Farnham great wheel

This Farnham great wheel is for sale.  Both the wheel head and the table are signed and were purchased together about 50 miles from Owego, NY.

 The NewarkValley Historical Society has loads of info on these wheels and the Farnham family.  Bill Ralph wrote that finding a signed wheel head on an original Farnham wheel is pretty cool.

It seems odd to us that this great wheel has a pine rim which has required some repair.  Fred had to reinforce a break in the wheel with a glued in piece in back of the rim.  Plus there was a split that had to be reglued.  There is also evidence of an older repair to a split.  The wheel would be fine to spin on at home, but the rim, since it is made of pine, would not be one we would recommend taking to a lot of demos.

Asking $450

SPRING!

There were way more turkeys strutting their stuff than I had ever seen here together before.  It was fun watching all of them.  Now they have mostly gone their separate ways and only one mature male comes around.  A hen must have her nest nearby because she comes through the yard pretty regularly.

A sore hand messed up my progress with various projects so it took a while to finish this green scarf.  It is the Hanging Vines pattern I knitted last fall and enjoyed.  The yarn is from Fiddlesticks and has angora in it - - so soft and luxurious.  I got it from WEBS.  The yarn was so soft and lovely, I made the scarf extra long so it would wrap once around the neck and still have long enough ends to reach to the bottom of a jacket.

The bears made their first appearance this spring.  I think this must be a very young female with her cub.  Later that evening they apparently came through our yard and the cub may have been frightened by our cat and ran up a tree next to the house.  It wouldn’t come down because the cat, fascinated by the bears, wouldn’t leave the scene.  The mother bear stayed at the base of the tree for a while and then eventually went up to the lowest branch and stayed there until it was dark or the cat gave up on his vigil.    I hope both were sufficiently annoyed by the experience not to come back.

Another lace project also got finished in the last couple of weeks.  It is the Kiri shawl. I made it from my own handspun.  It is the last of the first shearing fleece from my grey ewe blended with 20 % tussah silk.  I brushed the shawl after blocking it to give it a nicer softer hand.

It has been a very cool spring, but great for the flowers.  We had daffodils for weeks and weeks and now the yellow rose is biding its time, slowly coming into full flush - - the best it has ever been.

The rhubarb is also the best ever this year.  I made this strawberry rhubarb tart from Riverrim's recipe.