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Soon the tomatoes and peppers will be gone...a few more to savour until next year.
I'm starting to work on another bag. This one is being built from small projects I've been saving. The buttonwood tree is something I put together last summer. The bright blue circle is the outside bottom layer.
A close up of one side:
Oh yeah, vacation's over.... Busy trying to finish my sweater and stitching on the woven blanket. Also remembering the frustration of shorter days and not being able to take pictures when there is natural light.
Done enough to use. There is still a bit more stitching to do on the other end, but it can wait-it's getting cold! I started this in Feb 2009, it's mostly hand stitched, and it has been quite a learning process for me. I think more than anything, it's given me confidence in my hand stitching. It lost a bit of it's checkerboard along the way, but I'm okay with that.
For the back I used a piece of silk my mother gave me. It's dyed with eucalyptus. I folded it over to front and stiched the edges to create the binding.
On to the next blanket:
One thing I learned from the first large square, it's much easier to stich smaller squares....
Finished up a bag with one of the old tablecloths I've been saving for just this purpose. A great use for stained table clothes! I still haven't been able to find the pattern I originally had....
Different. The same. Just as beautiful....
One result of spending time where it is so quiet that sounds become distinct,
where it is so quiet that it is possible to hear the flap of a buzzard's wing when it flies by,
or where nature is so loud that the sounds of humanity are drowned out for the most part, is that the everyday sounds of normal life are all that much more noticeable as a constant. Pockets of quiet can be hard to come by.
I asked my uncle to cut me a few rounds of redwood for spindles. I'm still playing with the construction a bit, but this works.
I've been spinning a bit every night. Finding a bit of my own quiet space.
For the very first time ever I have winter squash that grew well enough that there was something to harvest. I think that would be due to the chicken compost. Hooray! Not much else though. A few carrots, some herbs, rhubarb. The last summer squash:
It got away from me. I decided to hollow it out, bake it and fill it with a rice concoction. The squash was stringy, but it looked nice. Tomatoes are from the farmer's market.
The cauliflower and peppers were also from the farmer's market. Still lots of good things to find there.
I made the bag as a gift for a friend. It's a bucket style bag. I couldn't find the pattern so I made it up using an old bag for some rough measurements. Worked just fine. I'm going to make more of these for presents this year, using some old vintage table cloths.
Maybe I'll make some with plant dyed material....
One of the things I missed while I was using up my travel miles was Blog action day. This year's topic was water and it's something I still want to make mention of. It is hard to imagine when you see something like the Columbia River, that we have a shortage of water on our planet...
But we do (a long list of reasons why are listed here).
Like most things on this level, I make the most sense of it when I bring it to a personal level. When I think about how much water I use and where it goes. It's easy to think about household water. How much goes in the garden? How much do I use to wash the dishes? How long of a shower do I take? Where did I get the water to dye fabric (Avocado pink!), rain water or tap?
It's harder to think of hidden water. What water is used to make the things I buy? What pollution is created? For those of us that live where water is plentiful most of the year, it's easy to forget to think of these things....
Fabric butterfly born of fabric from a small fabric shop that I visited in California. They carry some wonderful things, including fragments of indigo fabric and locally dyed ribbons.
For a long time my grandparents had a grocery store. The store was the bottom floor of the building, the second story was where the family lived. My mother says that even if the store was closed, if someone needed something they would come and knock on the door and one of the family would come down to help them. It's now a restaurant. We had lunch there last week.
While I was in California I was able to do a bit of shopping at another family store...my aunt and grandmother's surplus pots and pans. I was able to bring home some stainless steel pots and a few aluminum pots. I also brought home several bags of eucalyptus.
My first experiment was in a stainless steel pot with tap water and fresh leaves. I tried a bit of cotton, wool and silk. It's a pretty golden brown. A bit on the orange side. The raw silk dyed a bit darker than the rest.
The next experiment will be with some of the dried leaves. It will have to wait for the weekend since I want to simmer the dye bath with the windows open. This is potent stuff!