Chimney Smoke

 

 

There's a whiff of it in the air, and it's not a forest fire!  The sugar maples are about to turn that crazy orange they do.  Our first load of picture-book firewood arrived today.  Call it scarf weaving weather,  and I've started adding a little alpaca-silk blend yarn to the mix, for coziness. I'm still in the lost-in-the-woods mode, in soft smoky colors and Rosepath,  and I like it like that.

Deer Season, Deja Vu

Deer season ahead.  The deer are running now, sometimes in front of your car headlights.  Driving at dusk is a fraught experience, 45 mph seems too fast.  Not much has changed in my neighbor Falk's yard since last year, except he's not there.  His old blue truck is parked behind the sheds.

I wove 3 more pillows of rag, linen, and Rosepath,  and will weave some more.  I'm waiting for new yarn to arrive, silk and alpaca cones in choice colors, only 2 back-ordered! My plan is to make wristwarmers and scarves with similar designs to these pillows.  I'm also planning for Sno-Crush, first all textile show, here, Nov 20 - Dec 31.

uphill

The wild clematis is a little garland of puffs along the hill road. The woods on the side hill of the valley is not so leafy now, but the Witch Hazel is in bloom with its small yellow starry flowers.
I wish my weaving could merge into the rough fissured bark of the century (at least) white pine. I don't try to copy what I see. It's usually after I've woven something, that I see what I have been looking at.

Late Bus

Dusk happens suddenly these days. I walk up the hill after the late school bus comes through Avalanche. The woods is settling down, a few birds call, a cardinal chip-chip-chips. Two deer run across the road in front of me, their white tails flagging. There is a bow hunter in the woods.

My bench cushions are woven and shipped now.  Still some pillows to make and  sew together tomorrow.  But now, there are a few of my Hen-of-the-Woods mushrooms leftover, and some red wine, suppertime.

Hen of the Woods

All weaving came to a standstill.  My husband brought home many bags of clusters of Hen of the Woods, or, Maitakes, that he collected  in the woods.  The mushroom clusters grow at the base of oak trees in the fall. (Similar mushrooms growing on different tree species should be avoided).  They  are very flavorful, and taste like tender meat on chicken wings. They have a firm texture, a little chewy.

They pull apart easily before they are cooked.  I've been sauteeing them , or roasting with olive oil,  garlic and rosemary, salt and pepper.

Often the mushrooms are huge, and may weigh up to 40 pounds.  Enough to last the whole winter, until the morels come up in the spring.  They freeze well, so I've been putting them away, and sampling, sampling, sampling.

Rags and Mushrooms

 Look what popped up under the spruce tree this week.  Could I eat them?  Or, dye with them?  Probably both, eat and die.

I'm weaving my favorites again,  a little bit of rag, a little bit of linen,  leaving the edges raw. They are  a set of cushion covers I'm designing for modern concrete benches.   Good textures to combine, smooth polished concrete, with rags and linen.

Abundance Is A Bandage!

Felt button making today was a little like baking cookies. Sofie helped. These were dyed in a simmering bath of dye and vinegar and salt, decorated with french knot dots out of perle cotton. Stitched to a safety pin back.

++++++++++++++++

Internet auto-translation can be such a rich experience. Any writer can become two, or even three, times better than she ever imagined through this simple application. In my last post about creativity and inspiration, I tried to say that self-censorship is my biggest problem to overcome, and felt I had expressed that idea as well as I could. That is, until I came across an internet site that substitutes any writer's words with synonyms, starting with letters from the beginning of the alphabet. I've no idea why the site exists, but there it was, and this is what I found.

In my version I wrote: "I wonder, Why do I stop myself? I'm actually not doing anything alarming, or earth shakingly over-the-edge. It's only a scarf, and mine is a scarf with crooked edges, and bright moments."

Observe the transformation magic of robot internet synonymization:

... I wonder, Why do I stop myself? I'm absolutely not accomplishing annihilation alarming, or apple shakingly over-the-edge. It's alone a scarf, and abundance is a bandage with agee edges, and ablaze moments.

See how much better?

In Tina Fey's words, rephrasing the lyric "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose", "A synonym's just another word for the word you want to use...."

Looming Lempi

Deep Diving scarf, plain weave & Rosepath, linen, cotton, silk mixed wefts on Swedish cotton warp.

Creativity, inspiration, borrowing, copying. Where do the ideas come from? For me, they spring from many sources. Some that I'm aware of, and others that I'm not. I'm someone who believes she knows her own mind, but come to find out, I'm too close to the forest to see the trees.

I'm old enough to know there's nothing new under the sun, everything we can do has been done by someone before us. But not quite the way we will make it. That's the way imagination works. It spills, and moves from person to person. Ideas are meant to travel. I've met artists, weavers, who try never to look at anyone else's work, so they'll be sure never to be guilty of being influenced. It might be their method to work that way, but what kind of artist stops looking at anything? I try to see everything, everywhere, all the time. The effect can only be beneficial, and, frankly, I need all the help I can get.

My ideas come through my window, from other artists and painters, from pictures on Flickr and artist's blogs, and some, spookily, seem to come over my shoulder while I'm weaving at the loom. I think it may be a Finnish grandmother suggesting, "Yes, now pick up the unbleached linen...." The biggest enemy to my creativity is self censorship. When I see how far and wide other artists go, I wonder, Why do I stop myself? I'm actually not doing anything alarming, or earth shakingly over-the-edge. It's only a scarf, and mine is a scarf with crooked edges, and bright moments.

Congratulations, Sofia Arnold!

No More Detour

County Highway Y reopened yesterday. No more driving by this lawn target deer to get to Avalanche. I think there is a door in his side like a pinata, where toys and goodies spill out when
the bullet hits the mark.

Looking Around

Today I finally finished sewing the Half-Woolly bag (half of a full Woolly Bully bag) woven in rosepath with wool rag-rya. Then I took my last cotton and linen scarf, with rosepath designs, and hung them in Mrs. Mamakitty's doorway for a picture. She paid no attention.

She needed a new bed of fresh pine needles, since the nights are cooling off, and the big pine tree is dropping its needles just now. After lunch she tried it out, and found it very suitable for an afternoon nap. This morning Sofia woke up with an extraordinary ringlet curl in her hair.

I then tried to call the congressional offices to register my opinion again that, as a self employed person, without health insurance, I support a strong Public Option for All in Health Care Reform. (My call got through, tomorrow I'm going to send postcards).