bee creative

random moments

1. This is Lightning. He lives at the childcare where I work. On Friday one of my co-workers gave him a hair cut.  I combed some of the fur into some sheep's wool and then showed the preschoolers how it could be spun into yarn with my drop spindle. And then how that could be knit into fabric. 

2. Multiple photos and projects, layered. It's been windy and it's raining cherry blossoms.

3.  Salad made of fried potatoes, radishes, lettuce, walnuts, avocado, bread, cheese. Tonight's version was asparagus, toasted bread, cheese, lettuce, spring onions (cooked), lettuce. 

4.  Yesterday I was looking at some wooden spoons and pottery at the farmer's market. The vendor greeted me and then asked me a question I thought was a bit odd for starting a conversation...had I ever tried making pottery? (The answer is yes but not much.)

 

 

in the garden

Eating from the garden:

Sprouting broccoli, rhubarb, and one spear of asparagus.  I made stir fry with the broccoli and the asparagus.

Playing in the garden:
I'm going to plant it full of nasturtiums.

And color from the garden:

Wool dyed with golden hops, bronze fennel, rose petal leaves, blackberry leaves and a few dandelion leaves.  I bundled and boiled in the water I had used to make a bundle with onion skins.

Not really looking for leaf patterns, just color.

journaling, part two

I am still working on my field note blanket, not however, as a daily project. Two years are documented this way, the rest is more a documentation of a moment, an observation.  The blanket will be done when it is done.  It is a kind of journal.  A journal in that I have recorded an observation about a day, a moment, an experience.

I've gathered more thoughts about journal keeping, in particular a response to Grace who wondered about the difference between a journal and a field note:

• A journal or diary might document anything. A thought, an experience, an emotion, a reaction.  It may start from any experience.
• A field note starts with place specifically, with documentation of the environment.  Field notes haven't remained objective for me as a journal with a strictly scientific perspective would have because my emotions and responses are reflected. In this way they have become a field note about human emotion too.
• A field note is a type of journal entry.
• The perspective that humanity is separate from the environment and the environment is a resource for us to use doesn't feel true to me. I am part of the field note. I am part of the moment.
• There are so many ways to journal. We can write, record, photograph, stitch, draw.  A journal need not be paper, it's the act of recording and documenting in a continuous manner. A record of time passing.
• Journal keeping may fit some people's learning styles better than others. For myself, I need to gather thoughts and ideas and express them somehow as part of the process of integrating knowledge. In this way it is a tool.  There is research about this but I'm not looking for it right now.
• I have rarely looked back on my journals and yet when I do I am struck by how consistent I am in my thinking. There is something worth considering here.
• When I do look back at journal entries, it is usually to revisit important moments in my life that I have documented...my trip to Italy for example. Still thinking about why we keep the things we do.
• When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams.  Her mother's journals were blank, unwritten in...  Thinking about the subtitle, "Fifty-four Variations on Voice."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

journaling, part one

Journal page plus photo layered together to begin. And then more layers, a filter or two.

+

=

A long row of these primroses grew at one of the houses where my grandparents lived for awhile. I was a teenager about that time. I bought this at a garden sale a couple weeks ago thinking about that.

A few random thoughts, some perhaps more true than others?

• Journaling can be about remembering. I have kept a journal for a long time (since I was 10); in various forms.  This blog is one of my journals.  An interactive one, similar to ones I kept for classes in college that would be read and commented on.
• Any form of making, including the garden, becomes a place to hold memory. A way to journal.
• I've read that sometimes the childhood memories we hold on to are the moments of our lives that center around a lot of emotion. Other childhood memories that we have as adults are ones where a story is built by the child.
• A journal is a way to tell our story. 
• It's not the keeping of that is so important, but rather the act of documenting, of creating. I rarely look back at past journals. Haven't even kept them all and am now in the process of sorting and altering some of them.  I'm even thinking of tearing some up to make paper with.
• Journaling is mostly about the organizing of thoughts.

a bumble bee report + other things

One of last week's collages.

I am still catching bumble bees in the house.  It's happened 6 or 7 times now.  Never more than one a day, not always every day. 

Last night the bumble bee shot up from the floor along side my bed, hit the lamp and then disappeared down under the bed.  I turned off all the lights and opened the door.  There was a bit of buzzing (they are very loud really) from under the bed.  I finally found it on the floor in front of the open door.  It walked towards the door a few inches and then flew off into the garden, completely resembling a plane taking off from a run way...

Meals for the week are all the same as last week + rhubarb from the garden. 

I've been sorting fabric. 

Had to laugh when I realized that the assembled pile matched one of my favorite coffee cups. It says something about faithfulness to me.

food for the week #5

I had to do a double-take. Lemons? At the farmer's market where everything is local; either grown or processed? Yes.

Meyer lemons can take cooler temperatures.  My mother has had one for years.  She usually gets a few every year. They are worth growing just for the fragrance of the blossoms. 

Dinner tonight:  kale raab with a squeeze of lemon, bacon, bread and radish.  100% from the farmer's market. 

Other meals/food for the week:

• Potato soup with broccoli, made with the last of the cream so I could rinse the bottle.
• Beans
• Avocados, from California.  They will never be local here so good enough. Hooray!
• Radishes
• Spinach
• Olive tapenade made with re-hydrated red peppers, olives and walnuts.