Bobcat Tracks

The stats for this here blog tell me that it ranks #5 in a Google search for "bobcat tracks in snow." Really? The post from two Winters ago was a tongue-in-cheek reference to an Old Crow Medicine Show song that I had just discovered.

"Bobcat tracks in the snow
Tell me, mister bobcat, where is it that you go?
Down among the town lights, in that valley below
Tell me, mister bobcat, where is it that you go?"

It seemed like a clever title, but in retrospect, perhaps it was a bit pretentious to show Pookie's tracks instead of the Real Deal because so very many people land here searching for actual bobcat tracks, including that one guy who informed me that my picture description was in error. Dude, get a life!

In an effort to end the confusion, here's a diagram showing what Real bobcat tracks look like, stolen from the NJ Bobcat Track Survey project -

I hope that clears up any confusion and thank you for making me #5 :-)

Soap for Sale!

As some of you may know, I work at an ice cream/chocolate shop called Nye Beach Sweets. I know! Dream Job, right? The shop has undergone a remodel over the last couple of weeks: gone are the lavender and lemon walls, halleluiah! The new colors are honeycomb, black bean and sun-dried tomatoes - much more mellow and comfortable.

The latest batch of goat's milk soap is now available for sale at the shop and will soon be available in my Etsy shop.

If you're in the area, stop by and say, "hey" at 526 NW Coast Street here in Newport, Oregon. If you happen to be in town on Wednesday night, join us for Fiber Night from 5-8 PM.

Stove Worshiping

The cat and the dog have declared a truce, agreeing to share the prime spot in front of the wood stove. The weather has turned cold, gray and wet, as it does every year around this time, and this is the perfect way to spend a chilly evening.

Out of the Molds

These batches took the  mold shapes really well!

Not so pleased with the colors, though - a bit dark and muddy. The brown seashore shapes were supposed to be "Antique Blue," but that is plainly not the case. They smell great, though :-)

Nothin' but Soap bars above, pure Castile with goat's milk, they look good enough to eat but are still quite lye-heavy and would burn even the least sensitive tongue. A few weeks of curing and they will be ready to use.

Salted lime above, peppermint oatmeal below. "Antique Blue" again, and too dark. I hope the color gets lighter as they cure...

And so ends the interesting part of Soapapalooza 2012! Nothing to do now but wait for them to dry and cure, turning the bars occasionally and keeping them warm and dry.

Soaping

The last couple of days have been busy here at the Coast - it's that time of year again - the soap-making marathon!

This -

Becomes this -

Add some color and you get this -

And this -

A ton of fun, but lots of work, too. Twelve different batches in two days - vegan, goat's milk, scented, plain and even a couple of ugly bars. More pictures to come when the bars are cured enough to remove from the molds. This stage of the process isn't really all that exciting...

Fiber Night at the Sweet Shop!

Finally there is an evening fiber group meeting in Newport! The owner of Nye Beach Sweets has agreed to let us take over the shop on Wednesday evenings from 5-8PM (please pardon the typo in the flyer) for a Fiber Arts/Stitch & Bitch group to get together to knit, spin, crochet, or whatever.

The address is 526 NW Coast Street, right next to the Nye Beach Market and Savory Cafe in the beautiful Nye Beach neighborhood of Newport.

There are plenty of chairs and room for spinning if you would like to bring your wheel.

All fiber arts welcome!

Name That Plant!

There won't be any prizes, just a shout-out and link-back for the correct answer :-) This plant bloomed for the first time in the yard the other day -

The main foliage is ~18" tall, the leaves quite thick and pointed, growing from a central point. The flower stalk is ~48" tall. Here's a close-up of the flowers -

The flowers hang downwards and have no discernible smell -

What do we have here?

UPDATE: I think we have a winner! Anon of the comments (what? no blog link? :-) suggested the yucca plant. Further research points to this being a Yucca filamentosa, a native of the Southeastern US that is widely cultivated as a low care, decorative landscape plant. It's a night-blooming plant, releasing its scent to attract the tiny yucca moth, which explains why it seemed to have no smell during the afternoon. Report on the scent to follow!

Busy Summer

The last month has been quite busy, but nothing stops the garden from growing. The hydrangea is in full bloom -

As are the nasturtiums -

And violas -

An infestation of flea beetles nearly did for the green beans and a gopher (or similar creature) has eaten half the potato crop, but the broc, cabbage, kale and chard are flourishing. We ate the first cuke from the greenhouse and the squash are putting out tiny fruits.

