Old Folks at Home

     I just finished reading a book called "The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules" by Catharina Ingleman-Sundberg, one of those free or nearly free Book-Bub e-books. It's  about a group of seniors who escape from an old folks' home in Sweden and commit a crime so that they will be put in prison, a place which they think will be far superior in every way - better food, more choice, cable TV, library, exercise in the fresh air, jobs to do... The "home" they reside in is abysmal - plastic food, doors locked, pills to keep people settled, no fun, very little in the way of entertainment.

    

     I've heard that "prisons are better" idea dozens of times. "We should commit a crime! Prisoners are better off than seniors!" And it could be true. But would we want to hang out with crooks of all kinds? Goodness! Would an elderly person be bullied in prison? 

     I wonder though, is respect the norm in publicly funded senior homes? You hear such terrible stories. You are quite powerless when you're old, at least when you're to the point where you require assistance to accomplish your daily routine. Let's face it, most of us say we NEVER will and never want to move to a senior home. BUT there could come a time... 

     Good health - that's the key. Without health, physical or mental, you slowly become dependant. For awhile your dependence can be absorbed by your family. Then one day they can no longer cope.

     Many of us cared for elderly parents and we don't want to inflict this burden on our own children. But here's the thing that scares us about "assisted living". Once you're in a senior care situation you begin to lose your individual rights. At some point your doctor, your family, someone besides yourself, decides it's time for you to move to the next stage in the system. Husbands and wives are sometimes separated due to differing care requirements. You get shifted according to your physical needs and/or mental capacity. Your societal needs - friendships, familiarity with your environment, with the staff, individual preferences - all take a back seat to the institutional structure. 

     Many who are in-care are unable to speak for themselves. I've always said, if you're in care you had better have an advocate, someone who visits often and makes sure you're being treated well. But I've spoken to people who either had a family member in care or worked in a care facility. Advocates that perceive shortcomings are none too welcome. Stressed and/or short staffed care workers (who may be in underfunded situations not under their control) don't want someone in their face telling them they're not doing their job properly. 

     I have lived in the same house, on the same farm, for 42 years. I could just about get around blind and deaf. I don't want to leave here unless I'm in a box, neither does my husband. I've slowed down some but I still garden, have sheep, make a fire every morning, cook and clean, go for walks, jam with my friends, have a dog, like to party. All of this would go if I moved to town to a senior home. I'd have reading, writing, and TV. I'd be safe, could make some new friends...but I think I'd be bored silly. That's something I've noticed - people who live in towns and cities get bored when in the country for any length of time. Townies may be surprised, but people who live in the country get bored in town.

     Most of my friends are country dwellers. Discussion of these issues comes up in gab sessions, even with the youngsters (between 50 and 65). We wonder, why can't there be facilities for seniors out in the country? Places where you could have a dog, a fenced yard, a small garden, go for walks on unpaved ground - surely it wouldn't be that difficult! For staff you'd need (part or full time): an LPN (licensed practical nurse), a cook (real food), a maintenance person (who would double as a gardener and a driver), and a housekeeper. You could have about 8 tiny homes attached by covered walkway to a main building where meals would be served. Everyone would have wifi and satellite TV. There could be an exercise room, a family entertainment space, a kitchen (residents would be allowed to cook if they wished), dining area, maybe one of those fancy bathtubs made especially for seniors. It could all be worked out. It would be pretty much a cooperative effort amongst the residents. Ahhh, dream on...

     As our kitchen table conversation goes on we all realize we would have to do all this ourselves; government sponsored places are unlikely to stray from their norm. It seems quite impossible and very unlikely that we would get organized before it's too late. Questions arise. Where would we do this? Everyone loves their own place! No one wants to move. How would we finance this senior utopia? So the discussion fizzles out and we put the idea on the back burner.

     But there's something we can do, we can and should investigate what services are currently available for seniors who opt to remain in their country homes, eligibility criteria, cost, ease of access. If services are minimal, underfunded, understaffed, we should determine our needs and lobby local (and provincial) government to upgrade these services. From many different sources I have heard that  it's less expensive to care for seniors in their own homes than in an institutional setting. So beefing up rural care services may simply be a matter of letting funders know what's needed. It would be a win win situation.

