Home once more!

Ian has been busy while I've been away. He wired up some
plugs for my kitchen in the greenhouse. Maybe I should go
away more often 

I'm back home now in the caravan. It is hard to imagine being back in the apartment now, but time will come I'm sure. Unless, of course, we are very fortunate and manage to sort something else out in the meantime, but I doubt that. It is still quite mild and warm and so not an issue about being in the caravan at all, until the evenings that is. The cooler nights and the mosquitoes has us heading into the caravan to eat, instead of the greenhouse like we were doing. We still cook in the greenhouse and that helps with making it easier in the caravan as there is not so much room and sometimes the cooking can create too much steam and make everything feel damp anyway.

He also made a lid for our new well. We reckon it is producing
about 10 litres of water a day. Not great but at least it is
flowing. It has been emptied once so far and it is supposed to
get better the more it is flushed out. Admittedly we haven't
had the rain to percolate through either, which is why Ian
has been cutting hay again.

Anyway back to what happened last week. First of all an apology. I haven't been back to the apartment yet and so I still do not have the photos from the trip. I think I will post them tomorrow, if I remember, rather than wait until next week, which will seem weird. One thing I found out from my trip was that the Austrians call the area I visited Tie-rol  ("tie" as in the item of clothing you wear around your neck) and not Tee-rol like I have always heard it called in the UK. Innsbruck is a pleasant enough town and I really enjoyed being able to walk alongside the green river down a leafy path to the university every morning. It was just far enough away to get a good bit of exercise before the long days, which started at 8:30am and finished late. The first night finished with a reception at the local municipal building, which was a little like a full introduction to Innsbruck to a captive audience, instead of a short introduction and then a time to network, which is the normal format for these things. There was a bit of grumbling about that and rightly so.

Mari is a gorgeous looking alpaca and sweet natured too.

The second day was a little shorter and finished with a tour around the town, but I missed that, as I got chatting with someone. It still finished around 6:30pm though, so not exactly short days. Again there was not much free time for networking, which to be honest I think is more important than many of the presentations. It is a bit of an issue in the academic world that funding for these trips is dependent on presenting papers and not on what would really benefit academia and that is bringing together a whole host of experts from different fields to work together on something that could do with some fresh input. I know that outside experts are not the answer to everything, but it is good to bring in fresh perspectives from time to time and to have access to quite a vast range of knowledge.

Chanel in reflective mood

I got my Lancashire fix from the group of sessions that I had a presentation in, as the host of the sessions was originally from Barnoldswick and he still had the Lancashire twang. I also sat through a presentation which had a map of the area where I used to come from and where I was born. Felt a bit weird with it being the subject of a study by someone who was German but lecturing at Sheffield University where I got my bachelor degree.

This is the "I'm pretending to be asleep"
pose, because as soon as your back is
turned I will be up on the table or in the
sink to see what tasty treats you have
left behind 

My presentation was okay. It was not particularly fluent as it was just after lunch and I was quite tired. It didn't help that I was up finishing it off the night before after the late reception finish. One lady really liked the presentation though and was very enthusiastic about what I was doing and my supervisor said I was much clearer than the other presenters, so that was kind of okay. However he also said "Where was the methodology?" and said I wasn't clear enough on the landscape aspect as usual - will have to work on that for my PhD defence for sure. I often have to re-write something and insert the word landscape a few times to make it fit with the theme of my studies better. I'll get there.

The autumn raspberries have been brilliant this year. Last year
they mainly did not ripen before the frost got them, we only
had a few but this year we have been having to freeze them.

What I really liked about this conference though was the fact they broke up the long days with a field trip in the middle of the conference. It gave us a better chance to chat with others and to see more of the agricultural landscape of the Tyrol (did you notice I put landscape in there?). It is quite fascinating to hear of farmers who only have a small number of animals, one only had 17 cows and yet they were still in farming. It helped that there were subsidies to maintain the landscape (done it again! :D) in the traditional alpine way. It also helped that there were lots of tourists to the area to stay in guesthouses they ran and that they had a good market for their cheeses. During the winter months, when obviously it was more difficult to get up the mountains they kept the roads clear and did forest work. Quite a diverse lifestyle then!

