Blog Entries – Page 2

Playing with Plants

I fell deep into a rabbit hole. It is a very cool thing, I feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland. Never fear, I’m not abandoning my weaving and garment making, but I’m beginning to develop a new additional love, one I hope can integrate into one I have expertise in (because I certainly don’t know what the heck I’m doing in this rabbit hole), but the journey so far would make Lewis Carroll happy!

First off, before I detail this past week’s adventures in plant land, after much sturm und drang, I am happy to finally announce that my daughter and I have completed the video documentary on my retrospective. My followers around the world get to experience the exhibit, a swan song to my long storied career. The link for the approx. 1 hour video is here.

In addition, I created another page in my Extras section of my website, that has all the garments and artworks shown in the exhibition with their full labels, details of technique and materials. You can look at that separately here, or follow the links in the show notes.

Meanwhile, I took a five day class at Peters Valley School of Craft, with one of my favorite teachers, Steven R. Carty. I took a class with him a couple of years ago in foraged basketry. This one was called Free-Form basketry, and used the materials at hand to provide inspiration for shape and size. I tried to keep things small, but they just wanted to be big and bold. We started with driftwood as the inspiration, and I made a very cool basket using flat reed and sea grass. It should have had more ribs according to my daughter, to be more stable, but that’s part of the learning process.

Next we made hoops of Oriental Bittersweet, located a short distance from Peters Valley (you can’t forage or harvest in federal lands, and Peters Valley is located in the Delaware National Recreation Area, overseen by the National Park Service). Anyway, I’ve been struggling to rip out all the Oriental Bittersweet in my yard, it is horrifically invasive, and even though it makes for great basketry materials, I’m still ripping it out. But Steven found some, and we made hoops that inspired the second basket. My hoop is still green, and I know it will shrink as it dries, but all of that is a learning curve and I just need to try and see what happens if…

I also found out that you can dye reed with Rit Dye. Being cellulose, I should be able to dye it with Fiber Reactive Dyes, of which I have a ton, and I should be able to get at least tints using some of my natural dye experiments. Time will tell. A different rabbit hole…

The salmon flat reed was provided by the instructor, along with some teal dyed seagrass dug from a bin in the class.

But the best part, is where I used all the cordage I’d been making over the last couple weeks, in the beginning part of the basket. This cordage is from the flag iris leaves (yes, also invasive, but I’m leaving them) in my garden.

I’m slowly learning that July/August is time to start harvesting. I’m sort of looking for the late winter when gardening goes to sleep, at least here in the northeast. This has been an exhausting year of constant watering, weeding, and maintaining my newly planted 3000 native perennials/bushes/trees. I had a friend for lunch and then pizza for dinner yesterday, and we spent hours sitting outside talking, and watching the insect and bird activity. I’m seeing birds and bugs I’ve never seen before. There must be a hundred different types of bees alone, all over the blooms of my clethra. And we watched an honest to goodness monarch butterfly flit all around checking out the blooming milkweed and the Joe Pye weed, and I’m hoping will send out a signal to call all its friends. There was a gold finch perched in the tree over a section of clethra, sedges, and more Joe Pye. It is the state bird, but I’ve never seen one on my property. And of course I get an occasional glimpse of my resident praying mantis. Something I haven’t seen in 25 years. It is a miraculous site.

In the front yard, under the Kousa Dogwood I had an unknown volunteer pop us last year. Just a few plants, and they were kind of pretty, so I left them. A plant app told me it was Perilla. I didn’t think much about it, except that it wasn’t native. My Korean friend told me it is a staple in Korean cooking, used in place of lettuce leaf wraps. Huh… In my yard… I didn’t plant it.

This spring, the few plants exploded into a nightmare. I ripped some out, but left some plants, because I had read in Rita Buchanan’s book, A Dyer’s Garden, still one of my favorites that it could substitute for Purple Basil, which she recommends as a dye plant. I had planted Purple Basil in my small dye garden, but only a half dozen plants, not the 18 she recommends in order to dye 4 ounces of wool. I have so much Perilla I’m picking it out of the grass in the front yard. So I picked a huge soup pot full,,, (about 85% Perilla and 15% purple leaf basil)

I added water and cooked for a couple hours on the induction burner I bought. Unfortunately this brand of burner, AMZChef, only has settings of 140 degrees, and then the next setting is 212 degrees, which is boiling. Nothing in between and no way to hold something at simmer. So I may have to look for a different model.

I do know that plants containing purples, have anthocyanins which are fugitive. Meaning they will wash out. Nevertheless, I put in two skeins of Aluminum Sulfate mordanted wool (the stuff I accidentally felted, see my last post), and a mordanted silk jacquard length of fabric.

