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It wouldn't be unreasonable to say that trees connect earth and sky...
I found the green fabric (it's hand dyed that I purchased several years ago) while I was hunting around for something else this week and couldn't resist weaving it together with some blue that I had out sitting on the table. The brown with spots is fabric I dyed with eucalyptus. If I remember rightly the spots appeared when I wrapped the fabric around a piece of copper pipe.
The last couple evenings I have curled up on the porch swing to read, to knit, to stitch, to dream...
To start new again.
I frogged the cowl for a second time. After I had it unraveled, I knit up little squares (4 so far) and felted them a bit. I may stitch them together. Along the lower edge there is just a trace of the silk gauze that was spun into the roving. Much better.
Shush...don't tell the neighbors...I was making wishes. Also planting beans and weeding the potatoes. And a bit of weaving. Don't think I'm done yet. It's mostly silk gauze and a bit of raw silk that I dyed with eucalyptus amongst the hemp.
1. The handspun cowl. I had to tear it out and start over because it was too big. Tinting white wool with silk gauze and brighter colors of wool. 2. The next bus project. Scarf made with locally spun and dyed yarn. I've had this in my stash for years and decided it was time to make something with it. 3. I was knitting a washcloth with hemp and thinking about what would have a loose enough weave to thread silk gauze through...not sure what I would make with this. I'm going to weave a variety of fabrics through this and see what I get.
From out behind the clouds...where next? Moons from Glennis (Shibori Girl). I'm debating something in the center. Making it up as I go...
How patient is Briar? Patient enough that I could put a cowl on her.... Well, she was sort of annoyed.
Up...
Close.
I'm trying an experiment with the washtubs that I use as planters. I want to plant a little bit of this, a little bit of that in each tub so that I have smaller crops that rotate more. The tub behind the daffodils is planted with lettuce, radishes, carrots and beets.
I bought several things for the dye garden yesterday: some black violas, a St. John's wort, mallow, and a goldenrod.
I'm reading Walking on Water by Derrick Jensen right now. It's primarily about our educational system (in the U.S. so far) and how it affects creativity. It's pretty engrossing... a lot that I want to quote.
I'm off to help at a garden sale today. I'm hoping to find a few plants to add to my dye garden too. I have a new knitting project for the bus since I finished the pink socks and one of the cowls. And I get to pick up my new camera...hooray!
Playing with Photoshop Elements again. Finding the next step in this project...started in an easterly direction and now looking up...
This weekend I used up seventeen eggs making quiche (broccoli), ice cream, carrot muffins, homemade pasta, lasagne (with the pasta and the cheese was homemade ricotta), and blueberry biscotti (used blueberries I dried last summer). About half the food went into the freezer to eat at a later date.
I learned that it is possible to make powdered sugar at home (found via Not Dabbling in Normal, also directions for making brown sugar-which works very well).
Also trying very hard to make it until next month when there will be fresh local strawberries. Thank goodness for frozen:
One of the nice things about a milkshake is that if the ice cream is a bit grainy, it doesn't matter.
The nice thing about knitting in a round is that even when you are going in circles you still are going somewhere. I have one more row and the green striped cowl will be done. My direction for May is "up."
About the photo: This is a layered image created with Photoshop Elements. I layered a scan of knitting needles covered with silk gauze with a scan of hand made paper with seeds in it (the same one I've been using for the background of my last several posts) and then took a clip of the photo I posted when the cowl was in progress and stretched it out and layered it on top. Each layer has it's opacity adjusted so there is a sheerness to each layer. Rather like a layer of gauze on top of another layer of fabric.
I think a week without a camera is going to challenge my creativity down some different paths.
My parents and I attended our local "Procession of the Species" parade yesterday. Lots of creativity to be found! This parade is in honor of Earth Day and the Endangered Species Act. Unfortunately, right before the parade my camera became a member of an endangered species when I dropped it into a mud puddle. It worked just long enough to get a few pictures of the parade and for me to download them this morning. It will probably be about a week before I can get a new camera. I feel sort of incomplete....