Ian has been sculpting around the well. Hopefully it will grass
over soon

The first place we visited was to a cooperative who managed one mountainside with separate herds of cows, some dairy and some beef. The milk was pooled together and a cheesemaker rented a place from the cooperative to make his cheeses. I bought some raw milk to drink, since I was missing ours from home. Of course we got to taste the cheese too. The next visit was to a farmer who produced his own cheeses and had a shop on site, where we had a rather nice lunch of cheeses, salamis, hams, eggs and salad, all from the farm. You may notice a theme here of cheese, because our next visit was to a cheese factory in the valley. The farmer we had just visited sold his excess to the factory as did a few others but all had to be mountain farmers, no milk was bought from the valley farmers. Many of the farmers even sent their milk down to the factory via a cable system. That would be a sight to see, but when we got there the cheese making had finished for the day. Guess what! We also ate cheese here too and had a drink of buttermilk.

Cobwebs on the fencing

The next visit was to see a young chap who had just started producing vegetables for a local hotel. The hotel owner had bought the land to supply his hotel as he wanted to keep the produce local for his Ayurvedic diets. It was great to see the weedy garden. It was of course the first year and he was only experimenting, so only to be expected. The plans did seem a bit odd at times because they planned to produce eggs for the hotel, but there are always cockerels that need dealing with when trying to raise your own and it was supposedly a vegetarian hotel, well you could get meat if you wanted but the thrust of it was vegetarian. They also had sheep to keep the grass mown (sounds familiar) but again there is a problem if there are too many males and the same problem for the milk they aimed to produce at a later date. He did admit that the staff would probably benefit from the meat, when it becomes available. He was right though that it used to be that eating meat was a rare event and not a daily event like it has become and his own grandmother only used to eat meat a couple of times a week. We didn't have cheese here, but chives on bread with a home-made syrup for drinks.

Veronica has been putting on weight after her pregnancy free
year. We don't think she is pregnant this year, she was too
busy fending off all advances

Finally we finished up at another dairy farm, but funnily enough we didn't eat cheese here. They had some ancient protected pear trees and so instead they made juices and a spirit from them and we got to taste these. I had the pear juice first, which was lovely and then tried the alcoholic pear drink. I couldn't taste the pear, just the burning sensation as it went down and I couldn't finish it off. I said it was too strong for me and the farmer laughed and said "No! No! 60% is strong!" I dread to think! He assured it was "only" 40% proof. Still more than I can take anyway.

Agnese is probably pregnant though and she has been acting
strange, rather like Estelle last year.

We had the conference in two locations and so after the field trip we were dropped off in Seefeld, a tourist resort higher up in the mountains. It was rather twee with all the balconies overflowing with flowers and just about every building was either a guest-house or an eating place. I found the guest-house I was staying in, Haus Orplid and was met by a lovely lady. She welcomed her guests every morning and made sure she said goodbye when I left a couple of days later. She greeted everyone warmly without overdoing it, which was rather nice. There was a bit of an issue in the fact that the guesthouse only served breakfast between 8-10am and the conference started at 8:30am again. She said I could come down 5 minutes earlier and assured me there was plenty of time to get there, as the venue was only 10 minutes away. Well it is if you find it straight away! I got there in the end, is all I'm saying.

Tomatoes ripening in the late summer sun

The evening was a reception up in the mountains and to get there we had to use the funicular railway. Another presentation by the local dignitary and the obligatory facts about the place, but blessedly short and he gained everyone's approval by stating the first drink would be paid for. The meal was rather good and I chatted for a long time with a chap from the UK mainly and a bit with chaps from Norway and Switzerland - they mainly spoke in German to each other though. At the end of the evening we had to go back down the mountain and when we got to the bottom I realised I had left my alpaca scarf at the top of the mountain. The problem is that I had come down on the last but one train and although the train would go back up the mountain, it would not come back down. A phone call to the top though and I was assured my scarf was found and would come back down with the next group.

A bird's nest made from sheep's wool we think

I waited in the waiting room but for some reason the guy shut the door. I had visions of being left there all night. He let me out, but by the time he did, most of the folks had already left and my scarf was nowhere in sight. I had to go back to the hotel, but as I went around the corner the lights all went out and I was left trying to find my way back in the dark with just the torch on my phone to guide me. What fun I have! I did find the bridge that we went over to get to the railway and once over that there were streetlights and getting back was simple from that point. Fortunately I also got to keep the key to my room and that let me into the guesthouse itself. Phew!

