FUN WITH TRENCHING

Trenching - it started as a suggestion from Edith when she put irrigation on the vines - "you know you could easily run a pipe from the dam and irrigate all the trees you are hand watering".  The result is YET another adventure in setting up a new property.

First our pump expert, Steele, thought that it would be better to use the bore near the dam.  We already had power to the bore as it was installed when we brought power 200 mtrs from the road to the house and a pump on the dam could be easily disrupted by the camelids as they love to run around the top of the dam.  In the final washout, I had to get an electrician to install a waterproof double powerpoint near the bore, then Steele would put in the pump, then Kevin would come in and do all the trenching, then Edith would lay all the pipes, sprinklers and drippers and Kevin would come back and fill in all the trenching.

Remnants of an old building

Near the front stairs

Trench to the bore

 Nothing ever runs to plan.  First I asked a local electrician to have a look at the cable near the bore and he told me it was all black and green and had problems.  I waited over a week and still no sign of the electricians who originally installed it, so I thought I would get on with the trenching.  Yesterday and today a couple of hundred metres of trenching have been completed and the front of our house looks like a construction site again.  Trenching is a great adventure (ha, ha, ha) - you find such unexpected things like telephone cables, water pipes and even electricity cables in the most amazing places!  We even found the footings of an old house and had to pull out old bricks and concrete flooring.  But after 13 hours of trenching including repairing water pipes, it is all ready for Edith to come and lay the pipe next Thursday.

We'll need a small truckload of sand to fill in the trenches wherever traffic runs, so that will be delivered tomorrow.  The fourth phone call to the electricians has resulted in a promise for someone to come also on Thursday to resolve that problem.  We'll also end up with a lawn - or rather something green in front of the house as a sprinkler system will be installed there.  The water is salty, so a mix of various grasses will be sown.  The control box will be on the verandah and we will have 3 separate areas to water - 2 lawn areas, trees at the front gate and down the driveway and a new tree area in the dam paddock - still to be planted.

Then, I am pleased to say "planting of the trees" will have come to an end.  We refuse to water anything else.  More pics when we finally see some green.

THE COLOURS OF AUTUMN - NATURAL AND WOMAN-MADE

Well the rain was short lived and there is none in sight at least for the next week.  However the temperature is just delightful - 10 degree mornings and mid twenties during the day.  About 4.00pm the chill returns and this afternoon I took the bike and trailer out to collect the paca poo and distribute it onto the trees in the olive grove.  Once the work was done, I wandered around the grove - just on sunset, cool air, birds settling for the night.  First I visited one of the cabernet vines and pulled off a small bunch of sweet small grapes.  Then I visited all of the trees to see how they were going, delighted to be eating my own produce and spitting out the seeds as I strode around.  The final four figs were ripe and one had to be consumed straight away.  One of the avocado trees has gone berserk and the walnut is ready to drop its leaves.  The macadamia is growing tall and strong and it will be interesting to see how many years we wait for flowers and nuts.  The two apples trees planted in the one hole are extending well outside the netting (which should have been removed when I finished picking the apples) and are waiting for the secateurs.  The 60 odd olive trees are also begging to be pruned and some of the little citrus are producing their first fruit with about 10 oranges, 10 tangellos and 14 grapefruit starting to ripen.  The establised lemon, lime and mandarin trees we planted have produced well with my picking over 3 kg of fruit this afternoon.  I have just finished eating one of the sweet mandarins as I type this.