The soft pink was lovely, and as I stirred, I noticed the silk turning a gorgeous purple. The silk was glorious, and to my surprise, after things cooked for a couple hours, the wool came out grey green.

The glorious purple of course faded when I washed it to a pretty lavender.

Rita talks about post dips, which I’m hearing more and more about, which change the PH of the thing you are dyeing. I tested the dyebath and it was a PH 7, sort of neutral, but I took her recommendation and dipped one of the wool skeins in ammonia, and to my complete shock, saw it turn bright green right before my eyes. I didn’t think you could get that color in natural dyes. The color held even after washing and drying. The other skein, I post dipped in vinegar, and the grey green color intensified, and remains pretty. Amazing results from a bunch of volunteer invasive plants. As an after thought, I also dipped the pretty lavender silk into ammonia and got a lovely shade of soft green. After washing and drying, it seems pretty stable.

And of course I continue in the evenings to work on the cat appliqué quilt. This is block number 8, which bleeds onto the adjacent block, so I can’t finish sewing down the pieces on the right until the entire 9 blocks are assembled. Some of you are asking about the source for these quilt block kits, and they are from the 1990’s, created by Maggie Walker. You can still find some of them on eBay. The quilt is called My Cat’s Garden.

This has been a transformative year for me. A huge part of my life has come to an end, and a new one is just beginning. I feel like such a beginner, I want to learn so much, and am all over the place with information, books, social media sources, and classes. It will slowly all come together. Many many years ago, when my kids were small, and I hung out with a bunch of moms that were totally into alternative medicine, foods, organic options, all the things we thought were important for raising healthy children. We explored medicinal plants, and I had always thought that if I had been younger and had the time, I’d have loved to study with someone like David Winston, and really become an herbalist. One of the women in my basket class is doing just that. Studying herbal plants, creating medicines, and she turned me on to a couple of books she follows. Me, being a book-aholic, immediately ordered a handful from Amazon, which were waiting on my doorstep the last day of class.

The more I find out, the more I want to know. Sort of like when I first learned to weave. That friend that came for lunch yesterday, I showed her how to weave on a four shaft Structo, and she was hooked. Then I showed her how to set up and weave on an inkle loom. She was really hooked. Already looked up the Inklette on Woolery. I suspect she has already ordered it. And a new weaver is born, and this old weaver has fallen into a new rabbit hole… And once I post this blog, I’m off to make another batch of pesto for the freezer…

Stay tuned…

Just Do It…

I’ve taught most of my adult life, in one form or another. Inspiring others to do for themselves is incredibly rewarding, watching that process of cause and effect, and seeing a student run with creativity, putting their own stamp on the information I have given, it all makes my heart sing.

It would be really great if I could take a workshop with myself once in awhile…

I’ve already mentioned in previous blogs, my quest to reinvent myself, explore new areas and adventures, and keep myself as busy as possible in this challenging year. Challenging for many reasons, not the least of them is my son’s deployment to the middle east. I’ve needed to stay distracted and creative.

And of course, one of the biggest distractions of the year has been replanting my property with thousands of native perennials, bushes and trees. I spend hours out there watering, weeding, and watching bugs, bees, birds (I even saw a small praying mantis) and the activity in general that makes an ecosystem, which I’ve largely ignored up to this point, actually felt irritation, in that it is one more thing calling to me.

Things are starting to bloom, to mature, and I’m beginning to think about fall, and harvest, and when and where to do all those things that I thought about last spring. I’m largely in uncharted territory here. I know enough to know I don’t know what the heck I’m doing, but yet, I know I have to start somewhere. I’ve been taking workshops all year, in natural dyeing, eco printing, indigo dyeing, and even making a willow chair, which I talked about in my last blog.

I’m armed with a stack of books in basketry, in eco printing, in natural dyeing, in native plants, in pollinator gardens, and there is a thing as my dear friend Robyn Spady says, called Analysis Paralysis…

I would tell my students, if you want to get good at something, like making garments from your handwoven fabric, don’t expect the first thing you make to be incredible, prize winning, worthy of a Convergence fashion show. You have to start somewhere. You have to learn to fit your body, you have to learn to use your equipment, you have to learn the perks of your cloth, you have to learn what your body can and can’t do (yet) and personal ergonomics, studio set up, or lack of one, all of those things require a journey. But you have to start somewhere, and you have to keep at it, and discover for yourself. Going to YouTube and searching for a topic, and hoping that person will show you exactly how, might get you pointed in the right direction, but you still have to get on the horse and start the journey.

I will be taking a class starting next Friday, at Peters Valley in basketry. It is with a basket maker I adore, and I’ve taken a class with him before. This class is in free form basketry. I thought, though it isn’t required (materials list is, bring your creativity and a water bottle) that it would be great if I could bring some cordage I made, and in fact, I need to do something with all of last year’s shed full of flag iris leaves that have been dried and stored. There will be a new harvest coming…

So I started making cordage, soaking a few leaves at a time, making 2-3 yards in a sitting, and I’m getting a lovely little stack. I’ve since added a few more yards since I took this photo.