Amazing the contortions an alpaca can do to scratch an itch

Fortunately the scarf was there in the morning. It was the scarf I had knitted from our own alpaca wool for Ian's mother who died last year, so I would have been rather sad to lose it. The last day of the conference was a short day and many left either that morning or shortly afterwards, so it felt like only a few were left behind. Most were taking advantage to go on holidays or to join the post-excursion trip to the Italian alps. I was only leaving the following day as there wasn't enough time to get to Innsbruck after the conference to get home. Later on in the day though I bumped into one young chap from the conference as I was looking for somewhere to eat. Since he was also doing the same, we decided to eat together. As we were making our way along to the restaurant he had planned on eating at, we saw another fellow from the conference. His partner had joined him in Seefeld for a day or two and so we all sat down and had a right good chinwag. It was better than eating alone anyway.

The golden head of an amaranth plant in the greenhouse

Saturday I set off back home. It was a fairly uneventful journey though, albeit with a rather long overlay in Frankfurt, apart from meeting a rather interesting young chap on the plane from Frankfurt to Riga. He asked me if I was visiting Riga and of course I said I was going home, which as usual surprises folks. I found out he was a joiner on yachts in the South of France, which made a bit of a change from working for an Irish joinery company, as many Latvians do, which he had done for nine years previously. He might even pay us a visit to the farm, he said, as he lost his cashmere hat and would love another hat made from natural materials, but he is allergic to sheep wool.

A rather large tomato that is now in the process of being
reduced to soup

So back home once again and it is back into the more mundane aspects of life, like harvesting amaranth seed, starting to tackle the tomato mountain, hanging some of the self-sown hemp to dry (they are huge now and taller than me), helping Ian with the sheep by holding them while he gave them injections and then helping make sure the lambs got to the new pasture. Unfortunately while I was away one of the lambs died and so we are down to two. The lamb was rather thin and it also got stuck in the wood pile one day before I went away. It could be that it wasn't thriving due to worms, which is why we gave them the injections about two weeks ago and this one was the second dose. Who knows! Sheep do sometimes just keel over and we are not the most experienced of sheep farmers.

In clover

Veronica. Unusually nosy for her!

It has been an intense week this week. Although we often do lots of different activities, the pace we go at is usually fairly relaxed, but not this week. First of all Ian moved the sheep from where they have been all spring to somewhere nearer to what they would consider civilisation (being herd animals and only three of them, I think they miss the company). The poor things were so hot, but we did make sure their feeding ground include trees for shelter, but did they use it – no of course not! They had to sit in the hottest spot next to the gate.

The sheep were over this hill behind Ian taking the photo.
He then moved them all the way over to a spot to the
left of the greenhouse. They were very good and didn't
scamper off at all. I think it was just too hot

If you don't examine them too carefully, they look much
better today. Still, if they could, they would change their
hairdresser

The reason for moving them nearer to civilisation was to bring them closer to an electric point so we could shear them using the mains electric and not a generator. It went so well at first, we managed to stop any of them escaping first of all and we then tied their legs together to stop them running off while we sheared. Before you think we were being cruel, you have to remember these are animals that cleared a four foot wooden fence by scrabbling over it. If these sheep did not get sheared that day, they weren't going to get sheared for quite a while and in the heat we had this week, it was the less cruel option. Unfortunately Ian has not been on a sheep shearing course and the finish was not very professional, in fact they looked a proper dog’s breakfast - if you get what I mean. Still they fairly skipped around in the rain yesterday. Better than the big wool coat they were wearing.

Brencis looking gorgeous

Brencis' fleece. You can see it is definitely not pure white

The instrument of torture ..errr I mean
the hoist. We need to find a wider belt
for it, but at least the principle worked.
It was funny holding Snowdrop
because she would audibly sigh as she
was being milked. I think it was a relief

Although Snowdrop lost her baby last week, she was quite full of milk. Rather than waste it and because we know that she is likely to have problems feeding a baby in the future, it is always good to have spare so we milked her. That is now in the freezer – not much but at least it is something - a feed's worth. It may contain colostrum, but I'm not sure if colostrum is always the first lot of milk or whether it is only within 24 hours. We did try to milk her while she was pinned down for shearing but it didn't work. We then tried it while she was standing up, but she kept cushing (the alpaca term for sitting down with their legs underneath them, which of course means it is impossible to milk her like that. In the end Ian made a hoist to stop her cushing. I'm glad to say it worked well.

