Snowdrops

Poop Quiz

Lily and I were walking around scouting out places for beehives and lo and behold, this is what we found.

I was so excited!  I've been thinking we needed another poop quiz.  

It was a sunny day so I took a pic of this specimen in the sun and in a shadow.  I didn't know which would give you the detail you need to make an ID.

You can blow the pics up for a closer look.

This is old poop.  I'm guessing it's been there since October.   It was big - really big.   As big as your hand with your fingers all stretched out. 

It's full of short hairy fibers.   I'm guessing grass. 

So, what do you think left it?


Whatever left this was big and probably eats mostly grass.   If you read the blog often, you might remember this story last fall.   I'm pretty sure that our specimen is related to that.

Winter Has Teeth

And some are really sharp. 

 

Winter has frozen fingers. 

 And lacey caps.

And watered silk. 

 All photos:  Lily Jenness

Boiling Sap

We've been collecing maple sap for a few weeks now.  The flavor changes as the buds form on the twigs, and the syrup isn't as good.  The silver maples have started to bud, so we stopped collecting that sap.

The sugar maple is still producing.   We've gotten about 30 gallons total so far.   On days when it's below freezing at night and above freezing during the day, the taps drip a fast, constant drip - almost a stream of sap.   K2 took this pic of a drip coming off the tap.







It's time to start boiling.  Last year we had a fancier set up that our friend, Mike put together.   This year, Mike has his arch at the Daisy Garten Farmstead so he can demo the boiling, so we're using a somewhat lower tech system.


I got three really big pots [probably a total of $20 for all three at Goodwill] and I built a really hot fire in our firepit. 


To start, I filled them all with sap - the three pots together hold about 10 gallons of sap.   As they boiled down, I transferred the syrup from the blue pot on the left, to the blue pot on the right, and from the blue pot on the right to the tall pot in the back.    At the end of the day, all the boiled down syrup was in the tall pot and I brought it inside to finish boiling it off. 

The pots sit on grill racks that are set on two heavy iron bars.   The system worked fablously until I noticed that the grill racks were sagging from the very hot fire.  I rearranged things a bit - very carefully! so that the bars were closer togther and I added a second rack under the left side.  The last thing I wanted to happen was for all my syrup to spill into the fire because the rack broke.  It worked fine for the rest of the boiling.   No broken racks, no spilled syrup.

A couple of things to note if you're planning on  boiling sap yourself. 

• You're going to need strong racks and a very hot fire.  
• To get a hot fire, you need a lot of smaller wood in an open arrangement in the center of the fire - think teepee.   Small wood = the size of your forearm.
• Surround the smaller wood with larger pieces of wood around the outside.   That forces the heat to the center were the pots are.   As the big wood burns down, you can move it to the center and put more big wood where it was.    Big wood = the size of your upper arm.
• Use a ladle to move the sap from pan to pan.   It will pick up ash from the fire, so as you move the syrup to the next pot, pour it through a strainer.   That takes out a lot of ash.

Winter Geese

Every morning we hear a pair of geese go over.   We're starting to hear flocks of sandhills moving north.

Spring must be coming.

Lights, Camera....Action: The Sequel

Do you remember last Spring when the crew of The Weekly Special came to the studio to interview me about dyeing yarn?    Read all about it here.   You can see the YouTube clip on my side bar -->.

I met some wonderful people and had a really great experience.  Imagine how excited I was when the producer, Eric Bolstridge, contacted me to do a piece for The Friday Zone!

The Friday Zone is a program especially designed for kids 6-9 years old that's produced in Bloomington, Indiana by WTIU on the campus of Indiana University.  They asked me to be a guest for a segment on color theory.

Of course, I said, 'Yes!'

We planned the material, packed up three boxes of dyes and tools and samples and headed to Studio 6 at IU on Wednesday afternoon.

After loading everything in with the help of some of the backstage crew, we got settled in behind the cameras with the rest of the crew.    You can see a bit of the area where the crew stays during production.   It was much much darker than these pics show.

