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Today I made leggings and a skirt, cleaned the chicken coop, made apple pie and apple sauce, napped on the front porch couch, pulled a few weeds and knit just a bit. Another journal page.
The apple leaf/onion peel bundle. Not to dramatic. I'm going to put it in the indigo vat tomorrow.
Indigo on the left and cabbage on the right... Makes me wonder if it's really worth fussing with indigo for local color.
My models won't cooperate:
Today I finished the white cotton/silk scarf.
Started a journal page.
Learned how to replace a toilet.
(Can you tell which is indigo and which is the cabbage?)
And picked a handful of strawberries.
I'm out of yarn so it's done.
Now all I need is a pirate ship to come sailing by...
"He strains his eyes in the darkness, and the massed shadows before him loom hard and clear like the outline of a ship. A thing of grace and beauty, born in another time, a painted phantom ship. And now his heart begins to beat, and he strains at his paddles, and the little dinghy shoots swiftly over the dark water away from enchantment, for what he has seen is not of his world..." Frenchman's Creek by Daphne DuMaurier
It's still my favorite pirate movie.
I needed a new bus project today for the trip south that I took...
so I started a sleeve for a sweater. I have decided I wanted to make one more sweater with the pattern from Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting without Tears before I use that pattern for a sweater made with hand spun yarn. (The first sweater is here.) And yes, I made a swatch, you have to for this pattern.
I will be dyeing this with some kind of plant material. Maybe hazelnut leaves, maybe indigo.
And then there are the current dye projects:
On Wednesday I bundled hazelnut leaves around copper and then dropped it all in a hazelnut leaf dye bath so that the dye is seeping up the fabric.
On Thursday I wrapped a rose leaf in linen and dropped it into the rinse water for the last project I dyed in indigo.
Friday's bundle is a dogwood leaf that I'm keeping damp but not soaking.
Tomorrow I'll see what this makes:
I harvested some of the indigo my mother's been growing for me in her green house. This is what I have on my porch that my parents started for me and then I brought to my house. It is just a bit smaller than what my mother's grown so I'm guessing the heat and humidity is most important for the indigo as it's getting established. Once it's growing it doesn't seem to need the higher temperatures. What I germinated and what has only grown on my porch is about 3 inches tall and has about 4 or 5 small leaves per plant. Very different stage and results...
I have what I've harvested soaking in water and will see what I can do with it over the next couple days. I'm following some suggestions from Rita Buchanan's A Weaver's Garden.
Update on this coming soon I'm sure!
On Monday I bundled:
Fabric wrapped around rebar and then wrapped in cabbage.
Today I wrapped this:
Apple leaves layered between folds of the fabric and then placed in an onion peel dye bath that's been sitting outside for awhile.
My plan is to make a bundle each day this week and then unwrap one a day next week...
Last Saturday's basket. From the market: radishes, onions, strawberries, tomatoes, zucchini, cheese and broccoli.
Zucchini fritters. A good way to use up egg whites left over from making pudding.
Sour cherries from the garden and homemade vanilla pudding.
Crepes (I am so addicted to these right now) with potato, cheese, smoked salmon, and shallot. With a dab of home made creme fraiche. The potato, shallot and raspberries are from the garden.
Every year I question what I am growing and why? What is easiest for me to grow in my garden? What suits my micro climate and soil and doesn't take much extra work? This is important as I work full time and spend 2 hours a day on my commute (bus and walk). What is most important to grow? What is most cost effective? What should I buy from the farmer's market? What do I want to eat?
This morning I found a proverb at "HandEye" I liked: "While one silk thread is strong, many woven together are stronger." And then I thought about how diverse communities might be stronger...
And thought it might be nice to add some of my banana fiber yarn into the silk/cotton mix I'm knitting. It didn't really work well so I decided to add a tassel at the end.
And then I found this video (here at Ordinary Courage)
I particularly loved watching the children in this video. How could someone not smile?
I could see making another sky scarf, this time marking the sky at dusk, but one thing I've learned over the last almost eleven months is that I'm not so good at a daily practice like this. Since February, I mostly make a note of what the sky looks like each day and then on the weekend I spin the yarn and add it to the scarf.
A week's worth of yarn. A little over a month to go...
I'm thinking a lot about choices.
(This is a good thing.)
Why we choose to do the things we do?
My grandmother gave me this figure of "Three Wise Monkeys," a couple years ago. It was given to her during her childhood. I keep it beside my computer.
The first time that I opened up Billy Collins book, The Trouble with Poetry I pretty much opened right to a poem called "See no Evil"
"No one expected all three of them/to sit there on their tree stumps forever, their senses covered with their sinuous paws..."
This doesn't travel well and that makes it a porch project, so this...
is the current bus project.
Another scarf. I'm trying to use up a few things in the stash.
And then there are the library books...after the watering is done, the raspberries picked and a few weeds pulled. Many of these were recommendations from friends, one of the beautiful things about blogging.