I took an indigo dye workshop with my guild a couple weeks ago (sodium hydroxide vat) and at the end of the day, tossed in a silk scarf blank, thinking I could use it for eco printing. As I’m out watering, I’m thinking, I really need to start harvesting some of these leaves, the peonies are on the way out, and I really need to harvest and dry, or just use them. And every time I eat an avocado, I save the skins and pits, and store them in the freezer. The bag fell out the other day. It was full.

So, I decided to put the books down, and just do it. I grabbed a bunch of wool skeins I had bought, and mordanted them with Aluminum Sulfate. Except, I was using a burner I picked up used, and didn’t really know the settings, and ended up boiling the wool, and to my embarrassment, partially felted six skeins. I felt like a complete beginner. I’m not into watching pots, but a watched pot never boils?

After I removed the skeins from the mordant, I tossed in some silk lengths for scarves, tone on tone silk jacquard, with a pretty watery design in it. And I tossed in a yard of a silk/cotton lining fabric, just because, I’m curious.

Annoyed with myself, I took the avocados out of the freezer and someone told me to grind up the pits. I pulled out my food processor, with the grater disk, and realized that I needed to thaw the pits first. Duh… Even a Cuisinart won’t grate rocks…

I put them in the sun, and they thawed within the hour, and I was able to grind the pits up, and tossed it all into a soup pot and didn’t care if they all boiled away, except that I read later that boiling them takes away the pink color. Sigh…

I got a pretty peach color, with two skeins of wool, one mordanted and one not (I read that avocados don’t need a mordant), and I added one of the silk lengths.

And it seems with all foodstuffs, that the color isn’t really stable, or so I’ve read. So once washed, they were kind of dull and uninspiring, and one of the skeins is partially felted… There is that. But I can always overdye…

I took the peach colored silk jacquard length, and went out and harvested a bowl full of cool stuff. Cotinus (smoke bush), Japanese maple, ferns, Oak, Peonies, Rose leaves, Redbud, and I tossed in for good measure some onion skins.

I used an iron blanket, a length of cotton I had, dipped in Ferrous Sulfate, and laid on top. Rolled the whole thing up and steamed the bundle, for maybe an hour, forgetting that I had to go out to an appointment, and didn’t want to just walk away from a steaming roaster. So I turned it off and a few hours later came back to it.

The results were hugely disappointing. Other than the orange pops of the onion skins, there was almost no imprint on the silk.

Though the iron blanket was pretty. But not what I was going for.

I grabbed the indigo dyed scarf, and tried again. This time, I just went back to basics, and sprayed it with 50/50 vinegar and water, and tried again.

Super disappointed, there was no imprint at all except for the few coreopsis flowers I tossed on at the last minute.

Still, there are many avenues to take here, so I started over, mordanted the indigo scarf with aluminum sulfate, and dipped all the botanicals in Ferrous Sulfate before laying them onto the scarf.

I covered it with an iron blanket, another length of cotton from the stash, and finally, I got something I can work with.

The iron blanket actually had some color in it, but I am starting to think about different post options, and thought, what if I tossed it into a dyebath, and so I did, with a handful of onion skins. I always have those available. The onion skins and the ferrous sulfate combined to make a lovely green. I haven’t washed either scarf, I read I should wait for a few days…

Meanwhile, I’ve ordered a bunch of dye extracts and chemicals from Botanical Colors in Seattle. They will take a while to get across the country. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to locate a source for aluminum acetate, everyone seems to be on back order. I’m patient. I have enough to keep me busy.

But I’m starting to get excited, see what I can try next. None of this is what I actually want as a result, but it is a start. I won’t make that award winning piece for awhile, if ever, but that isn’t the point here. I’m learning, exploring, wondering what will happen if… And that is the point. And all of this is coming from my gardens. Except the chemicals…

Of course, having learned my lesson, I now baby-sit pots all day long. I thought I was off the hook watering my gardens the last couple of days, since we were supposed to have torrential rains tonight into tomorrow. It looks like most of it will go south of us. So that means back to watering tomorrow, but I had a couple days just sitting and watching pots, and working on quilt appliqué block number seven.

There are nine blocks in this quilt, a project my mom bought in the 90’s, and never got to do; asking me last year if I would make it for her. Her arthritis is too bad now, she is 93. I agreed and it has been an amazing project. The coolest puzzle I’ve ever assembled. Once the 9 cat blocks are finished and assembled, there is a huge vine that meanders through the entire quilt, the trunk of which starts with the cat I’m working on, his claws are scratching the trunk, or will be. I can’t completely stitch them down until the rest of the quilt is together. It is the perfect project to work on, that and cordage from my invasive flag iris leaves, while I sit and watch pots so they don’t boil.

