As the Spindle Turns . . .

Spring Dyeing

2012-05-22T02:33:49Z

Got a start on some natural dyes today. Lemon balm lives in the whole back end of the yard. Since it needed a haircut, I dyed some sock yarn with it on a makeshift wood fire. I mordanted with a cold copper bath (copper chunks in a water and ammonia bath) afterwards. I left it soak over the weekend and rinsed it today. Will have to wait until washed and dry to see if its a worthy green or just khaki. The madder has been soaking in a rhubarb concoction. I tossed in some alum for a lovely rose shade and cooked it on a more controlled outdoor stove on low for a good hour. The shade will deepen overnight as it cools. The darker one was a light walnut to start with and was overdyed.

Lemon BalmRhubarb and MadderWalnut and Alum in Madder

I was attacked this morning by multiple muses. Hats they whispered. Summer colors. Rainbows. I went through my stash and got a start. So many colors!

Tomorrow must put projects away and wind yarn for Great Lakes. Big box arrived. Can't sell it if its still in the box in my living room.

comments

Back home again

2012-05-16T04:22:51Z

We're very special. Congress met and laid off my husband. Wow. I feel so important that it took an act of congress to achieve our current state of affairs. My ego is quite bloated. So Sunday I drove 13 hrs to help him move back home. He had only been on the job for ten weeks. We lost the deposit on the apartment. It also cost a lot in travel expenses. We got him all packed up and the apartment cleaned and headed home another 13 hrs in the rain. Needless to say, I owe apologies to folks that needed customer assistance. Driving 26 hours in two days plus packing, kind of leaves you jet-lagged. My todo list is long and my time before the next event is short. If I didn't get an answer to you or finish your custum hat, a gentle reminder would gladly be accepted. Hoping to be at War Practise this weekend and Great Lakes Fiber next weekend.

comments

Basement Floor

2012-05-12T19:56:00Z

I've got a 90 yr old house that needs some TLC. At present, I'm deliberating on the basement floor. It's seen much better days. Depending on who you talk to, there are many solutions.

First the floor must be sealed. It currently has oil paint in patches, some kind of red primer which wipes off with various cleaners, epoxy patches, but mostly nothing at all.

I thought about epoxy painting the whole thing. Drawbacks: apparently if you ever want to tile later, the adhesive won't stick to epoxy. You also can't add radiant heat later on. If you do plan to epoxy, the floor needs to be tested for moisture first. And at some point later on, I'm thinking cork floor.

I made the mistake of inquiring at a hardware store that doesn't sell coatings and they told me to use oil paint. High traffic area. Paint rubbed off except in one corner. Still miffed at these supposed experts. Waste of time and energy. That was ten years ago.

Thompson's seal for concrete. This looks like the best option and you can even add a colored stain for decoration. However, the floor needs to be pure unadultered concrete. No goofy coatings that have been added over time. Bummer.

So I saw this HGTV show where a guy rented a masonry floor polisher and took all the junk off the floor. I'm thinking that might work. Any ideas? I asked Google today and got very little help.

comments

Climbing back into the shell

2012-05-11T02:59:49Z

All the baby birds fledged a week or more ago. We had two nests on the pillars supporting the porch roof. See? Empty nest!

So at dawn this morning, outside my open window, comes the sound that a baby sparrow makes when trying to convince the folks to feed it. Loud and frantic, this juvenile sparrow is back in its original nest, trying to con anyone who'll listen to fed it. Woke me at the crack of dawn. The only one it attracted with those piercing calls was my cat. Once he showed up, the game was over. The poor sparrow had to fend for itself. Not a hardship in our neighborhood as the outside birds get my parrot's expensive leftovers. And every neighbor has a feeder, judging from the number of corncobs and peanuts I dug out of the compost yesterday. Did I mention that my squirrels all wear blue coveralls and straw hats? They're farmers all right. I don't mow grass, I mow corn stalks. Speaking of mowing, I found where this year's poison ivy is growing while mowing today. Tomorrow's agenda includes eratication. My tomorrow ToDo list just keeps growing and growing. Sigh. Rest now, work later.

