Frogs and Ravens

Fall Update

After an unseasonably warm week, the chilling winds are back.  The house resounds again with the whum-whirr of the forced-air heater starting up, and the cat huddles close at night.  I wonder if I may win my bet with D. after all, that we'd see snow before the end of November.

When the wind is not too strong, I go walking, camera in hand.  It intrigues me how I can shift from "nature" photography to "urban-street" photography in less than a fifteen-minute walk.  Sometimes they coincide, when I capture the shadows of trees playing across the graffiti at the base of the bridge that crosses the river.  Other times they seem like different worlds, one of crumbling brick and rusting dumpsters and peeling paint, one of white sycamore bark, creeping insects, and soaring egrets. 

I wonder, sometimes, if my writing and my photography are at odds, or whether they support and reinforce each other.  Certainly I am now taking far more pictures and writing very little; but I feel at the same time that all of those images are seeping into my brain, waiting for use.  It's also hard to persuade myself that walking around is productive work without the camera along for the ride - the idea of going on a writing hike is not instinctive in the way that going on a photography hike is.  Perhaps because laptops and even the Neo are not that portable, and I think too fast for all but the most scrawling of outlines in a notebook? 

Whatever it is, I am more in a visual mode these days, down to the point of feeling somewhat naked if I go for a walk without the camera hanging off my shoulder or held in my hand.  I'm also rediscovering an urge to paint and sketch that had been dormant for a while.  Some of this is the permission having an Etsy shop gives me; but I think it's also been long enough that such activity feels exciting instead of dutiful.  I've been haunting the Hobby Lobby and the local bead shop, hooking up with the local fiber community, and skulking around JoAnn's and Office Max, looking over everything with a speculative eye.

In the simplest of sentences, then, this is what is going on:  I feel happy.  I feel happy in a way that I have not in a long, long time.

Now, if you'll excuse me, the light's just beginning to turn a wonderful shade of gold...

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National Alpaca Farm Days

This weekend is National Alpaca Farm Days (warning: site has sound and is animation-heavy) - so I took the opportunity to visit a couple of the local farms.  A chance to see cute babies, play with fiber, chat with people, and see the countryside - what's not to love?

The first farm, Small Southern Farm, was down a winding riverside road, and tucked away among the trees.  They had three crias, one born only the day before, toddling and gallivanting and nursing.  The mothers were grave and sweet; the pregnant ones quiet and prone (they all seemed to like lying on the ground with their necks extended).  The males were in a separate pen, standing close to each other, and were reluctantly parted so I could pet one of them.

There were two women spinning, and a bunch of yarns and knitted items, and bags of unspun fleece.  I bought a bag of lovely black fleece, which belonged to Annie, the mother of the newest cria.

The second farm, Larger Northern Farm, was more remote in once sense.  It took some serious navigation through back-county roads that were barely two cars wide, were somewhat unpaved, and which tended to change names along their length.  (Thanks, Google maps and county road guide!)  However, once you reached the tiny village that the farm was in, it was right off the main road.

This farm had about three times as many alpacas, but only one baby so far.  They were a bit more aloof, clustering at the far end of their pasture, though there was some excitement when a couple of males started jousting over the females on the other side of their fence.  The real treat of visiting this farm was the people; there was a friendly man spinning alpaca fleece who could, I believe, talk the hind leg off a donkey if he put his mind to it.  The number of topics our conversation covered was impressive in its scope.  The owners of the farm were nice, too - a couple of Brits interested in sustainable agriculture and supporting local farmers and businesses. 

I left this farm with an armful of brown fleece from Foxglove and information about a local Amish store and an upcoming Dye Day.  I also took advantage of the lack of traffic to pause repeatedly by the side of the road to capture the late-afternoon light on the land.  It is the beginning of harvest season, and the dying leaves of the soybeans glow yellow in the long rays of the setting sun.

Alpaca Farm Days continue tomorrow - maybe there's a farm near you!

Quiet Season

Life these days is measured in small, subtle increments, and it doesn't seem to offer enough substance for writing. Only little drips and drops fall onto the page, instead of fluid outpourings.

