Tuesday, July 10, 2012

around here lately

It is definitely summer!  Today the temperature reached 33 C (91.4 F) with a humidex of 44 C (111 F).  We've had some storms the last couple of weeks too.  Tornado hunters hung around Saskatchewan for a few days last week because there was wild weather including rain, wind, hail, and yes, tornados.  We had a dandy Canada Day light show.  Mother Nature decided that fireworks were not a dramatic enough way to celebrate our nation's birthday.  I didn't get pictures but you can see some great ones here courtesy of Greg Johnson.  He has lots more pics on his blog and I am fascinated by the little video on this page.  I like a good storm but those guys get a little too close for comfort.

Although we see quite a few tornado warnings in the summer, we usually don't have to worry too much because most of the southern part of the province is farm land and not too densely populated.  The tornadoes usually touch down in fields where damage is marginal.

Every now and then damaging winds cause trouble when they get too close to structures.  Our neighbors have a cabin at a lake about an hour away from Regina.  Last week they watched a storm coming toward them over the lake.  When it hit, they couldn't see anything out of the windows because of torrents of rain and hail.  Once they could see their yard they noticed one of their sailboats in a tree and the other one blown out into the middle of the lake.  The one in the tree wasn't damaged until it fell out of the tree and broke hitting the ground.  They lost a few trees too.  Another cabin lost its roof in the storm.  I don't know if the winds were in the form of a tornado, plough wind or whatever.  After a wind event, scientists can see the damage and decide what winds technically caused it but I haven't heard if that happened.

Check out my amazing segue for my leap from storms to fiber news....
I was spinning merino on my support spindle while watching live streaming on tornadohunter.comhttp://tornadohunter.ca/live-streaming/ last Tuesday.  My focus these last few months has been to get comfortable with all kinds of support spindles and I'm really loving them!  The pretty one in the picture is my favorite and was made by Lori at Deerfield Creations.

We spinners are in the midst of the Tour de Fleece.  I really haven't done a lot of spinning except to continue working on some superwash merino that I dyed in gender neutral colors.

  I'm chain plying to keep the color sequence in place.  The plan is to knit it into an Elizabeth Zimmermann Baby Surprise Jacket or Tomten for dearest grandbaby when he/she is a little older.  I've also spun some cotton to practice using my tahklis and a charkha.

Mostly I've been washing fleece.  Val (Wooly Wool of the West) kindly sent me some generous samples of soft fleeces so that I could decide which I wanted and I've washed them and started to comb and spin samples.  I decided on lovely soft Columbia and Corriedale fleeces.  We are so lucky to have Val's eco-friendly spinner's flock right here in Saskatchewan!  Her fleeces are beautiful and I do love the process of starting with a raw fleece to spin my yarn!

2 comments:

deborah said...

Just to keep things in perspective, Phoenix has had day time temperatures of 47C with night time lows of 33C! Yikes.
Lovely work, Susan. That spindle is a treasure, but then, with your skills, you could spin magic yarn on a twig.

Susan said...

You're too kind but thank you.

We visited Vegas once in August and the temps were like that. I don't recommend it.