comments

Exhaustion

2012-05-09T20:18:47Z

Well I had plans for the day except it all came down to "the car must be emptied". Jennifer unloaded the merchandise and tent. I cleared a path up the driveway. I had trimmed the elm earlier this year. There was a huge brush pile. I dumped last year's compost out. Too much clay. Can't use it. Started trimming the twigs, mixed those with last year's leaves and a small amount of clay (dirt). Filled the container for use next year. Now I have a pile of clay in the driveway. I have wood bees buzzing cause I covered their babies up with clay. Jennifer took the decomposing leaves under all those branches and tried to hill the potatoes. While she collected compost, I started chopping twigs, branches, and logs for a dyebath or cooking fire. I don't have power tools. So I got my exercise using a hand saw. I collected enough for a fire and put them under the awning to dry out. Then I climbed into the mulberry to prune a few branches. The bark has moss and a bit of dead wood. Got a little trimmed before the exercise was too much for me. Not sure if the tree is okay or is rotting. The bark feels wrong. The tree had way to much snow on it a few years back and is still bent.

Now before anything else can happen, flour must be obtained. Off to the store. The giant batch of dishes is washed. Balls of yarn have been wound. Food needs to happen soon. The cat decreed it.

comments

Positive

2012-05-09T13:05:24Z

Life has not been good lately but I'm trying to stay focused on the positive side. Just as there are days where everything is going your way, so there too must be days that are the opposite. You can't truly appreciate one without the other.

When you can't control what is happening to you, it helps to keep busy. Today I started on a new hat prototype. It's that waking state where everything bounces around and ideas germinate. A client said cowbell hat, well why not? Now what does that mean? The knitting needles know and there's some gold wool on the cone calling out to me. Idea is sketched on the back of an envelope and off we go.

I changed the color of the carpet today. I vacuumed at least two cats worth of hair off it. I was only gone four days! How can one critter shed that much? I managed vacuuming the basement steps as well. I feel better!

When the rain stopped, the light was just right for taking pictures. It was a beautiful spring day. I got all the 5/2 mercizerized cotton up on etsy. Now I need to see what else I need to wind.

By afternoon it was nice enough to start in on the buttercup removal project. Nasty little buggers! They spread worse than crab grass. The roots won't let go of the ground! Even with an inch of rain they weren't loose enough to pull without some serious muscle. I'm gonna hurt after this one. I refuse to use agent orange on them. That nasty stuff trashes our drinking water. It also kills the good plants and doesn't have much effect on those buttercups. I managed to get half of the front clear.

John's coming home soon so my next project is clearing a room in the basement. It needs to be painted. I have paint. It became my dye room in his absence.

I am an overachiever so if something doesn't get completed, I feel like I didn't do anything. Back to fragmentation.

comments

Relaxation.

2012-05-08T00:01:48Z

Good and not so good weekend. The art show failed to live up to my expectations. Will try to give them useful ideas for another time but they can try them out without me being in attendence. I believe in their cause, but their clientele may enjoy a garden show or flea market better. Most participants enjoyed looking at art as if they were in a museum but did not interact with the art, which means cranky impoverished artists. 90 percent of the artists I talked to were new to the show. Very few coming back from previous years. The show is in its 36th year. That is not a good sign. On the flip side, we met some fantastic artists! More on them later when I fish out business cards.

So to lift our spirits, we headed to the Chicago Botanical Gardens just as the rain hit. It was nice to put up our umbrellas and walk in the English garden. We toured the Bonsai garden as well. It was very spiritual. Then off we went to the Plant Science Center to wait out the lightening. When the fury abated, we went up to the roof to view the green roof gardens and solar panels. Ed Begley Jr would love this place! We learned about the necessary layers to make it work.

We also learned about invasive species and found several that inhabit our yard. Buttercup has toxic sap and needs to be pulled with gloves. The little blue flowers are forget-me-nots and spread rapidly. (The ones we thought were Forget-me-nots are actually Siberian Bugloss, which is a good plant.) And the garlic mustard must go! Invasive species choke off native vegetation.