The weather is quiet and overcast. The birds are few and repetitive. The routine of our days is, well, routine, centered around the needs of the cat, our bellies, teaching, and the yearning for sleep and idle moments of television.

I spent today thinking about my shoes. They are a pair of navy blue pumps from Aerosoles, with a low heel and a "kiltie" decoration across the toe. I admire the way they look on my feet, the loveliness of the blue, the contrast of the fringe and brass studs. My feet complain about their rigidity along the heel-line, and the pressure they exert on the sides of the toes (they are still new, this being their first real wearing). Walking to and from campus, I shed them in favor of my patent-fake-leather Birks; at home I shift into my house shoes, a well-loved pair of flip-flops with woven tatami soles. I live in dread of their wearing out; I have yet to find another pair with the same sort of sole.

One evening I found myself with ink-black fingers and lines of darkness under my nails, throwing ink-soaked paper towels repeatedly into the garbage. I was clever enough to put a plastic bag under the inkpot when I hunkered down to doodle in my sketchbook; I was not clever enough to anticipate that the cat, seeing me on the floor occupied with something other than her, would try to lie down on the inkpot. I am grateful that the cat did not get in the ink. I am regretful that our new rug is now marred by a spot that looks like an out-of-place shadow that never moves.

I have been cramming information about French and Spanish frontier activities into my head, fodder for this week's lectures. I am both glad that the lectures are so short, so I can do this in haste, and sorrowful that the class is too busy for a leisurely exploration of these stories. At least I am not teaching one of those thousand-years-in-15-weeks courses.

I tried cooking some black-eyed peas the other night. The pods were so lovely - long and green with purple stripes - and the peas themselves intriguing little nuggets of pale green with dark spots and a coating of green-white pith. I pan-cooked them in oil with a bit of butter and garlic, and some water to steam them. Alas, the theory was better than the practice; they remained chewy and challenging to eat.

I went to the ceramics studio last week, riding my bicycle there for the first time. The hills in town are much more daunting than they look from the car or on foot. I carved and smoothed the pinch pot and lumpy cat sculpture of last week, and began a small container out of slabs. I've given up going in there with any deliberate projects in mind; instead, I seem to be working my way through all of the skills that have grown rusty with disuse, recapitulating the process of being a new student.

When I have quiet moments, and when my hands are not tired from writing paper comments and lecture notes, I work on a moss-stitch cardigan. The yarn is a deep blue called "Blue Ink" and although the progress is slow, it is satisfying. One little bump at a time, the sweater grows.

I have little moments to write about, but I can't seem to make them add up into anything larger. It's like my life, as I think about it.

Whirling

I am plying last year's tencel.  I took 8 ounces of dyed fiber and turned it into about 1500 yards of thread.  Each yard represents one spin of the spindle, one drop and one winding - one "make".  I spun, dropped, and wound, over and over, until I had a spindle of thread.  This I wound on a niddy-noddy, bobbing and tiring my arm, to make a skein.  Then I repeated the process.

This weekend I took the two skeins and I ran them together through the ball winder, spiraling their long, color-changing lengths around an eccentricly rotating hub of Japanese plastic.  One skein resisted, turning into a multi-hued snarl that had to be rewound on a toilet paper tube, yard by tangled yard.

Now I am plying from this ball of parallel strands, twisting them around each other to make the resulting yarn lie calm and relaxed.  I spin, drop, and wind, over and over.  I am impatient for the camisole I will one day knit from the fruit of my labors, but each step is important.  I am plying, calm and relaxed, my breath rising and falling with the whirl of the spindle.

The Fiber Event

Earlier this month I made another trip to the Fleece Fair.  It was raining when I arrived, with snow (snow!) forecast.  It seems like this happened last year; Friday was warm, followed by a chilly, raw Saturday. 

In any case, there was one warm, sealed structure, two airy metal barns, and one open-sided wooden barn.  It was a good thing that people were selling warm, fuzzy merchandise; I can't imagine what it would be like if it were something like a sundress-and-straw-hat sort of event. 

An unexpectedly nice thing was that not only did I remember a number of booths from last year (most of them seemed to have returned, though not all in the same locations) but a couple of the vendors remembered me. 

