Pusst Cat Dolls' were all in a pile on the chair by the Rayburn.

The picture is at the top for some reason, I thought it would appear here......

Including silver wire in fused jewellery

2009-02-10T20:30:00.000+01:00

Here is a picture of a piece of fused jewelery I made yesterday with a piece of silver wire added between the glass layers to act as an attachment for a leather thong. Not one of my successes or I am being too picky maybe. I had protected the wire with ceramic fibre and covered it with some dichroic glass and a clear topping. I was disappointed to see that the wire had more or less passed through the dichroic and was too apparent for my liking. I had expected it to be further back.

I do not know how to recitify this I will probably ask a question on on of the glass fusing forums, but I have thought of adding an extra layer of glass, so it would be stacked like this:

5.Clear on top
4.dichroic
3.thin black
2.wire insert
1.thin black at the bottom

Since I am really only at the experimental stage with all of my fusings I will probably try this out. I have had quite a fvew great pieces and only a couple of failures. I have kept very precise notes and have 'invented' a form for myself to show the kiln shelf layout, side by side with a list of the composition of all the pieces.

I am writing this as I wait for my next firing to finish. I was confused to find that when I switched on my Paragon SC2 kiln this morning, the controller would not work properly. The 'UP' arrow would not work at all, which made it a long process to programme as I had to hold my finger on the down arrow for ages to come down from 99.99 to 00.10!!! And I could only access Programme 3. I have sent an email to the company in the UK where I bought the kiln and hopefully they can tell me if it something I am doing wrong. I dread having to send the controller back to the UK to be fixed, but it is all still under warranty.

Today was a typical day Chez nous.......constant visitors, and I have just beenup and down like a Yo Yo serving drinks and checking on the kiln sitter all the time. Anyway it looks good.

France has just had its second hurricane in 18 days, and they seem to have decided to give them names like in the states. The latest, yesterday is called Quentin and the one 17 days ago hsa been called Klaus......I have no idea why they started with Q and why they are not going in alphabetical order like anywhere else? Who knows???? Maybe it will be explained.

The airports in the north of France were all closed yesterday, but Air France had predicted the chaos this may have caused and they pre-booked thousands of hotel rooms and people were just put in taxis and sent away for the night. Maybe there was an ulterior motive here as well. This was the airport building that collapsed not long after it had been built a couple of years ago.....maybe they were just avoiding a potential disaster of this happening with an airport full of people sleeping on the floors. Of course it was a full moon, I have been keeping weather records for over 6 years now and we often seem to get dramatic changes in the weather around the full moons, yesterday was no exception. We in the southern corner near Spain escaped very lightly, just heavy rain and some wind. Apparently there are 500,000 homes without electricity again in the north west. We tend to get very little coverage of this on French news - not like having Sky News or CNN constant coverage.

OK I need to get supper in the oven and switch my fused glass off - best not to get them mixed up...............

Art Clay Silver with fused glass

2009-02-07T09:23:00.001+01:00

I have read recently that these two media go very well together. So today I will try to put one of the cabochons I made yesterday onto a 'mount' of art clay silver. I have some fine silver bezel that I could surround the cabochon with first and then attach the whole thing to a backing of rolled out metal clay. I will cut a hole in the back of the backing as I think this will benefit the dichroic glass cabochon, allowing the light to shine through.

I have been experimenting with metal clay now for a few months. For anyone who has never used this it is 99.9 per cent pure silver mixed with an organic binder to the same consistency as pottery clay. This means that this can be worked as clay, no traditional metalsmithing involved. No hammering, no cutting - just use like clay. There is no waste, every tiny bit of scrap can be saved and put in a jar with a tiny bit of water. This makes your 'slip', a very wet form of clay which can be used to 'stick' together components parts of a piece of silver art.

The piece above was my first piece of silver clay jewellery, a wearable piece of artwork. I am sorry the photo is not too great. I am experienced with pottery and using clay in all its forms as an art teacher, but to work on a piece so small I found really difficult. I am used to throwing large lumps of clay around a table or a wheel. Metal clay arrives in tiny packages of 7, 20 or 50 grammes.

We have sleet and snow again here in the south of France so I will be inside today experimenting with the metal clay and glass combinations. I have found some great links and tutorials for these media and will publish them in my next posting.

The cats will be glad I am staying in today.

Kiln sitters and power cuts

2009-02-06T14:02:00.000+01:00

Two posts in one day?????? I have just watched a Blog video tutorial on how to add photos so here goes......

This is a picture of the whole kiln shelf of glass fusings I made yesterday. It was nerve wracking programming the kiln, I was holding my breath. I started and stopped it several times to make sure the programme was correct - OCD showing itself??? LOL. All was going well when we had several power cuts.....we have been having them since the hurricane and snow this area of France had about 10 days ago. Anyway the kiln sitter would not reset itself so I had to try and reprogramme it after each power cut. We had three cuts in all and having read more about cuts when firing I realise I was really luck as the cuts were right at the beginning and the last one was near the end of firing so no damage done.

It is fascinating to watch the glass through the kiln window as it starts to sag and melt and change shape, this is when the glass is fusing together. I had not a clue what was correct at this stage and I know that some experienced fusers will stop and start their kilns according to the state of the fusing pieces. I had no idea so I just let the kiln do its job, I can make adjustments another time.

Scary this blogging lark.......

2009-02-06T13:40:00.000+01:00

Suddenly a whole new learning curve to climb - blogging - never thought I'd start a blog.

I was inspired to do this after reading another blog via the Warm Glass Bulletin Board. I have recently started to learn how to fuse glass. My birthday present last year was a small Paragon SC2 kiln, at that time this was intended for making silvery clay jewellery, now I have progressed to making fused glass pendants and cabochons. Ultimately I think I will merge the two things together.

More about the jewellery later.

I live in a remote watermill in the French Pyrenees mountains, in the wine producing area of the Corbieres (lovely red wines, some great rose wines too).

My husband and I retired out here in 2002 from the UK and have never been busier! Hence the title of this blog - 'Another Quiet Day in the Corbieres'. Something happens every day to distract us from our plans for renovations made the night before. This catchphrase is a standing joke among our circle of friends, because there really is no such thing as a 'Quiet Day in the Corbieres'.

The animals keep us busy, all of whom are rescued strays, even the llama. We have dogs, cats (11), tortoises, goats, chickens, a rabbit, a peacock and pea hen, and are surrounded by loads of wild life, wild boar, badgers, lynx, deer, muntjac, foxes etc. So feeding and putting to bed are major daily events.

The initial photograph on this blog is of my most recent new venture in making fused glass. When I learn how to post more photos I will make up some albums. Until then please make do with this.