comments

Fragmentation

2012-05-02T04:06:56Z

I'm finding that my days are becoming more fragmented. As I work from home, each task is repetitive and therefore should only be performed for small periods of time. (to avoid repetitive stress injuries) The drawback is two fold. The house is a mess because nothing has been finished and put away. And you have a feeling of having done nothing. Repetitive tasks can be rather mindless anyway. Yesterday, I vacuumed, did dishes, made cookies, and cleaned up my birds area. I pulled fleece and made a few batts. I typed in data (bookkeeping) but didn't finish. Papers everywhere. Birdseed still everywhere. Fleece everywhere. Cookies have disappeared. I shipped orders. At the end of the day, I couldn't tell you what I'd done. To top it off, the computer starts to suck you in. Vast periods of time can disappear this way. I lost a lot due to trying repeatedly to get the iPad to do something it apparently can't do, namely, copy a web address from one page into an ancient webmail account. (squirrel mail) I thought there was something wrong with me. It had a lot of heartburn with squirrel mail. I had to put away the keypad and retouch the letter so many times because the cursor just went away.

Today I am just starting to see some progress. I wound balls of yarn, printed labels, updated etsy, shrank photos, started assembling a new case of yarn to sell. I am only one fifth of the way there. Sigh. Sitting at the computer is gonna tighten all the shoulder muscles. The laptop causes you to goose neck to see what's going on. I'm switching to the tablet but I can't perform many of the functions necessary to create my etsy pages from the iPad. The function that makes the screen flip when you move the tablet screws up the custom item placement in etsy.

I love the screen resolution of my iPad. I love the touch screen, arrow keys, and portability of my Android. I love the speed of my laptop and full keyboard. Sigh. Can I have just one device with all three?

Wishing. Courtney said it best on Live Wire when talking about wasting time while waiting to discover your true passion. There's less time to pursue your passion because you've wasted it (watching back-to-back episodes of Archer). I think it might be worse my way. At least she could tell you what she did with her time. It shouldn't take me a day to remember what I did. It should be more memorable. Granted I'd rather be vacuuming than walking through bug infested swamps looking for orchids, but still.

The one thing I did do that was memorable was found an old friend on facebook that I haven't seen in years. That made yesterday worthwhile.

comments

Planting

2012-04-10T17:52:43Z

I went to make lunch. I opened up the lettuce we picked up from Shepherdstown's farmer's market. I got hit by an oder. I love farmer's markets and fresh produce. Unfortunately, we didn't eat this lettuce up quickly enough. It went south. Well, it was ten days old. Sigh. I prefer having fresh food outside my door that I can help myself to whenever I choose. So I went out to take a look. I found a few plants outside that reseeded from last year. Just starting to grow. Must be time to plant.

It cooled off enough that I can plant lettuce with a chance of actual germination as opposed to cooking in the ground during our unprecedented early heat wave. I still have a lot of seed from last year. I also have seed packets from many years ago. I hate throwing things away. And since germination of the old stuff may be one in four or more, I still hate throwing them out. So I put them all in one baby food jar and shook them up. I also tossed in the spinach seeds. I made a row outside in the garden and planted some of the mix after moving a potato that came up where it didn't belong. Every couple of weeks, I'll plant more. In large bare spots, I can plant as needed if stuff doesn't come up. I watered right away as the birds were very interested in my doings. I am hoping the bugs that eat my lettuce will hold off a while. Not sure what to do about that rabbit. Maybe a covering of some sort.

comments

Spring Cleaning

2012-04-08T14:03:01Z

For some unknown reason, I hit my house with a vengeance this week. The mulberries are gone from the freezer where they took up more than half of the space of the entire freezer. I processed wine from years ago and bottled that. I've started a new batch, about 5 gallons from the freezer mulberries. Cleaned off the dryer downstairs for my wine bucket. That bucket was heavy.

I did huge batches of dishes. I'm hand washing winter sweaters and mittens to be put away for the summer. The stove top has been taken apart and burner trays scrubbed. A new cover of aluminum foil has been put around them for easier cleaning. Tomatoes were planted. Still too cold to put in the plants we bought last weekend in Shepherdstown.

