First post

The New Year was brought in by Miss 2012 going up in flames taking with her all our unwanted thoughts. We toasted her out and the new year in.

Kayakers ready for the rescue

Polar bear swimmers

This was followed (much later in the day) with the polar bear swim.
Meanwhile, in the fibre world, much holiday time was devoted to organizing fibre homework: samples spun, fibres blended, weighing and measuring blends of silk and mohair, writing up my notes for the Level 4 homework. The New Year fibre world is starting out in an organized manner. That should last a day or two.

2012 Last Post

[Photo: Tree with wire rope
growing right through it]

Yesterday was the annual Christmas bird count. Our team consisted of Annie who is doing her PhD on sea birds, Russ, a biologist who has done a lot of bird research at all sorts on interesting places, mostly on islands, and me. I was their handicap to help even out such an expert team. We were in charge of the southern section of Newcastle Island. Three other teams who also knew their birds covered the centre, southern and northern sections. In all it took 36 man/woman hours, or around three hrs per team. How many birds? From memory and just from my team: 1 hairy woodpecker, tons of chickadees, 2 ravens, 3 eagles, a dozen golden crowned kinglets, 2 towhees, 4 sparrows, 16 robins, 6 Anna's hummingbirds, and a host of LBJs (Little Brown Jobs)...hmmm....doesn't seem enough for a 3hr hunt. Annie and Russ were able to identify most of these just by their calls.

[Photo: X tree]

[Photo: Tree with a handle]

[Photo: Miss 2012's last day]

Along the way we saw a few interesting trees which I photographed and thought I would share.

And tonight is the last night of 2012. We will be sending off the old year with written promises of what we are NOT going to take into the new year. These promises will be written on paper and stuffed down Miss 2012's top just before she is burned at the stake on the stroke of midnight. Say goodnight and goodbye to Miss 2012.

Another story - life after death

[Photo: Protection Island lighthouse]

We met John this summer. Late fifties, early retiree. He anchored his 40' live-a-board sailboat just off Lasquiti Island. In the heat of the day we sat admiring it from shore with him. He had purchased it last year from a widow whose husband had spend over $200,000 getting it ready to sail around the world, just before the husband died. The boat sat for six years before John found it. When he retired from 32 years working in Alberta, he was desperate to live on a boat. Any boat. A hulk would do. He didn't care if it had a motor, he just wanted to live on the water. But he found a dream boat instead.  
He wasn't sure if he was up to sailing across deep seas, so he set sail with two friends, a retired FBI agent and a Navy Seal, two guys ready for any emergency, from Puget sound headed for the Baja. Off the Washington Coast they had engine troubles but John managed to jury rig some parts and they headed in to Astoria to make permanent repairs.
That was the last thing he remembered before waking up in the Portland hospital. He had been dead for 3 hours. His heart had stopped and paramedics had managed to keep him breathing. He arrived at the emergency operating room DOA and the doctor asked what the hell was he supposed to do with him. Someone said 'do what you can.' And the doctor did. John is alive 9 months later due to a series of little miracles: engine breaking down when/where it did, paramedics being so close by, the doctor doing what he could.
I asked if his friends had first aid training and had kept him breathing until the paramedics had arrived. He said they were both trained but neither had administered first aid for fear of being held liable. 
I didn't ask if they were still friends.

Lost .... and found at sea

Photo, design and
decoration by Laura Landry.

Readers of the blog will wonder where on earth I have been. Well, I have been up to my eyeballs spinning trying desperately to finish all my assignments for the year. D-day (driving-day) to get to Olds Alberta for year 4 class arrived and I still hadn't finished all my homework for year 3 of the Master Spinner program. The last homework assignment (spin embroidery yarns and embroider a 3 x 3" sampler) wasn't done. The thread had been spun for months but that doggone embroidery had still to be done. I embroidered for 1,000 kilometers, followed by two evenings before it got done. So on day three, tada, of level 4 class, I handed it in. Whew!
I returned home with a suitcase full of fibre and an armload of assignment instructions for the coming year. I have been back six days and still haven't had time to unpack everything. It was the Nanaimo Dragon Boat Festival all weekend and I was on the water all weekend. 
While I was away, our team, the Vancouver Island Ancient Mariners, posted a new bra on the Newcastle Channel 'bra pole'. I don't know what the original purpose of the pile was, but some years ago, it was decided that it should be decorated by bras, so dragon boaters, while out practicing add their mark. Note the miniature graduation cap on the left cup. Nice touch!

This years festival theme was the 60's, so we went as ourselves...hippies. We paired up again this year with Seventh Wave, a fantastic team from Vancouver who went Mondrian and British. Check them out.

Too busy to post

[Photo: Crazy 8 outrigger race]

Here we are almost a month since the last post. Life has been way too busy to take time to post. It's been go, go, go, for a few weeks straight and it has worn the body down to a head cold. Which is why I have time to post while at home recovering. 