While much of the country is suffering with high temps and drought conditions, we here on the Central Oregon Coast have been "enjoying" temps in the 60's (if we're lucky) misty, gray skies and plenty of wind. Not great weather for growing tomatoes, but what can you do? Everything in the garden got off to a slow start but seems (as always) to be making up for a chilly Spring with a burst of growth that gives us hope for a decent harvest.

Unfortunately, conditions are also perfect for weeds and slugs, but you have to take the good with the bad or go crazy...

R.I.P. Old Dog

Weasel took her last ride to the vet today. She was 15 years old and suffering the infirmities of age. When she lost control of her back end and could no longer walk unsupported, we knew it was time to let her go.

I don't have many pictures of Weasel because she was usually in motion or refused to look at the camera - I think the flash hurt her eyes.











She always hated a bath and loved to sleep in the car in full sun, baking herself to a panting crisp, much to the consternation of at least one nosy woman who called animal control to report dog abuse. She was truly a Desert Dog.

Stove worshiping won't be the same without you this Winter, Old Dog. You will be missed.

A Watershed Moment

Behold the first salad of the year with 90% of the contents being from the garden here at the Rockin' Red Rabbit Ranch! The arugula, lettuce, peas, radish, kale, chard and spinach seeds were planted back in February and are now ready to eat. The cuke, carrot and celery were, alas, bought at the local Thriftway, but soon we'll be harvesting our own, if the slugs don't get it first.

Topped with Doryman's Blue Cheese Artichoke Dressing, this salad is to die for!

Dressing:

1 jar Marie's Super Blue Cheese salad dressing
6 oz sour cream
8 oz marinated artichoke hearts

Stir all ingredients together and enjoy!

Tonight's slug death toll: only 6. The pellets must be working!

A Little Gardening

Before

After

It doesn't look like much, but two wheelbarrows full of weeds were removed from the garden plot and 10 bags of steer manure were turned into the soil. Not bad for four hours of work! The weather is improving and the flowers are enjoying the warmth and sunlight.

The calendula is always happy and has been blooming for weeks now. Two large plants were removed from the garden bed and transplanted to the compost pile where it won't matter if they self-seed again this year.

The first blooms from the bearded iris that have shown nothing but leaves for several years now.

Over-wintered borage is an early source of food for the local bees, who swarm all over it in the heat of the day. I love the vibrant blue flowers!

Squash, cuke, broccoli and cabbage seedlings are ready to plant out. This week's misty rain and cooler temps will be a perfect start for these little guys!

Peas in the greenhouse.

I had way more fun than DoryMan, AKA SandMan, who spent the day stripping paint and sanding the cabin top of a client's project.

Princess Pookie demanded I sit down and make a lap at the end of the day. A rum and coke on the enclosed porch is the perfect reward for a hard day's work.

The War Has Begun

We've had some dry, warm weather here on the Oregon Coast, followed this morning by a light rainfall and mild temperatures. We all know what that means, right? Right. The slugs are back. I found 32 on a single lupine plant early this evening. I killed them all. It might be giving away too much personal information to say that I enjoyed every minute of it, too. Another 30 were found munching on my new onion stems and were dealt with most severely. The plan is to do my best to eradicate the local slug population in the hope of a large garden harvest this year. Any tips?

Columbine

The Colorado Columbine was this.close. to blooming yesterday afternoon. The sun was shining, the bees buzzing around, a beautiful day. So glad I took the pictures yesterday as today is is pelting down rain, the wind is howling and the rabbits, who are ready to be sheared again, are not happy about the damp.

Spring in Oregon!

Soaping!

First, let me just say that I hate Blogger's new "look." It was fine before (as was Gmail) and now it sucks. Everything is moved around and there are so many symbols with no words that it is making me a bit cranky. Not that I need an excuse, just sayin'.

So my (blogless) friend Awana came over on Monday for a day of soaping. She is new to the Wool Thing and had never made soap. I have more supplies than one person who is not a professional soapmaker should have, so it was a perfect match - we traded labor for soap and it worked out great.

First we made lotion - dead simple with a prepared base that has been sitting around for I don't know how long. Add warm water, 8 drops of fragrance for each 4 oz canning jar, and Bob's yer uncle, lovely lotion!

Here's a warning for you, kids - see that stick blender there? When rendering beef fat, don't think you're being all clever breaking up the chunks with a blender - the melting fat is very much hotter than you imagine and will melt your blender before you can say, "Oh, sh!t." Really. The beauty of blogging is that the stuff that Goes Wrong need never be put up for public consumption. Of course, one must be very careful to keep the mistakes and misguided Great Ideas out of future photos, no? Now you know that things don't always go according to plan here on the Rockin' Red Rabbit Ranch.