Now it's time to clean me as well. Then go in search of food on Easter. Hmm. Procrastination has it's drawbacks.

comments

More Travel

2012-03-20T22:00:06Z

Well they say travel broadens the mind. No one could say I don't travel. I was in Cambridge to install my husband into his new job. He is temping at Technology Square. Much needed to be done while he was away at work. I walked and walked. I got to know the area. I found a realtor. I found my hubby an apartment that we can afford on the transit system. I shopped for basic supplies. I moved stuff into the new apartment. We discussed logistics. He opted to be without car. I got him a transit pass. Life is adequate. I then moved on to my own agenda. I needed to get back and pack for Gulf Wars. It's hard to achieve world domain through yarn without the YARN! The ball winder was on the fritz again. (Reminder me to find Fritz later and get it off him). Over twenty pounds of yarn had to be wound by hand. Because of the ancient ball winder, it was a two person job. Sigh.

I struggled through it with help from Chronographia and Toni d'spoon. Crate after crate was packed. Yarn was dyed, rinsed, dried, wound and labeled. Finally the van was packed and I headed south with high hopes of avoiding white out conditions.

Did I mention the affinity I have for white outs? It is a thirteen hour drive normally from here to Cambridge without traffic. Pennsylvania has some lovely topography called mountains and a weather area known as the snow belt. I had the lovely chance to drive the entire length of the state along the snow belt. And what did I see as I drove along the snow belt? Why, snow of course. I have never seen snow fall up before. I have now. Visibility was nil as I drove through one cloud at a time. And then it was gone. And we'd climb another hill and the road disappears and reappears. I had enough of this in Green Bay and Michigan. But here stakes are much higher as sheer drops are right next to the road most of the way. So I was rather pleased that my trip south to Mississippi was much less harrowing. I was also pleased that I had the van and not the Jeep. The Jeep has an intermittent fault in the dashboard. Sometimes the gauges work and sometimes they don't. And the cruise control is permanently out-of-order thanks to the would-be thieves in Az. The van performed splendidly over the two day drive. My legs are not on speaking terms with me because no one should drive as much as I do.

The weather was indeed splendid and has continued so even now that I am back at home. More on Gulf Wars later.

comments

Travel

2012-02-28T14:27:11Z

Didn't plan on it at some level. I had a grand scheme to conquer the universe. I really did. It was suppose to be one trip to the midwest, economizing on mileage and hotels. It was suppose to go: Kalamazoo, MI, then Chicago, and then Milwaukee, staying at friends houses and plotting my schemes as I went. Then Chicago got moved to the beginning of the month, leaving a two week gap. My friends got the flu. I got the flu. A blizzard hit and I was almost stranded in Green Bay. Hotels were booked full due to basketball in blizzards in Kalamazoo. Why play basketball in a blizzard? Why Kalamazoo? The world will never know.

So instead I went to St. Charles IL and did Reenactor Fest, recently redubbed Military Reenactor Fest. Cool stuff! Amazing people! Romans, German tanks, Awesome! View pictures on my FLickr Page.

I took my husband along because he doesn't get out much. And he had a billion hotel points so we could stay free. If you plan to conquer the universe, do it on someone else's dime. So in between, we visited museums. Those are a work in progress on the Flickr page. I have the EAA Airventure Museum pictures up. I got to see Spaceship One! I need an evil laugh and a bald cat, then I will be invinceable! (Okay, a spelling app wouldn't hurt either).

Then I headed over to Oshkosh to see Bling. Ooo, shiny! The costumes, wow. The accessories, amazing. The jewelry shiny. The pictures, kinda dark. Need photoshop. Need real computer instead of tiny Android. Then, only then will you see the most astounding costuming known to woman-kind!

So all that leaves no explanation to why I am currently sitting at a desk in Boston, MA, plotting my next moves to overwhelm the SCA with the most awesome fiber arts display of merchandise at Gulf Wars. You'll just have to come back often to read my blog and find out why.

comments

Just Things . . .

2012-01-22T02:52:20Z

Inventory. I hate it. I love it. It's tedious especially doing it alone. It takes me forever. It's not just about inventory. It's winding all those balls of yarn for displays, making pretty skeins, labeling all those hats, updating the database, trying to figure out what that ball of yarn was back when it had a label. Then there's the joy of discovery. Ooo! I love those two colors together. Do I have enough to make anything out of it? Oh, that missing ball of golden fleece fell behind that bookcase, I've been looking for that for a long time. Each new bag of old yarn uncovered makes me what to play all day instead of counting or weighing it. There's light at the end of the tunnel. Only another week of this. Eight skeins of alpaca to wind, three more tubs of fleece to sort and weigh, and dozens upon dozens of socks to count. Notions to count and package. Then comes the WTF yarn. It's not labeled and a guess as to if it's even in inventory and the forgotten or not-quite-right projects. Hats that don't fit human heads. What exactly do I do with them? There must be a creative way to make them work.

