bee creative

some weekends...

It wasn't that I got distracted this weekend... although yesterday I picked up a copy of Digital Expressions by Susan Tuttle from the library and did spend some extra time on the computer today.  

I didn't even spend the weekend napping or being lazy...

(This blanket was perfectly flat until Lola decided to arrange it to her liking.)  

I just didn't do most of what I planned to do. 

Rather I seemed to spend a lot of time day dreaming and shuffling fabrics back and forth and thinking about whether to cover (the middle of this did not turn out the way I wanted), or to cut.  To use this pattern or that pattern. 

And I did discover that the secret to making good (what I think is good anyway) nut butter is to roast the nuts and not be stingy with adding oil. 

And I did find this really good interview with Bobby McFerrin (he talks about improvisation) which I think applies to all types of creativity.  He talks about the need to just keep going.

I did that. 

 

 

 

blue sky socks

The latest pair of socks I've made...mostly while riding the bus. 

They make me think of the song "I Can See Clearly Now."  One of my favorite versions is by  Holly Cole, but I really like this one by Bobby McFerrin that I just found too. 

The next socks will be bright:

I think Kaite and I have the same yarn...

recycle day: table cloths

This weekend the weather was nice enough that it was time to set up my shelter for the porch swing.  This is an old lace table cloth.  I tie two ends to the porch swing, one corner to my wall of windows and the other to one of the wires that supports my grape vine. 

Part of the view at the moment:

Another project I am working on with a re-claimed table cloth:

A bucket style bag.  This one had been dipped into an indigo vat twice when this picture was taken.  Tonight I dipped it again to create more blue patterns farther up the bag. 

 

starfish

At first I thought he was a fish, but he wants to be able to run.  And I thought, where would a beast be able to swim and run?  Maybe among the stars? 

A month or so ago I received a package in the mail from Jude.  One of the items was a fragment of a beast.  To me it was an invitation, an opportunity to see where inspiration might start or stop and where it might become a conversation.  I'm not sure what stage this is at.  There is still a bit more work to do around the tail and the eye and to stitch the sky down (I have some thread I'm dyeing with indigo today).  This is so much about evolving to me.  

Thank you Jude...

 

moon and clouds

From my indigo fermentation vat!  It took me three weeks to get this vat working, but it does dye fabric.  HOoray!

I don't have the necessary tools to make a really clean circle, but I love the shadows that were created by what I was able to do...

Also, just finished reading When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams.  It's a wonderful, wonderful book that I know I will reread more than once.  I'm not going to share my favorite quote as the idea is more wonderful if it is discovered after reading all that comes before it...

come for tea?

You could have a bite of yogurt cake with rhubarb sauce:

It's the first stem of rhubarb this year (from the garden) plus a few frozen strawberries to make it red. 

We could tour the garden.  I had to try another batch of lettuce in egg shells as the first batch didn't work so well...

I'll show you my sky scarf:

It's getting quite long.  It seems quite different to me to look at it as a whole rather than close up:

Every little section has something I love.  The colors here are so soft they might not show up on all monitors quite right...and the yarn I spun on Friday night is here somewhere.

And I'd share the thing that has excited me the most this weekend...  The indigo yeast vat that I started last summer and thought wasn't working very well, sat outside all winter.  While I was cleaning the garden last weekend I decided it was probably time to dump it somewhere.  But when I looked closely I realized it was an interesting shade of green and I thought "Hmm, maybe I should bring this inside and warm it up a bit?"  So I did and amazingly enough...it works! 

The yellow is velvet dyed with onion skin.  I love these colors together. 

friday night...

it's quiet in the neighborhood. 

I took my spinning/knitting projects out to the front porch.  A cool evening, but too nice to be inside. 

Deliberately, I am letting the end of the roving catch in the already spun yarn. 

The roving I am using for a shawl has patches of color that matches the fungi growing on the stairs.

And also the snail that is crawling by my foot. 

He's probably heading for the primroses.

green shawl + recycle day: garden labels

Mostly I buy my dairy products in glass bottles, but once in awhile some plastic will come home.  Last week I decided to cut a container into square tags and then write the names of the tomatoes being grown on the plastic with a sharpie.  I'll either use a hole punch or a hammer and a nail to poke holes in the tags and then hang the tags on the appropriate stakes when they move outside. 

And then a close up of the shawl I'm now working on:

I've decided to use some other colors for stripes but the green blend will be the "primary" color.

 

like a bumble bee...

Oh spring surely did arrive this weekend...

The plum blossoms were the first to open.  I hope it sets fruit this year.  Lots of bumble bees around this weekend so maybe...

Yesterday was the first Farmer's market of the year... I bought cheese, bread, radishes, broccoli, carrots, Brussels sprouts and potatoes.  This year there seems to be more spring veggies, not just things stored through the winter like the potatoes.  There were quite a few greens too. 

Half of the radish leaves went to the chickens and half was used to make pesto for my lunch. 

With such beautiful weather, this weekend really was spent mostly in the garden.

But I did do a bit of spinning and knitting.  I think I've solved one of my problems with my sky scarf.  I've continued to have problems working on it every day and have been mostly just noting the weather and then catching up on the weekend.  This week I'm going to try something new.  I've got a second project I'm going to work on as well. 

While I was cleaning out baskets I found a shawl I had started and then put down at some point (probably to start the sky scarf).  I've decided that after I finish spinning and knitting my daily row for the scarf, I'll continue spinning and knitting on the shawl until I've satisfied my need to spin/knit in the evening.  I think this will make the spinning/knitting more of a commitment for the day. 

spring cleaning

I want to know why the weather is given as 40% chance of rain instead of 60% chance of sun?  Mostly we got the sun.  And oh it made me happy...

Most of my spring cleaning happened in the garden today(had the day off from work)! Weeding and digging and pruning.  I harvested a handful of lettuce that reseeded last fall and is just now starting to grow.  I was experimenting to see if I could save lettuce seed.  I'm not actually sure where that lettuce seed is at the moment, but what reseeded in the garden did beautifully. 

I also did some spring cleaning in the pantry.  I pretty much made this up but it is loosely based on the rhubarb chutney recipe in Small Batch Preserving by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard.  It has dried cherries, dried prunes, dried apricots, apple cider vinegar, red onion, rhubarb (from the freezer, my plant is almost ready to start harvesting from) and a bit of sugar. 

Also did some closet organizing whenever the clouds sailed over and covered up the sun.  This once was the leg on a pair of pants.  Now it's the latest thing from the indigo vat...and yes there is a spot of dirt on the fabric.