We made four loaves of soap (shampoo bars not pictured because I am lame and lazy today) -

Smoky Patchouli, Garden Gate and Orange/Allspice

Even got creative with a cupcake pan (the white on top is grated soap flakes) -

Juicy Lime Cupcakes!

Goat's milk bars scented with Wine & Roses -

Multi-colored bars

And lots of molded bars -

They are a strange color because they are frozen to help the mold release

Altogether, this represents four separate batches, some with shea butter added, some with sweet almond oil, all with goat's milk and oxide colors. Awana was a great helper, suggesting scent combinations, color combinations and swirling - I generally just pour it into molds and call it good, but this was much more fun. Thanks, Awana!

Card Weaving

A couple of years ago (how sad that this project took so long to get going) Mom gave me a card weaving "kit" consisting of 28 cardboard cards and Candace Crockett's excellent book Card Weaving. It sat on a shelf patiently waiting its turn for the top of the queue, and now its day has arrived. Below you see my first effort using silk fingering weight yarn (dyed with the last batch of bookmark yarns back in July) using Candace's Sample Band A pattern. Not at all bad for a first effort - look for it to become a hatband sometime in the near (or far) future. 10 cards (40 threads - 4 holes per card) were used for this sample -

The basic premise of card (or tablet) weaving is that the threads are secured at the far end by being tied to something stationary while the near end is secured to your belt, a bit like backstrap weaving without the backstrap or any sticks. The cards turn, opening the shed, the weft thread is passed through, the cards are turned again, the weft is beaten in, another thread passed, the cards turned, and so on. Very simple. The pattern emerges as the cards are turned towards your body (four turns in this case) and then turned away from your body (four turns, also for this pattern) in a prescribed fashion. There are infinite variables and patterns possible and you can use almost any kind of thread or yarn, depending on the effect you want to achieve. A simple tutorial can be found here and a site to help you design your own patterns can be found here. You can even weave your own labels to put on your card woven (and other stuff) bands. Amalie at Adventures in Historical Tablet Weaving is exploring the techniques and duplicating historical bands - quite an interesting project!
 
I quite enjoyed the process and portability of card weaving and after doing a bit of online research to see what others were doing and pattern possibilities (not that there's any shortage of lovely patterns in Card Weaving) I embarked upon a guitar strap using a firmly spun wool yarn and 28 cards (that's 112 yarn ends for those paying attention) -

What a nightmare to get the cards threaded and the loose ends untangled. This is my only gripe with card weaving - the yarn is all measured and cut, held in a bundle, and the cards threaded one by one, color by color and the end tied in a knot. Then, the yarn must be "combed" to sort out the un-tied ends and the cards worked back and forth to get everything moving smoothly. There has to be a better way, and when I figure it out I will share so you don't have to be tortured, too.

The wool yarn was not easy to keep tensioned for weaving so I tied it onto the back beam of my loom, straitened the threads and tied the near end onto the front beam to take advantage of the loom's tensioning system. Worked a treat and I could walk away from the weaving for a break without untying myself from the weaving.

The band came out wider than intended, but the tension is very nice, giving it a nice, firm hand - perfect for its intended use.

Many people use inkle looms for card weaving, or floor looms for wider pieces, or a special card weaving loom like this from Ursula's Alcove -

There are many card weaving looms available if you prefer not to be tied to the work. If you prefer to keep  your project as portable as possible, a rubber band to hold the cards together and a small bag are all you need. A very portable project with huge design possibilities! Expect to see more about tablet weaving here - the next project has been threaded with handspun to test the effects of a fuzzier yarn and working with a "skipped holes" pattern.

There's a New Cat in Town!

Miss Lilly has relocated to the Rockin' Red Rabbit Ranch!

Our friend Brandon is moving and can't take Lilly with him. Lilly is a Ragdoll/Balinese cross with enormous blue eyes:

She's been here three days and as you can see from the picture above, she's still quite stressed out. Not. Preliminary negotiations with Pookie have been fruitful and we expect to have two furry queens marching about shouting commands in short order.

Another Sign of Spring

Before -

Too busy to face the camera

Just as fuzzy on the underside!

It's never a fun task to Shave the Dog, but it must be done three or four times a year or the matts and tangles become too much. The shedding is a PITA, too.

After -

A Very Unhappy Dog!

It's not easy - Sabu the Crazy Helper Dog just can't sit still, especially if grooming is involved. She would much rather be covered in mud and pine needles, a wild creature on her own. The trim always looks a bit hacked for a week or so, but it's so worth it!