This is Michelle.  She was so friendly!  We especially appreciated the time she spent chatting with us before filming started.  It helped calm my nerves a lot.

A lot, I tell you.    Michelle deserves a raise.

I was very excited to find out that she was one of the cameramen.   Here she is behind Camera 1.

Sometime during rehearsal, I'm pretty sure I remember Mike, the stage manager, telling me to look into Camera 1.  Now that I think about it, it would have been nice if I had actually done that.

I'm pretty sure that I never looked at Camera 1 at any time during filming.

I think my subconscious was working on the premise that if I didn't actually make eye contact with a camera, then quite possibly the cameras weren't there and there was nothing for me to be nervous about. 

Denial is my friend.

This is Tyler, the audio guy.   He helped me put the mic on without destroying the mic or strangling myself.

He said they prefer it when guests don't strangle themselves.

I think that's a good policy.

Here I am not strangling myself.    I just let Tyler fix it all.   He's especially good at fixing the loop next to the clip.  This is a highly sought after skill, he tells me.

I think they should give him a raise, too.

Here are the hosts of the Friday Zone!


Emily and Taylor are rehearsing the opening segment of this episode.

And here they are during filming.

My part of the show was divided into three parts.  The first part was at the couch, where I talk about some basic color harmonies.  I brought way too many samples, but it looked pretty all set up.

This is what was going on behind the cameras.

The set is very bright and the backstage area is very dark. Everyone wears black and everybody is very quiet. 

It took me a while to realize that the quiet was deceptive.  Actually, there was a very lively conversation going on that I couldn't hear.

Here's the thing about being a guest on a show like this. You miss a lot.

Most everyone else on set gets to wear a little audio bud thingie in their ear so the producer, etc. can tell them what to do and how to adjust things better.   The producer tells folks when to practice, when to film, when to stop, where to sit, etc. 

The guest doesn't get one of those ear bud thingies.  I'm guessing that this is true for all guests and not just me because I tried to strangle myself with the mic when they came out last Spring to film for The Weekly Special.  

What this means is that there is a constant conversation going on only half of which you can hear.  And when  Mike comes over and asks if that arrangement is going to work and are you OK with this, he really isn't talking to you, he's talking to Eric, in the booth.  But he'll be polite when you answer him as if he was actually talking to you.

So, basically, everyone else knows what they are doing and what's going on and the guest has no clue.

No clue at all.

It's a little disconcerting.  But you gotta roll with it.

This is me on the monitor, and on the couch, not looking at Camera 1.   [It looks like the monitor is one of those big ones on the wall behind us, but really it's a normal sized one on a stand, back behind the camera next to where the crew sits.  Bad perspective. Sorry about that.]

This is me holding the color wheel.  It's the one thing that I did really well.

Really, really well.

I held the color wheel up for Camera 1, so they could get a good clear shot of it.   For about 5 minutes.  Then we realized that I should have been holding up another one.  So I held that one up.  This is what happens when you bring four different color wheels to demonstrate things with.

I hope that my skill at holding things up for Camera 1 makes up for the fact that I never actually looked at Camera 1 myself.   

This is where we did the second part of my segment.   We've got a big white board ready to show what happens when we combine different colors of light - additive color mixing.

That's Mike on the left.  He's the stage manager.

During the actual filming of this segment, I was standing where Taylor is in the pic, talking about additive color mixing and Taylor was manning the lights so we could see what happens when we mix them. 

These are my beautiful helpers.  They got to be on camera with me for the third segment - subtractive color mixing with dyes. 





I learned a lot about being on set and on camera.  Next time will be easier.

Here's what I learned about being on TV when you have no idea what's going on:

• Don't expect to hear the whole Lights, Camera, Action thing.   If they say that, and I don't think they do, it's in the earbud thingie and since you don't have one, you aren't going to hear it.  
• They do use the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 hand signal.   Watch for that.  It means you're filming. 
  