Wheat and Poppies - not red ones though

Amaranth. These have been competing
well with the weeds and Ian has been
able to keep just ahead with these.

We have also got quite a bit of weeding done, but there is not much to show for it, although I did find some carrots and dill, not many, but they are at least there. Of course at this time of year, if you don't keep on top of the weeding, the weeds tend to take over. We had some old seed and a bad year for germination and that hasn't helped. I have some carrots going to seed in the greenhouse, so that should give us plenty of carrot seed for next year and I shall buy some fresh seed from a seed company, so that we have a good genetic mix of carrots. I let enough carrots go to seed for our own use, but not enough to make sure they provide us with healthy plants genetically in the future.

Lots of wonderful flowers at this time of the year and until
Monday was blissfully relatively free of biting insects.
Monday the really large horse flies suddenly appeared.
They look like something out of a horror movie, but
fortunately they are so loud, you can hear them coming
and be prepared. It is the pesky small ones that are harder
to get.

Because we haven't got any chick pictures
this week, here is one of Eyre looking
sleepy. She has been ever so good at going
to sleep in the toilet area of the caravan when
we have been sleeping in it. She is quiet until
we wake up.

Talking of genetics, we are have bred some lovely looking chickens, with gorgeous black or grey feathers, unfortunately we seem to have bred out any sign of intelligence at the same time. All our other chickens have only taken about three days maximum to get the idea that when food is put in the back of the ark, that means it is time to go away for the night. The food is an incentive to go into the box to be fastened up. However, this lot have been chased around the ark lots of times to catch them. It would be the most awkward ark too. It was designed as a small ark for chicks to go on the floor, but then we extended it upwards to give them more room and there isn't as much access for humans. At least they are finally getting the idea, apart from one and even that one is finally getting it. It tends to look around as if to say, "where has everyone gone?" before the penny drops and into the box it goes, a good minute after the others. I do hope the folks that got their siblings are not having the same bother.

Sour dough bread buns freshly baked for
lunch

The sweetcorn is doing well in the greenhouse

Apart from all that it was an intense hay cutting, baling and shifting week. We reckon we may have shifted about 4 ½ tonnes and I have certainly walked miles behind tractor. The good news is that it would seem the UK got our heatwave and we only had to put up with temperatures around 28C (82) and not over 30C (86F) like we normally do. I certainly felt the benefit. I don't even feel particularly sore, just like I have done a lot of work.

Some of the cuttings from one of the grapevines in the
greenhouse seems to have taken. We aim to plant these
ones outside and see how they will do there.

The rain on Monday battered some of our oats. Not sure if
we will get anything out of this bit. It maybe okay. It is
not as if we need to harvest it with a combine harvester.
We might just use the scythe 

One of the first things we had to do was shift some of last years hay that we still had in our neighbours barn down to our place to make room for the new hay. While we were doing that our neighbour came into the barn carrying two freshly baked goodies, straight out of the oven. She was supplying the camp nearby with things like cinamon rolls, biezpiena rolls (kind of like a cross between cottage cheese and curd cheese in a sweet roll) and pizzas. They were absolutely gorgeous and much appreciated. She does look after us.

Tomatoes are starting to form on our plants now

Looking down from the top of the ski hill at the area
we cut, baled and cleared

This is to the left of the picture above

A remnant from the Soviet era. The signage
on this electric pole is in Russian

It was close but we managed to get all of this year's hay into the barn and stacked in the space we were allowed. I think we could have only got one or two more bales in. We had around 70 bales leftover from last year, and over 180 new ones. That will be more than enough and means we do not have to worry about trying to bale and stack any more from the land. We needed more in past years because we didn't have any where to stack it to keep it dry and ended up throwing a lot of it away. It feels very nice to know that won't be as much of a problem this time around.

Not the strawberries I picked after the hay stacking but ones
I cut up to dry. The strawberries are huge and tasty this year
and we have been having them on our breakfast all week.
Such a hard life!