Oops again

Once again I need to say oops. I may have to dump this program (app, called Blogtouch pro ) if I can't get it to function sanely. Now it's throwing in past blogs at random and adding them to the bottom. I half expected to find my whole blog history filing through. ?!#

From Fleece to Quilt

    We traded our goat herd in for sheep for several reasons, mainly because marketing was easier, more sheep auctions closer to home.  My husband wanted to tan the hides of the ones we butchered for ourselves, fleece on, to make soft throws and rugs but never got around to it, other more pressing projects always taking precedence. Instead the hides were, and still are, tossed onto the roof of the dog kennels so the birds can pick at the fat. But I, being the homemaker part of the bargain, wanted to do something with the wool. I only managed to complete one project using wool the whole time we've had sheep.

     When I got pregnant I figured I should learn to knit. In my thinking that's what mother-to-be were supposed to do. I made one jumpsuit that fit my son when he was 2 and one sweater that was too small when he was born. So I had already determined that knitting wasn't my strong point. Besides I had no spinning wheel or drop spindle, and had no clue how to spin except in circles. As luck would have it, our local hall hosted the answer for me to use my wool - a quilting course! 

     It was important for me to take it from the fleece to the quilt, so the first thing I did was take the newly shorn wool down to our lake to wash it. Wet wool is mighty difficult to handle but I got it all sorta washed and onto an old bed spring to dry in the sun. I borrowed some combs and a hand crank drum carder (see below) from a friend and bit by bit cranked away at the fleece until it became rectangles (batts) of combed wool, reasonably devoid of straw and weeds. I was nearly ready!

    But I needed some material squares for my quilt cover and a simple design to arrange them in. Our local thrift shop had all I required so I snipped and sorted till I had something I figured looked pretty nice, then sewed the quilt cover with my old treadle sewing machine. It was looking pretty good! I was ready to take the course. The instructor had never before encountered someone who wanted to make a quilt with real wool, most folks use perfectly uniform synthetic quilt batting, but she rose to the challenge and we made only one change - we added a layer of cheese cloth over the wool. My treadle did itself proud (though it has never been quite the same since - went out of sync somehow due to the thickness of the wool) and before too long I had the quilted part of the quilt ready for the backing. Our quilts were sized so that a bed-sheet backing should fit just right...but when I pinned it on IT DIDN'T FIT! For some reason it was about 4 inches too short.

     By this time I was getting pretty tired of looking at that quilt. It had been a long and, for me, difficult process. When that sheet didn't fit I just groaned. I rolled the darn thing up, put it in a large garbage bag and stuffed it under my bed. Never looked at it again for several years until one day I got the courage, took it out, refitted the sheet and sewed it all together. That quilt stayed on our bed for many years, even after a dry cleaner made it go all lumpy. It was hard for me to retire it. After all I was pretty proud of my fleece to quilt accomplishment. But it did have one wee flaw. Some of the long straight pins that held the backing on before I sewed it had worked their way deep into the wool. All were found eventually, one sharp reminder at a time!  

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From Wikipedia 

     Carding is a mechanical process that disentangles, cleans and intermixes fibers to produce a continuous web or sliver suitable for subsequent processing. This is achieved by passing the fibers between differentially moving surfaces covered with card clothing. It breaks up locks and unorganized clumps of fiber and then aligns the individual fibers to be parallel with each other. In preparing wool fiber for spinning, carding is the step that comes after teasing.

     The word is derived from the Latin carduus meaning thistle or teasel, as dried vegetable teasels were first used to comb the raw wool. These ordered fibers can then be passed on to other processes that are specific to the desired end use of the fiber: Cotton, batting, felt, woollen or worsted yarn, etc.

   The simplest machine carder is the drum carder. Most drum carders are hand-cranked but some are powered by electric motor. These machines generally have two rollers, or drums, covered with card clothing. The licker-in, or smaller roller meters fiber from the infeed tray onto the larger storage drum. The two rollers are connected to each other by a belt - or chain-drive - so that the their relative speeds cause the storage drum to gently pull fibers from the licker-in. This pulling straightens the fibers and lays them between the wire pins of the storage drum's card cloth. Fiber is added until the storage drum's card cloth is full. A gap in the card cloth facilitates removal of the batt when the card cloth is full.