• Trust that the hosts will lead you where you need to be in the conversation.   Remember, they've got someone whispering in their ears about how to move the topic along.
• Smile all the time.  Especially if you're not planning on actually looking at Camera 1 to see if the little light is blinking or on or whatever [I would know which if I had actually looked at the camera] and filming is in progress.
  
• Pretend that every practice is the real thing.  For all you know, it is.   I never did figure out if a take was just a rehearsal or not.   It all felt real, until someone cracked a joke or stopped mid-sentence.  Plus, I figured it would be bad form if I kept interrupting to ask, 'Are we filming?' 
  
• Figure that even if you are awful, they're probably going to be too polite to tell you and  you can live in blissful ignorance until that segment hits YouTube.
• Remember, YouTube is not forever.   I hope. 

All in all we had a wonderful experience.  Thanks so much to the cast and crew of The Friday Zone for having us!

Stay tuned!  I'll let you know when this episode of The Friday Zone airs.

Prism Towels

One of the things I like most about weaving is how the colors of the interlaced yarns in the warp and weft blend.  Each type of fiber gives the optical blending its own flavor.   It's magical.

Cotton yarns pixilate.   Little dots of color that seem so obvious close up, blend with their neighbors into something completely different at a distance. 

This series of towels capitalizes on the color magic of interlacement.   The colors shift and blend and split like colors through a prism.   

Blow the pic up to see what I mean. 

This is the family's favorite set.  I'll be doing these in a lot of colors. 

These are $20 each.   I do them in sets of four if you want a set.  Machine washed and dried.   16"x24" right out of the dryer.   Email me if you want them before they go up on etsy.   robin at morenna dot com

Pansy Purple Towels

Most of the time, my favorite color is some shade between blue and purple.    So when I found myself buying yarn for towels, I, of course, bought several blues and purples. 

Then somehow, one of the first warps on the loom this month were blue and purple.    Then there was another one.   And another one on the loom right now.

I'm doing them in big stripes and little stripes.  Random stripes and regular stripes.   With gold and green stripes and without them.

It's hard to decide which ones I like the most. 

These are $20 each.   I do them in sets of 4 if you want a whole set of them.  Email me if you want them before they go up on etsy.      Email:  robin at morenna dot com.   

Sunshine Bright Towels

Here's a closer look at the towels I've been working on.    I've done a couple of sets in sunshine colors with random stripes.

 This set is yellow, red, orange, green with a bit of blue.  Very cheery!   I love them. [Only 2 left!]

This set is a variation on the set above, with more magenta and orange.   It's a party in a towel.

$20 each.   I do them in sets of 4 if you want a whole set of them.  Email me if you want them before they go up on etsy.      Email:  robin at morenna dot com.   

Foggy Road

This road is surely leading somewhere exciting.   Just around the bend.

Organic Insecticide

I have a few trees and things that I generally keep outside in giant pots during the summer, but have to move in during the winter.  

I have a bay tree, a meyer lemon tree, a patchouli, a couple of rosemaries and a lemon verbena.   

They spend the winter in the studio, in front of the big windows.  We keep it 55 degrees most of the time, so we don't have to water things much.   

This year they have aphids.

Just kill me now.

I hate aphids.

Then I found scale.  

Scale is a soft bodied little creature that sucks the juice out of your plants.   They multiply readily and can really cause problems for plants.  


There are two ways to get rid of these pests. 

1.   Pick them off by hand.   Effective, but time consuming and not much fun.
2.   Spray them with something.   Much faster, but most insecticides are nasty.   

Then I read a post on Caleb Warnock's blog about making organic pest spray.   He'd had aphids in his greenhouse this year and tried it and it worked.

So I tried it and it worked.  

Here's what you do:

• 1 onion
• 1 whole head of garlic
• 2 Tablespoons ground cayenne pepper
• hot water
• quart jar and lid

Peel the onion and the garlic.  You don't have to do it well. Chop the onion into big pieces.   Throw the onion, garlic and pepper into a blender with a cup or so of water so it blends easily.   Puree it all. 

Put it in the quart jar and fill it up with extra hot water so you have a full quart.   Let it sit overnight.  