I feel like a true farmer this year. We knew some rain was coming, so got all the hay collected and stacked and since the rain was imminent Ian went and baled hay we had cut around the side of our greenhouse that had been re-seeded a year or so ago and was lush and tall not like most of the hay this year. I also went and collected all the ripe strawberries because the expected rain was due to be heavy and I didn’t want to waste them. We just finished those jobs as the first few spots of rain began to fall, at that point we finally went and ate and then slept for an hour or so. I don't even feel that bad today. I thought I would have been quite stiff, but I just feel like I have over done it yesterday and need to take it easy today. So not bad, must be getting stronger each year, or not as drained in the lower temperatures maybe.

These four bales of hay came from the side and rear of the
greenhouse

Three bales from this section and one from behind

The uncut patch is to keep everyone guessing what we are
up to :) or the other explanation is to allow the clover (the
purple splodge in the middle that you can see) to go to
seed and spread around that area. The grass in that area is
rather thin and so hopefully the clover will add some
fertility

We have found that the hay every year is very different due to the growing conditions.  Often the grass is tall, but the cool, dry spring meant this year's hay was on the short side and not so dense. What we have noticed though is a huge increase in clover. I have identified at least three sorts, possibly four. There was also vetches and lady’s bedstaw in abundance. So the hay will be very scented and possibly rather fattening with all the leguminous plants– so not much grain supplement will be needed for our boys this next year, they are fat enough as it is.

In the Eurozone

Nearly time to put the Christmas decorations away, but not
just yet. I know it is traditional to take them down either
yesterday or today, but ours make the place look cheerful
in this rather dreach weather. You may notice the rather odd
addition to our manger scene. He comes out every year and
is called Dally. 

The first of January saw the beginning of the end of the Lat, which many are quite sad about here in Latvia; although there are some older folks for which is not a problem as they have seen rather a lot of changes of currencies over the years and at least the Euros have bigger coins that are easier to see. It was quite common to see an old lady hand over a pocketful of change for the cashier to sort through, as it was almost impossible to tell a 1 santim coin from a 2 santim coin. We still had some Lats leftover and so we have just about spent them all now, we have until the 15th January. 

Some green grass, but not much

Being in the Eurozone means there is now no more confusion between Latvia and Estonia for me when I'm travelling, since Estonia was already in the Eurozone. There were worries of prices going up with the switch, but since I don't buy much or take much notice of prices when I do - it is what it is!- as our Swedish friend is fond of saying. It is the kind of attitude we have developed over the years of travelling, after it became much to complicated to convert back to a currency we were familiar with. However, I do know my milk, from my local farmer, has gone down in price. It should be 57c per litre but it was reduced to 55c - easier to add up I guess.

Ian has dug up the last of our carrots. Normally we don't
leave them this long, but since the weather has been mild
we could risk it. In fact this is the second mildest year in
Latvia's history or rather since records began.

As I said, the reason we don't take much notice of prices, is the fact we don't actually buy much from the supermarkets. My milk as I mentioned is from the local farmer, we are practically self-sufficient in vegetables, the lamb we hopefully get this week is a swap for some hay at the beginning of the year and we should have some chicken soon, once the cockerels are big enough to dispatch, which all goes to mean that we don't need much beyond citrus fruits, mushrooms, oil, salt, flour, cheese, rice, sugar, margarine, yeast, tea, coffee and toilet rolls. I think that is about it, apart from chocolate and it isn't just me who craves chocolate from time to time, Ian is the more regular consumer of that. 

Not much grass here!

We decided to go on a walk this New year's Eve to watch the fireworks. Turns out it was a little more dangerous than we thought it would be, as one chap threw a firecracker in our general direction. He wasn't even a young chap, so we can't blame the act on youthful exuberance. Fortunately it just made us jump rather than doing any damage. Fortunately the rest of the walk was uneventful and we saw quite a few fireworks. On our way back we saw a glow in the sky and wondered what it was, too low and slow for a meteor, too low for a satellite and not enough noise for a helicopter - besides who flies helicopters on a New Year's Eve? It turns out it was a paper lantern, as we saw it stuck in a tree burning away. The thought that came to our mind, was what if it had landed in a farmer's hay stack instead? I do hope it is a fad that disappears.