A brief interlude of winter occurred this week. Monday will be time enough to get back to projects like the scarf. After taking it out of the bag, I got ghost outlines of leaves. I should've left it longer. The leaves are a bit long in the tooth. Autumn was a long time ago. So I will give it another go and let it sit longer or use Martha's hammer.

comments

Let the experiment begin!

2012-01-10T18:26:54Z

Solar cooker is set up. Sun came up early. Morning temp was 29 degrees, but by noon it was 43 degrees. I expect it to climb a little more. Had to adjust the angle of the cooker with a brick. So far, I've achieved 250 degrees inside. Seeing as I am cooking with a plastic bag, I'm okay with this. I am aiming for a long slow cook. Generally speaking, when I emersion dye, I look to keep the dyebath just under boiling. I didn't expect 250 but I'll take it. I won't need to do this more than one day. When it's colder outside, it is hard to achieve decent temperatures in the oven. We usually are overcast in winter which affects the temperature as well. Today is hazy but no clouds.

comments

Attention span of a gnat

2012-01-09T21:25:17Z

I spent last night arguing with a website to pay a bill online because apparently that is the only way you can pay the bill. It didn't take my login name three times, my password twice, and various misspellings ensued on the security questions. I switched computers in case it was a not mac friendly environment. Turns out it was a not friendly PC environment either. It took me two hours to pay my service provider. Ridiculous. So today I am grumpy from lack of sleep. I also can't concentrate. I can do repetitive tasks extraordinarily well. So I got to weaving.

I looked at various projects people are doing with eco-printing. Eco-printing involves using leaves to dye fabric in natural fibers with lovely patterns. Gnat time. So remember that Daria episode where Jane's brother eats the gummy bears she was going to use on her art project? Well, I am keeping my art supplies in the refrigerator. Unlike her, no one will eat them. I picked leaves or rather raked like everyone else last fall. Unlike other people, I took oak and elm leaves, spritzed them with water and placed them in a plastic bag. I am storing them in the lettuce drawer in the frig. Gnat time.

I was doing inventory as everyone must do this time of year. I ran across some naturally dyed raw silk that I had no clue what I was going to do with it. Gnat time. I was playing around on flickr and youtube. So I saw several people's projects using pretty much the same thing. Why not try it? Empty loom. Quick project. No energy or effort, let alone thinking. I couldn't think to save my soul today. I already burned two batches of cookies and melted a plastic ladle handle. It wasn't pretty.

Loom warped. Eight inch wide scarf woven, plain weave, two yards long. Done. Since I have no clue how these beautiful things on the web were actually made, I made it up as I went along. I wet the fabric. I picked out elm leaves because the oak had dried out. Remember, they were hanging around a long time. Elm gives off dye all on it's own. The scarf was originally mordanted with alum before I did a madder dyebath some ten years ago. When I said I had no idea what to do with the raw silk, I meant it. Good news is, I know the dye won't fade.

I laid out the scarf flat and put down my leaf design. Mordant is important. I saw Martha Stewart do this once years ago with dahlias and a hammer. I put another cloth over the top of my scarf and rolled it into a cigar. I tied the ends with rag strips (they were handy). Then I went in search of my rubber band collection and used them all to hold it tightly together. Now comes the fun part. I stuck it all in a newspaper tube, spilled some of my tea into it and sloshed some white vinegar in too. I rubber banded the plastic bag tight and setup my solar cooker outside.

Gnat time. So like, I have this solar cooker that I don't use in winter cause it's usually too cold? Well, it's 45 degrees out in January. And sunny which never happens here in winter. So, I got to try the other angle. It's sort of a 30/60/90 triangle shape. The sun is lower in the sky in the northern hemisphere this time of year. The sharper angle is suppose to point it at the winter sun. Since I started cooking it at 1:30 and it's no longer very light out, I'll try this for a couple days and we'll see. If it actually works, I want to try rose leaves and fern leaves on other pieces. I like the weave of the raw silk. I think it'd make a great summer top. The heck with scarves, everybody does that.

