something old, something new & some other things

 

Here is a little rag bench rug from the sauna, that I packed with a kitchen fork when I wove it years and years ago, that's still a favorite of mine.  Today I started a fresh scarf on the 22" Norwood loom.  Amy Arnold's summer kids look cute hanging out in the store.  When I cross the creek I stop to dip up water in that red plastic bucket  to pour on the nasturtiums in the flower pots and the gingko tree.  

Today an Amish man with a long gray beard walked in to the store and said he'd been looking around the neighborhood for some hay they could cut, since it's been so droughty. Could they cut in our field?

We haven't cut hay off that old field in years and years, I said. 

It is what it is, he said. 

It kills me when an old white bearded Amish guy says something like, It is what it is.

Foot bridge

   

The new little foot bridge is painted with fresh red and white stripes.  The last  flood washed away the 2-plank bridge.  This one should be easier to see on a foggy night, if I go back to work after supper.

I cross the creek many times each day, and hoped the stripes would give me a little energy each time I crossed. The bridge has a little bounce.  Possibly the stripes will cause a transformation to occur each time I leave my (humble) kitchen and cross to the workshop:  housewife to artist. 

 I'm attracted to bridges. I was married on an old bridge.  (It was dismantled a year later--the bridge, not the marriage).  Some bridges scare me. (The  steep, narrow bridge over the Mississippi at Lansing, Iowa). I miss them when they're gone.  (The old 8-span green bridge across the Wisconsin River at Spring Green was replaced this year.  I'll never be resigned to the modern highway bridge). When standing on a bridge I like to look upstream, to see what the water is bringing down.  A warp coming off the back beam of the loom is like a stream flowing toward me, the future, possibility. The fell is the present, the bridge, where I stand.  Downstream, the water under the bridge, is the woven fabric  winding on to the front beam,  the story of what happened.

The milk weed pods are still pale green outside, but I found these from last year on my shelf.
Cotton wood, poplar, and maple leaves have been falling into the creek behind the store, and there is a pyramidal rock at the edge that I never saw before today. When I scoop pitchers of water for the flower pots on the porch, I smell mint. The path is a mint path. My weaving can't
begin to compare to the least thing I see on the path outside my back door. But, I did finish a new wool rug. It's a good rug, and feels good on bare feet.