The new shelter for the sheep

We've had a little change around on the farm this week. The sheep, as I said last week, were escaping and we can't really blame them. Although they were being given hay and concentrated feed, what they really wanted was green grass and there was precious little of that where they were being kept. Ian could only move the fence a little and they still have shelter and so we decided on a complete change. Around the back of our barn and greenhouse is some reseeded grass that was still long and green. Ian built another shelter from some logs and a tarp we had and between us we moved the sheep up. For two of the sheep it was pretty easy, Ian just walked up with a tray of food and they followed, the other one is a bit more nervy and so I walked behind to encourage her to go in the right direction. That sort of worked, most of the way, but she didn't quite make it into the area we had fenced off and she had to be chased back in to join the other two. Unfortunately she decided to take the quickest route and crashed the fence, breaking one of the fence posts. Oh well! At least now they have the opportunity to eat fresh green grass during the day and they get penned up into the smaller enclosure at night. They may as well make the best of it, as the temperatures might plummet in just over a week's time and we would be lucky if the grass was still green then, or even if it could be seen if it snows. 

Yey! The food man's here! Even when there is green grass
the concentrate is still appealing

Our young chickens have shown signs of growing up this week, two of the cockerels started crowing. These are the two we decided to keep, as we thought they were the more advanced of the chicks. It is funny when they first start to crow, it is almost as if they are shocked at what they have just done. Even the other chickens turn their heads and seem to give them a funny look, as if to say "What was that?" On a slightly different note, we had a visit from a forest ranger this week. In Latvia you need a permit to cut trees down over 12cm wide, which is fair enough as it is to stop people from over cutting the forests. The only problem with getting a permit, is that the forest rangers then start inspecting the forests and expect it to be kept tidy. That means clearing the undergrowth and thinning trees, which is what we were going to do, but at a slower pace than they were hoping for. Anyway we have done the majority of it, and he could see we had done some work on the forest to tidy it. The only thing was that he couldn't speak English and our Latvian is not good enough to hold a conversation. Still he got as much information from us as possible, we didn't have the paperwork out on the land, so that wasn't helpful for him and in the end, he decided it was enough and went. Sometimes it is helpful not to speak the language. 

Yum! Grass!

Life at times takes on a bit of a scary quality - although that seems a bit of an overdramatic statement when you compare our safe lives compared to living in a war zone - but there are times we are not certain of the next step and it reminded me of the "Bridge of faith" in one of the Indiana Jones films, where he has to step off the cliff before he sees the bridge (you can see it in the YouTube clip below). I feel a bit like that at times. I know it might seem stupid, but marking someone else's Masters project felt like that. It doesn't help that I didn't have the kind of feedback that I'm giving to the young man whose Masters I'm marking, mainly because the process is different in the UK. It is only by stepping out though and trying these different things that I can put into practice what I know. I'm sure it will get easier, but it still feels a bit scary. 

Shattered fence post. Not the one the sheep broke, this is
one the alpaca girls broke when they decided to go walk
abouts. At least Ian found out the girls are now quite happy
to follow him too. No idea how they managed to shatter
the fence post though

I’m not into resolutions and haven't made any for years; that is partly because I fail miserably at that sort of thing anyway, but thanks to another blogger who is, I have a phrase to carry with me for a while and that is the phrase “God is enough.”  I do know that really! I have lived that! Time and time again I have know that to be true, but each time the journey gets scarier and the potential to fail higher and each time it is like stepping onto that bridge of faith in the Indiana Jones film, that aspect doesn't get any easier, well not for me anyway.


On the topic of war I know I know, I sometimes get on my soapbox but I couldn't let this pass. A Unicef representative said this last week, "Targeted attacks against children are a violation of international humanitarian and human rights law and must stop immediately. Concrete action is needed now to prevent violence against children." But war full stop is a violation of human rights, not just targeted attacks on children. That is abhorant, but so is blowing them to bits with bombs, so is blowing anyone to bits with bombs. A war by its very nature is a violent act that violates rights. When will we learn? There is no justification for war, ever! Right now I will get down off my soapbox.
I managed to get a little creative this week. I not only finished some presents and sent them off along with the presents I posted the photos of last week- now that the post office is finally open. No photos for those I'm afraid, hopefully the recipients will take photos. I also did some more felting. I managed to find some finer fleece and so made some slightly softer felted pieces than the last time. So here are my efforts for one days work - combing the fleece by hand is obviously not such a quick job, but it was relaxing anyway.

Oh yes, lots of ours to comb enough fleece for this little lot

A piece done on a long silky piece of fabric

Close up of the swirly pattern

Background for a snowy scene?

Felted onto a piece of dark purple and green fabric

Felted onto a piece of lace