Check out the picture:

comments

Buckling the Swash

2011-12-20T15:53:34Z

One of the down-sides to being a pirate is having to mend your own clothing after a fight. There's no doubt pickings are poor this year. I can't afford me own seamstress. So out with the needle and thread. If'n you're gonna cut me, ken ye at least do it on the bias? I ben mending so much that Captain Pinky is starting to call me Bedsheet Sal. Bad enough I be a weaver by honest trade. If you wanted to know what we rennies do in the off season, now ye ken. We mends.

comments

Thirty-two

2011-12-20T03:04:25Z

Today was brought to you by the number 32. I wrote out 32 Christmas cards and got them into the mail today. Tomorrow is another day. Presents need to be wrapped and sent.

comments

Giving

2011-12-10T18:34:21Z

It feels really good to have gone through the closets and boxed up everything for charity. We don't have much money this year but we are giving the gift of the eighties to charity. The old dresser was emptied and our herculean effort to move it downstairs onto the porch is complete. The Amvets picked up the boxes and bags and dresser. I have space!!! The vacuum has worked some magic. It helped that I did the stairs as well. I plan to take the project off the loom and move the loom out to the garage. It needs a bigger table than I have in the house. The sewing machine is going off to be repaired, possibly on Monday.

My chore today is to finish wet-sanding the shelving unit that we bought a million years ago at IKEA. While cleaning out one closet, we found the hardware to assemble it. Yeah! The shelves will go in the kitchen and the not so useful Baker's rack will move up to the upstairs bathroom which needs a cupboard. It will look nice. The mahogany matches the floor tiles. I need to place wine bottles of bubblebath where the old wine bottles lived on the bakers rack. Towels on the table, little baskets of soaps and necessities on the top shelf, and toilet paper underneath. I'll have to do a before and after picture and post it. Dear Genevieve has really helped inspire us to remodel and organize our house.

Next step will be to find a new home for our antique buffet which John has been using as a dresser.

comments

Another dimension to Dye baths

2011-12-02T21:04:05Z

In the Middle Ages, dyers were located in the part of town next to the slaughterhouses and stockyards. After today's adventures in dyeing, I understand why. Even with the cooler temps, I've had some tomato vines soaking in water since the beginning of October. The water is green and the vines dead. I pitch the vines and cook the water about an hour. Then I strain the bath and run a test sample to see which mordant gives me the best result. I have stashed away four ounce balls of yarn, each mordanted in a different mordant. I take a 6 to 8 inch length of each. Alum gets one knot, iron gets two, copper gets three, and tin gets four. I tie all four strings together and throw them in the hot strained bath. I leave it sit a while. After all, I'm not tossing in my good yarn into that hot a bath. It is wool. I don't care if the samples felt.

Watched some TV, ate lunch, and then checked on it. Today's winner is copper sulfate. I measure out 15 % by weight based on the weight of the wool I want to dye. I toss in some cream of tartar for protection. And set it going again.

Okay, so when I strained the bath, I poured too fast and spilled some on my shoe. It stinks. Like a barnyard or the Bog of Eternal Stench. While I'm eating lunch, I notice the smell did not leave me. My sock is wet. Oh dear! The yarn has cooked for an hour and I need to run to the post office to mail my show applications. The entire back porch reeks. I turn off the flame and leave in a hurry. After I dump the cooled dyebath, then I will change my clothes. Meanwhile, you can call me "Hoggle".

comments

Extra time

2011-11-27T16:47:02Z

It's been so nice so far this month. Because of my crazy show schedule, I'm always behind on yardwork. Like a whole year's worth. I feel like I've been given a gift, a very precious gift, time. With the weather in the 50's, and 60's, it's been perfect for working outside. We have a lot of trees for such a small space. There are 2 mulberries, a walnut tree, elm, and two maples. Plus the neighbor's buckeye tree overhanging our backyard. So I raked, mowed, trimmed brushes, and landscaped. Today we have a storm coming in, which to me means "free" water. And what needs water? Freshly planted plants. Yesterday I cleared the run-away section behind the garage. I cleaned out the gutters, and dug up a hundred baby pokeweed and rose-of-sharon bushes growing where they don't belong. I dug up extra forsythia shoots in the foundation, as well as a maple tree, walnut, and buckeye. I like my foundation in tact. It helps hold the roof up. Then I planted tulips bulbs, crocuses, columbine, and found a home for an extra lamb's ear.