There were the usual bags and balls and tubs full of roving, and tufts of fleece, and rolled up bundles of raw wool fresh off the sheep.  In all the barns were cages of angora bunnies, and one place was selling, in addition to bunnies, a tiny angora goat and a Persian kitten!  To all sides were balls and hanging skeins of yarn, wooly garments and artsy felted flowers, hats, animals and colorful lumps.  There were racks of needles, jumbles of niddy-noddies, bouquets of spindles, herds of spinning wheels, and ranks of rigid heddle and table looms.  There were a number of bars of scented soap, and a lot of knitting and sheep-themed tchotches.  One man was wandering around in a brilliant, chevron-design sweater he'd designed and knit himself, several Menonite women, many large women in dramatic wooly knits, a few people wearing shawls, and many wearing hats, gloves and scarves (see - the perfect marriage of weather and event).  In between the crowds of slower-moving adults darted children, who paused to pet rabbits, stare at spinners, and huddle around space heaters, clutching stuffed llamas and sheep, tugging on their parents' hands. 

I loaded myself up, though I tried to hold back from too much roving; most of the lot I bought last year is still sitting in my room mocking me.  I bought: a silk "hankie" dyed in a range of deep, rich browns; several ounces of tencel dyed in blues and greens; a skein of laceweight bouclé mohair in varigated blues and greens; a skein of brown and black alpaca yarn (both mohair and alpaca skeins intended for shawls); a copper fibula shawl pin; two Bosworth spindles, one large, one small; a "skein" of roving in blacks and greens; some knitting needles, both straights and circulars; and a skein of cream laceweight for D.  There's enough here to keep me busy for months.

Then I drove home in fluffy rain, er, fleecy rain... no, I have to admit it, snow.  The smaller birds were on the porch, the "fluffy rain" was accumulating on the daffodils, and I could hear it striking the leaves and the blades of grass - a peaceful, skittery sound.  It was still snow in April, however.

Fleece Fair 2006

Fleece Fair 2006

Fleece Fair photos are up!

(Click here to start at the beginning - this one is in the middle, though it's the best representative picture.)

In A Word

The Fleece Fair is...

AWESOME.

(More later. I'm still giddy from overexposure to fibery goodness - and it's a full day tomorrow!)

Fleece Fair

I think this would make a cool excuse for a weekend road trip, while D. is away at a conference. Time to check the oil in the car...

Garden Insanity

I've ordered seeds!

This is what I'm getting:

Dye Plants: Hopi Red Dye Amaranth, Indigo, Madder (also Maroon Coreopsis and Hopi Black Dye Sunflower).

Herbs: Lemon Basil, Thai Basil, Chocolate Peppermint, Black-Stemmed Spearmint, Peppermint.

Fruits and Vegetables: Snowy White Eggplant, Paint Dry Bush Bean, Cherokee Wax Bean, Mitla Black Tepary Bean, Satsuki Madori Cucumber, Bird's Nest Gourd, Rouge D'Hiver Buttercos Lettuce, Emerald Oak Looseleaf Lettuce, Red Deer Tongue Looseleaf Lettuce, Charentais Cantelope, Moon & Stars Watermelon, Oregon Giant Snow Pea, Sweet Cal Wonder Bell Pepper, Cocozelle Bush Zucchini, Butternut Squash, Stella Blue Squash, Red Currant Cherry Tomato, Red Calabash Slicing Tomato.

Grains: Four-O-Seven Quinoa.

Flowers: Maroon Coreopsis (also a dye plant), Scarlet Flax, Hopi Black Dye Sunflower (also a dye plant), Miriam Edible Sunflower, Sweet Peas, White Sweet Alyssum.

I know this looks like a HUGE lot of seeds. I figured I'd rather have them than not, and it was getting impossible to decide. I'm also probably only going to plant one or two plants of each kind, rather than several. (Only ONE (ONE!) zucchini!)

The seeds (and some plants) are coming from Seeds of Change and The Thyme Garden. (The Thyme Garden is a really cool place; they'll do organic catering and host weddings, too.)