Terrible me

I know, I'm terrible.  I promised to blog for the Tour de Fleece, but it's almost over and no post.  I almost feel bad about it.

Lots of spinning being done.  Alpaca wool blend, 60% alpaca from my beautiful fibre boy Beau a giant rescue alpaca, and 40% wool from Salt Spring Island.

In other news, for some strange reason, I've decided I'm going to build a yurt.  Still trying to figure out the details, but I set up a separate blog dedicated to my Quest for Yurt Love.  I feel a bit bad starting up yet another blog when the internet is already littered with useless garbles, but maybe it will be useful for future yurt builders.  I'm writing about my research, observations, evaluations, and soon my triumphs and failures.

There is also an ulterior motive to writing the Yurt Blog - I'm a person with a limited budget and a finite number of skills.  I would love to make as much of this as I can myself with as environmentally friendly approach as possible, however, I'm having trouble finding the resources.  Maybe someone out there might stumble on my blog and read about where I'm at.  They might know someone's uncle who has a neighbour who just happens to have an excess of such and such a resource ... or there is a group of enthusiastic group of people who would love to help make giant felt cloths in return for awesome lamb feast.

Who knows, stranger things have happened.

I worry about appealing to crowdfunding so I can buy what I need.  Two reasons why I don't like this - one, just buying the thing doesn't teach me anything new, and two, I don't want to beg for money without giving something back to people - but what?  If I can think of some tokens I can give in thanks, and once I get a better idea of how much the whole thing will cost, then maybe I'll investigate kickstarter.  But until then...

Other things going on here at the farm include saving seeds to return to the seed library, planting out winter veg, getting ready for fibrations fibre fest (which for some reason I've decided to enter as a vendor).

Back to the present

I've had my computer off most of the last few weeks.  It was great, I got a lot of things done both on the farm and in the 14th Century.  The only down side is the mountain of email waiting for my attention.  400+ emails waiting for me...sigh.  This is going to take a while.

I spent most of my week enjoying cooking in the kitchen.  It's wonderful.  A much slower pace of life - Tortoise work if you will.  You know the story of the Tortoise and the Hare?  Where the two critters have a race, the Hare starts out all fast and zippity, but quickly tires, whereas the Tortoise plods along, slow and stead, and unexpectedly (or expectedly if you've heard the story before) gets to the finish line first.  That is what life is like during our week in 1371.  There is always something to do, but nothing urgent.  Just keep on keeping on, until it's done and it's time to start the next task.

Speaking of Tortoise work, it's time to get back to those emails.

Tour de Fleece is coming up in the next day or two, so expect to see me around here a lot more this month.