Year's ago we had the walnut tree cut back and there was all this wood, which was stacked along the back. For years, a woodchuck made his home underneath. We left him alone. Now that he's gone, I am slowly reclaiming the overgrown area back there. The log bark decayed to give some lovely soil. And today I restacked the woodpile nearer to the house so I can use it in the winter. Some of the logs needed to be cut in order to fit in the fireplace. Since I don't have an axe or a chainsaw, I got out ye old-fashioned wood saw and started to cut. It doesn't look half bad.

comments

Squirrels have more fun

2011-11-15T15:10:48Z

It's been two very busy weeks. We had a big show in Baltimore and had to make as much product as possible. It was a good show so now time to make replacement products. There are custom orders to work on, a pile of unfinished objects (UFOs) laying around the house, and oh the yard work!

I really feel like I haven't done anything. There is so much work that it feels like I'm not making a dent. In addition to yard work while the weather still holds, the interior of the house needs to be re-arranged. John will be coming home in January and there must be room for him here. Currently, every room is a studio with several works in progress in them.

So to make myself feel a little better, I'll take pictures of the hats in progress. The cleaning of the attic is ongoing. Boxed a whole bunch of early 1990s clothes for the Vets to pick up and resell. Maybe someone out there wants a pink/purple unisex outfit and leggings. Let's just say there is a reason it looked brand new and stayed in the closet all these years. I started cleaning out all my engineering publications, mostly catalogs. Those'll recycle. We took dead fluorescents to IKEA yesterday. It was a bummer that IKEA doesn't take batteries anymore. Now we have to find a Batteries Plus store to drop those off. An ancient TV and an old nonfunctional stereo will go to Goodwill for dismantle. They're keeping old unsafe electronics out of the landfill. Don't need anymore lead in our water.

My friend Beth is down sizing too. She has a dresser for John that should be coming over here today. John had been using an antique buffet for a dresser. Not sure were to put that buffet. It's big. It belonged to a fellow name Bubba who gave it to us on one condition, that he would never have to move it again. Might have to hire someone to move it down stairs. Or start working out.

Meanwhile, the house is still an absolute mess, inside and out. The wind dropped the rest of the leaves where I just finished raking. Bushes need to be trimmed. The gutters need to be cleaned and the tree trimming guys still haven't shown up. I've got a heavy branch trying to pull down my electric line in the driveway. I killed the power but I'd rather not have to hire someone to patch the house and fix the electric, especially with the wind howling like it is. Apparently they thought I was still reviewing their quote. Good thing I called.

Well, I hadn't planned on making this my to-do list but maybe it'll help me figure out where to start today. Still wet and windy, very grey.. Good day for taking pictures for etsy.

comments

Upon the nature of things

2011-10-28T14:44:48Z

I recently went back home to help convince my aging mother to see a doctor.

Appearances can be deceiving.

The town looked bustling, new development, etc. Everything was a chain. The were no more specialty shops, ethnic markets, etc. In other words, it lost all of the charm and uniqueness.

I think it started in the eighties. Before the steel mills fell, the farm implements went down. There were middle class, labor unions, and good jobs at places like Massey Ferguson, Jacobsons, In-sinkerator, International Harvester, Walker Mfgrg, etc. Then the thought of globalization came on and "poof" the jobs were gone. People became very thrifty. When I sold my wares back home I often heard "Well, (humph) I can make that." Sales went down. Way down. So I didn't go back. Apparently a lot of other people packed out too. No more specialty stores, artists, and roving vendors.

Ye reap what ye sew.

The agriculture affects the price of food. The price and availability of decent food affects health. Now we're back to why Mom needs to see a doctor. In the breadbasket of the USA, the choice of affordable nutritious food in the supermarket is disgusting. I don't live in California or anywhere where there is bounty and diversity of food. Quite the opposite. In fact, I save every vegetable skin, teabag, and eggshell because I have no topsoil. I grow what I can. I favor quality foods over quantity. I am a member of a food co-op. I shop at European markets, farmers markets, and specialty stores. Because if you don't, they will go away. Sure I live on a fixed budget. I just make well thought out choices on what to buy and make this week. And you know what? I don't throw food away anymore like I used to.