The next day, strain it through a towel into a spray bottle.    Spray it on your plants. 

Note:  There is enough pepper in there to make my hands warm and tingle-y if I get it on myself.   Don't get it in your eyes!!  Wear gloves when using the spray if you are sensitive to it.

Painted Hive

K2 is done painting the new Langstroth hive.   This is all her design.

Voila!

Here's a close up of the detail:

We used good quality exterior housepaint.  Semi-gloss so it would be a bit easier to wash off if necessary.  

It'll live in the studio for a while until we find a good spot for it outside.  

Water

Have I told you lately how much I love our creek?

photo: Lily Jenness

Parts of a Langstroth Beehive

Langstroths look like stacks of boxes.  It's hard to imagine while you're looking at the outside, just how bees move around in there and draw comb and raise more bees and make honey. 

Here's a guided tour through a Langstroth hive.

This is the hive base.  The white stuff in the middle is actually screening [which you can't see] over a white board which you can slide out.

Hives need excellent ventilation to let moisture out.   The screen keeps the bottom of the hive open and keeps mice and things out.

The white board is only used when you need to do a varroa mite count.   Slide the board in and leave it for 24 hours.   Carefully take it out and count the mites.   As long as there are fewer than 50 mites, the hive is OK.  More than 50 mites and you need to do something about them.

This is the hive door.   You can see it on top of the base, but under the supers [boxes] in the top pick. 

Notice that it has two doors.  You can rotate it to give you the size you need.   A mouse can get in the big side.  During the winter, you can tilt it so only the small door is open and that will keep out the mice that will try to winter in the hive.

 

This is a pic of a medium super and a deep super.   There are shallow ones, too that are 1/2 the depth of a deep super.

 Supers are the 'boxes' of the hive.   Supers come in different depths, which hold different sizes of frames.

Supers are open at the top and bottom.   They only have sides. 

Most supers are built to hold 10 frames, though some are built to hold eight.

The frames hang down in super and that's where the bees will draw comb.   Some of the comb [the inner frames] will be brood comb, where they lay eggs and raise new bees.  Some of the comb [the outer frames], will be for making and storing honey. 

Here are two supers on a hive base.    The bottom super is where the queen will be and where the brood comb will be.   The next super up will be where the bees put the honey.

That is their honey and they need it to keep the hive going, so we won't be taking that honey.

Those two supers together are called the 'hive body'.  

Because we want to have some honey for us, we can put more supers on the stack.   But we want the queen to stay below where we can't accidentally hurt her, so we put a qeen excluder screen between the hive body and the top supers that we will be harvesting.

Here the excluder has been set on the hive body, ready to put another super on top.

Here is the next super set on top of the queen excluder.

Remember, all of the supers have open bottoms and tops, so the bees will be able to walk wherever they want in the hive at all levels [except for the queen, who has to stay in the hive body.]

Factoid:  There's no flying around in the hive.   They walk around.  [No running in the house.]

We can keep adding supers as tall as we can reach.   The supers can get really heavy, so they don't recommend that you stack them higher than is comfortable to lift down.

Rog recommended that you add a new super when the last one has comb on 7 of the frames.    That way the hive won't get crowded.   If the hive gets crowded, they'll want to swarm to start a new colony.    We don't want that because we want the bees working with us in our hives.  

[Note:  One of the problems with Langstroths is that when we need to check the queen, we have to take all the supers down to get to the brood box and check on her.    That's a lot of lifting and monkeying with the hive and a lot of potential for accidentally killing or angering some of the bees.    This is one reason we're going to try a top bar hive, too.]

On top of the hive, there are two lids.   The first is the inner cover, which has a notch in the back for the bees to come and go through and a hole in the center for bees to get into the hive.   This also increases ventilation.   

On top of that, capping the whole thing off,  is the outer cover.


The whole thing will sit in a level situation, on top of cinder blocks so it's about 8 inches off the ground.   That'll help keep the mice out and ensure good ventilation through the bottom.  


We'll be building a top bar hive soon.  Look for a tour of that hive in a week or so.