The beauty of living here is that when it is dark, there is still plenty of activity.  Yesterday I tried to dye some of my alpaca fleece. I only used the neck as the saddle is the choice part of the fleece and as this was an experiment, I didn't want to risk wasting it.   I put the required amount of dye in the pot and boiled up pieces of two fleeces - Picasso and Alun  - for 30 minutes.  See the image of Picasso with mostly white and a little brown on his neck.  Picasso is a suri alpaca - grows his fleece in dreadlocks and so the dye found it hard to penetrate the dreadlocks.  The result was varying levels of colour from white in the middle of the curls through to very bright pink on the outside.  Alun, however is a huacaya and the dye penetrated his open fleece much more evenly.  He is also a rose grey, which means his fleece is naturally brown on the outside, but grey close to the skin.  The resulting colour was wonderful on both and the residual water still had a little colour, so I put in some more of Alun's fleece and some of Camilo's to see if any of the dye would take without adding any more to the water.  After another 30 minutes I took them out and these pieces of fleece just have a hint of colour and although more subtle, will be very interesting to spin or felt.

This is Camilo's fleece - natural colour on the right and slightly pink coloured on the left.  Camilo is also a suri, so the fleece has the lovely curls which create a wonderful effect when felted.

WELCOME AUTUMN, FAREWELL PARIS

Finally, finally, finally I can hear rain falling on the roof.  Although it is only a few millilitres, anything is very much appreciated.  The weather has also cooled down, so last weekend I spent a day pulling out the old plants in the raised vegetable gardens and planted some new seedlings - lettuce, English spinach, celery, dwarf beans and some Petunias.  Hopefully they will grow with lots of fertilizer and a good bag of paca poo.  I separated all the strawberry plants (and gave half away) and again this year planted some garlic in with the strawberries - nothing came near my strawberries last year and I am guessing it might be the garlic - who knows?  The best thing is that I used cloves from garlic I grew last year.

With nothing much happening outside, I have been watching a sweet potato sprouting in the pantry cupboard.  It has been there about a month, growing in the heat and dark and now is trying to produce leaves.  I think it is time to get it into the garden, though I am not sure how.

A local festivAL is being held in the town on Sunday, so I have made some little Nunos to put on my Spinning group's stall.  It will be interesting to see if anyone will like them.  I won't mind if they all come home again as I have incorporated some fabric which is about 20 years old so the items have a sentimental value to me.

And as I expected another little alpaca has been created - Paris Paca.  Just too cute...  She's off to Brisbane to a little girl called Mia.

Signature Alpaca

I found the most wonderful toy alpaca on the Internet.  Once completed using Scrumpy's superb soft grey fleece, she just came alive.....  and now she is the signature of EdgeOfHeaven creations.

I can feel a few brothers and sisters coming on...........

FIRST NUNO CREATION

  
I couldn't wait today to get all the bits and pieces of tissue silk and wool out and create my own Nuno scarf.  The tutor completed one at the workshop I attended last Saturday so I used some of her ideas and took them a step further.  In places I ended up with 3 layers of fabric and as my design was made up of a series of circles and semicircles the felted effect was raised circles, so I called my creation the Nipple Scarf.  There are 4 quite different nipples, 2 of which are pictured here.  The scarf is extremely light-weight, but will be warm with the wool down the edges.

It took me about an hour to lay it out and once completed I had no preconceived idea what it was going to look like when felted.  The rolling took about 45 minutes and then the felting took about another 30 minutes.  Of course inbetween there were lots of Dietcokes with ice to combat the 34 degrees and rests for the weary arms.  I probably filled in about 3 hours and it was wonderful watching the dramatic changes during the process.

I have lots of ideas to try, but probably won't get back to it again till the end of the week.  I can't wait......

PLANTS FINDING NEW HOMES

At last our temperatures have dropped to the low thirties and hopefully in a couple of weeks will be in the twenties.  I am longing to get out into the raised garden beds and pull them apart and replant for winter and spring, but it has just been too hot to date.

When I first planted the raised gardens this time last year I put a couple of lavender bushes in because they add such colour and aroma.  However they have thrived too well and I am preparing to take them out and plant them on the western side of the shed.  We also have a little pendolino olive tree which has just refused to die.  We left it in the olive grove for 2 years and it struggled so hard, but could not grow.  Then we pulled it out and put an avocado in its place, but I couldn't throw it away, so I placed it in a pot.  Pruned dramatically it refused to die, but also refused to grow.  So when I pulled the corn out of one of the raised garden beds before Christmas I put it in there.  Now the little tree is happy and is finally shooting after 3 years.  The trouble is, I don't want it to take over the raised garden bed, so it will find a home with the lavendars.