So guess what? Mom's sodium is too high; her calcium is too high; her cholesterol is too high; her blood pressure is too high. I watched her eat a mayonaise and cheese sandwich on effectively "wonder"bread for lunch. It was disgusting. I headed to the store to see what could be done. OMG.

There were stores that used to have reasonably priced food and of good quality. No more. Plan on paying even more than I do on the east coast. We used to grow most of our own vegetables when I was a kid. We had green and yellow beans, Bibb lettuce, peas, tomatoes, fresh rhubarb, asparagus, black raspberries, etc. My mother froze and canned and made jelly. There wasn't a vegetable in her house. Wow! What a rude awakening. I need to think on this to see what may be done. Their lifestyle is vastly different than mine. My sister is already way over burdened with two jobs, an autistic child, a senile mother and no like for vegetables. That needs to change. I think having a freezer would help. She needs ready-made nutritious food. Unfortunately ready-made is high in preservatives and sodium. What to do?

Side note: When talking with people about this problem, the response was also astonishing. People really feel they have no control over this problem. They don't look for CSA's or anything like that (Community Supported Agriculture). They think the reason I have so many choices for food is because there are Amish people where I live. Which isn't really true. There are no Amish at my farmer's market, not to say they wouldn't be welcomed, but that isn't the reason for the choices in food. It's really competitive here. There are CSA's, two fairly good farmers markets, a large selection of organics in most big grocery stores, a Whole Foods, a food co-op, even out in the boonies where I live- a health food store called Sunny Bridges. It starts with people caring about what goes into their mouths.

comments

The Yard

2011-10-19T02:57:04Z

Before the weather turns, the much neglected yard needs some work. To that end, I went out to see what was what. And of course, my mind turned immediately to dyebath possibilities. There are tomato vines which could give me tans to yellows. There is an abundance of lemon balm. There is also bramble which needs to be trimmed, grayish black. Rose of Sharon has spawned but I would not use it as a dyestuff. The walnut tree needs to be cut back. I like the color the hulls give but walnut bark needs to soak too long. There are abundant elm twigs as well. But there might still be enough dandelions about to get a decent green or yellow. I have tomato vines soaking. I started with lemon balm.

All that remained of my mordants is copper sulfate. So maybe I'll get a green.

comments

My Little Pony

2011-10-10T17:05:26Z

Okay. I didn't grow up during the time this series was popular. It was my daughter's generation. However, I sat through countless episodes on My Little Pony and She-ra and Rainbow Bright. It defined a generation. So I'm trying to process a backlog/stash of fleece. And of course, some of the burgundies were already spun off. And more little leftovers of other projects joined it. Last year it looked like this:

Well, now it looks a little more like this:

I'd picked up some wonderful mulberry silk top on etsy from the Yarn Place. Somewhere down the lone a bit of it got dyed pink. It really makes a statement.

After A Fair in the Park at Mellon Park, I decided I didn't have anything this year for my "purple" ladies. You know who you are. Purple is a color you can't live without. So far, I've spun over 100 grams. I am starting today on another ball. If you're not a purple or pink person, it's okay. I just spent a week with a lady who hates the color pink. It personally offends her at a basic level. I have other friends who hate blue. I am an artist and am not limiting myself to just some of the colors of the rainbow. I'll get around to your favorite color eventually.

comments

Sage Dyeing

2011-09-16T22:18:23Z

The sage turned out nice and yellow. I bloomed it with tin which didn't really do much. Since I have two skeins, I may try overdyeing one of them. I picked up some instant indigo back in June. Meanwhile, I trimmed the winter savory back and have it on the soak for another dyebath. I mordanted a skein with rhubarb to be dyed with madder later. Madder I can get in the winter: rhubarb not so likely. The pokeweed needs to be picked too. So much yardwork!

The rags turned out nice too. I wanted brown but didn't have enough. As it is, I had to combine Evergreen with a Dark Green to get this much saturation of color. The hardest part was figuring out how to hang the rags to dry.

comments