[Photo: St. Mary's Church
in Metchosin]

It started with a spin-in at a church by the ocean. A great environment for contemplative spinning, not that we contemplated, we just gabbed, but if one wanted to contemplate while spinning, then I recommend it. Try it. Take a spinning wheel to church.
Then there was two conferences, one workshop on making yarn baskets which I organized, operating a safety boat for a two day series of outrigger races, a spin-in which I organized, and the first bike trip of the year--short into the wind and driven sleet-like rain, amongst other events.  

[Photo: Some thing to do with coal
mining. Note the bike appearing
tiny next to this, thing]

Oh, and did I mention the renovations? It started harmlessly enough, buying a futon couch for the guest bedroom. That is the room also known as the stash room. The room which I suspect also houses Priscilla-the-fleece-less-sheep-that-rule-the-guest-bedroom-wool-stash. In any event, we had a guest due to arrive, so we ordered the couch, which arrived two hours after the guest left. Even with cleaning up the wool stash, the couch looked too crowded in the room. Something needed to be done. I won't get into the details, but it involved moving the bookcases (all three) out of the living room into the office; disassembling the office desk, shelves and counter; repainting the office, living room, dining room, kitchen; moving the loom from the main bedroom into the office; buying a wardrobe-in-disguise-which-will-really-hide-wool for the main bedroom; buying two upper kitchen cabinets for the office; and hauling great hoards of stuff (but not wool) out to the recycle shops. And we aren't finished yet. The office is starting to look great. The guest bedroom however is filled to the brim with paint paraphernalia, office papers, and a ton of office stuff piled 2-3 ft high on the new, unused couch! I am thinking the office is much nicer than the guest bedroom and, hey, why not put a door on the office and make it dual purpose: an office and a guest bedroom!

New Year, new wheel

[Photo: The twin Miss 2011's]

I ended the year with dye day and started the New Year with a new wheel. I think that bodes well. A bit symbolic.  
Dye day was exciting. Heather and I dyed while Nora, the knitwear designer and my mother (hi Mom) kept us company. We had three pots with mordants, each mordant (copper, iron, and alum) created a different shade or colour from the dye. We used Brazilwood for the dye and after dying, we used four different modifiers (acidic acid, alkaline, iron and copper) to get even more variety in colour and shades.

The two in the picture above are not Nora or my Mom, they are two Miss 2011 twin effigies. This is my tradition, to create an effigy every New Years. She attends the parties (3 this year) on New Years eve and people write down on a small piece of paper what they do not want to take with them into the New Year. The paper is stuffed down the front of Miss 2011 and at the stroke of midnight the effigy is burned taking with it the papers which holds the unwanted secrets of the participants.
Miss 2011 was in demand and needed to be at two parties at the same time, hence the twins. They are no more.

And to start the New year off is my new Ashford Joy. I wanted something shorter than my Lendrum but sturdier than my Louet Victoria and I think this is it. Let's see what she spins in 2012.

Wasn't that a party!

[Photo: Keith, the ferry captain]

When it rains it pours, and it comes down in clumps. Today it was raining boats and batteries. First my scale for weighing fibre needed a new battery, so it was out of use. Then my electric assist BionX bike battery was declared dead. They costs a fortune so I may have to revert to old fashioned muscle power all the way (think hills, think mountains. Uggg). Then we went to town in the boat to visit friends and when we returned to the marina to come back the boat would not start. Battery problems. So we had to take the ferry.
We got to the ferry passenger waiting room with 30 minutes to kill. Three people dressed for the Arctic, were there, carrying large plastic garbage bags full of something heavy. Turns out they had sunk only an hour or so ago. They were in an open 16ft boat heading over to the island and it was a bit rough out. I suspect the boat might have been a bit overloaded, so when they took water over the transom, the pump couldn't keep up and they took on more and more water, quicker and quicker. Two of them were just here for a week from Toronto (they came, they sunk, they left). The water came up so quick that the woman barely had time to dial 911 saying 'we're going down'. Luckily there was a boat nearby who heard their yells and hauled them in. Interestingly, the woman made the rescuer save her cell phone before she was pulled from the water.
Other passengers waiting for the ferry had already heard the news on CBC. News does travel very fast.
By the time we all heard the story, the ferry was 30 minutes late. We phoned only to be told the ferry would be an hour late as it had had a collision with another boat who had been speeding across the harbour with no lights on.
It wasn't until the next day when a neighbour told us the whole story. A friend had stopped by to ask for a ride around the island to look for his truck. Apparently there had been a party and he couldn't remember where he had left his truck. He mentioned a few people who had been at the party and it included he driver of the lightless boat as well as the driver of the sunken boat. Must have been quite the party!

The commute home

[Photo: Walking home]

[Photo: Walking along
the waterfront]

[Photo: View from the boat]

[Photo: View from the golf cart]

This is my wordless Wednesday posting, albeit a day late.