Three holes had been dug on the western side of the shed some months back and I didn't really know what would eventually go there.  I had been playing with the idea of a fine oak tree friends had given us, but I think the oak tree needs some friends of similar ilk around when finally planted.  Once I decided this morning to fill these holes with the lavendars and olive tree, I filled each hole with 10-20ltrs of water, some blood and bone, some alpaca poo and I am finally trying alpaca fleece in the bottom of the hole.  An alpaca breeder told me that putting scrap fleece at the bottom of the hole retains the moisture under the roots and goodness knows we need every bit of moisture we can get our hands on.  I have soaked the three plants to be moved and trimmed back the lavendar and now I will wait till sunset to move them. 

On the western side of the house I planted 8 Tagasaste shrubs on the slope running down from the tank.  They are supposed to be excellent fodder plants, fast growing, and good for water erosion control.  They have finally taken off, but our kangaroos have found them.  The tagasaste were supposed to be fodder for the camelids!  Spraying water with crushed chillies has helped a little and I had hoped spreading fresh alpaca poo may also act as a deterrent.  However the nibbling continues each night.  So today all the lavendar offcuts have been poked in the ground around each plant and maybe, just maybe, my little friends won't like the aroma or flavour.

Finally this morning some more summer produce has reached the table.  What wonderful summer colours - orange and red capsicum, orange and purple eggplant and red tomatoes and chillies.

Just to make life a little more interesting, tomorrow I return to working on a project to teach English as a Second Language at a local Institute.  So the creative side of my brain has to turn from wonderful felting to creating courses.  Give me brain food.....  my walnut tree will have to get a move on.....

WOOL IS A GLUE

 Yesterday I pursued my fascination with felting by attending a full day workshop on Nuno felting which was conducted by a very talented, creative tutor.  Most people felt using bright colours, but I really want to mainly use the natural colour of my camelids.  However I was prepared for one day to play with colourful tissue silk fabric and colourful wool and silk fibre to learn the procedures which will enable me to Nuno felt with my alpaca fleeces.  It was great starting with a blank canvas and watching 10 women produce their own interpretations of the the tutor's creations.

At the end of the day I had produced 4 items.  Each one doesn't really represent a finished article, but rather will remain as samples of techniques learnt.
The main thing we were told to remember is that wool is a glue. 

THE CUFF The cuff is made from a piece of ancient (about 40 years old) green lace and the blue wool added to the middle gathers the lace during the felting process.  Before felting, I added pieces of purple material (remnants of an evening dress made over 20 years ago) and then chunks of green silk.  The blue wool in the middle also extends at the ends to make ties with the possibility of  the article being a wristband.

THE BLACK AND GREEN OBJECT.  This piece is a work in progress and may end up a necklace.  The black strand which holds it together is alpaca wool and then I added strips of green tissue silk and then black lace and then chunks of orange silk.  I am going to play a little more with the green tissue silk and may add beads along the way.

THE BLUE TISSUE SILK.  This piece was an exercise in adding wool to the silk to produce the gathering effect.   I also leant how to add wool to the ends as well.

 

THE ORANGE STRING.  This again is a work in progress as a series of these are made and then you put them all together to make a rather beautiful necklace.  Wool was added down the middle, then I put a piece of spun wool on top which extends to make the ends and finally I added some white silk.  The felting process gathers the orange tissue silk which may eventually fold around the centre or it may stay flat.  Either look is a possibility.

My main aim of learning the technique of Nuno felting is to produce more usable products like scarves or maybe to enhance the edge of a skirt.  Then again I might just like to dabble with colour every now again and play with beads and sequins......  The trouble is the weather will eventually cool down and my vege gardens are calling for a lot of attention.  Play time might have to be after some earnest toiling outside.