And I did order an induction burner from Amazon. I can actually set the temperature…

Stay tuned…

A Story…

Because life isn’t nearly as much fun if you can’t make a good story out of it…

There is a wonderful fiber school called Sievers School of Fiber Arts on Washington Island Wisconsin. I taught there for probably a dozen years before Covid put an end to my travels and I chose not to reschedule after Covid ended.

Sievers has a willow patch, that they tend and harvest every fall, and they have always offered a class in making a willow chair. Many of my regular students talked lovingly of coming in the fall, with their spouses and making a willow chair, and would show me photos of the pair of chairs on their porches, decks, verandas, whatever. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to come with my husband over the years and do this class with him, so we would have a pair of willow chairs on our deck that we made together.

It would have meant that my husband and I would have had to drive from NJ to Wisconsin and back, with two large chairs in tow, and somehow, that class was never at a time when both of us were available and could make the trek.

When my husband died, of course that dream came to an end, and since I no longer teach on the road (though I do miss Sievers), traveling out there by myself to bring back a chair didn’t make sense.

But I live an hour away from another craft school, Peters Valley School of Craft. When I looked at the course offerings back in January, I couldn’t believe they were offering a willow chair class. My husband was gone, but I could still do the class myself and not have to drive back from Wisconsin.

I signed up, though this one was a five day class, not a three day class. I didn’t care. It was actually one of eight classes I signed up for at the Valley this spring/summer. I want to learn.

What I didn’t realize at the time, was the actual dates of the class coincided with the 8th anniversary of my husband’s death. Which was Monday.

Working with willow is challenging for someone used to manipulating fibers, soft things, that though they have a mind of their own, will work with me, or rather I learned to work with them to achieve my goal. I’m still learning to understand live wood. Freshly picked. Shipped in from Montana, since Peters Valley is in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area , part of the National Park System. You can’t pick anything in a national park. So no willow patches.

There were only three of us in the class, which was great as I usually needed a second set of hands to help hold the bent willow in place. The teacher Walter Shaw, of Wapiti Willow Studio, was generous with his time. And he created a chair as a demo, staying one step ahead. Right next to where I was building mine.

This voice in my head kept encouraging me to ask Walter what he planned to do with the chair he was building. He said he wasn’t sure, his wife (who was teaching a ceramics class at the Valley the same week) was encouraging him to make furniture for her new ceramics studio. I asked if he would sell me the chair…

He agreed, and on Monday, like I said, the 8th anniversary of my husband’s death, I wrote a check for Walter’s demo chair, which matched mine perfectly, same willow, same maple base.

Since I was commuting, I brought home one of the chairs Monday night, and the second chair Tuesday night. I felt my husband there the entire time, and understood that he wanted me to have a pair of chairs too. And so, now I do, sitting proudly on my deck, under the gazebo cover.

We had time at the end of the class to make a willow tray. This was a challenge. This isn’t basketry willow, these are willow branches and they were very hard to weave in and out of the supports. But the tray is lovely.

This is the second class I’ve taken at Peters Valley since I wrote my last post. The previous one, at the end of May, wasn’t the best class I’ve ever taken. The instructor was overly enthusiastic with all of the techniques she wanted to try with us to explore Eco Printing, within a three day period. Since the current trend is to Eco Print, or print with botanicals on cloth, by dyeing the cloth first with natural dyes, much of the class was focused on natural dyeing and the use of modifiers. We made lots of small samples for a notebook. We learned to make print paste as well, and experimented with block printing, flower pounding, making our own soy milk for a mordant and print paste base. It was a lot in 3 days, and though I took a notebook full of notes, I’m no longer sure which sample goes with which technique. We even tossed a cotton tote back into a “dirty pot” on the last day.

We did print two silk scarves, one dyed with madder, and the other with logwood, using an iron blanket, but I will honestly say, I wasn’t happy with anything I did there. But I have a lot of things to explore, and I’m already starting to save leaves, since I have a yard full of very printable botanicals. Winter will be fun this year.

A couple of weeks ago, I came home from wherever I was, and discovered the mother lode of magazines in my mail box. I’m a member of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and get their bulletin a couple times a year, and they are always interesting and informative. In the mailbox was also the latest issue of Shuttle, Spindle, and Dyepot, from the Handweavers Guild of America. And there was the much anticipated Journal of Weavers, Spinners, and Dyers, a gorgeous publication from the UK.

This issue was much anticipated because I wrote an article on sewing with handwoven fabric, some many months ago. I finally got to see it in print. It really is a lovely article, and it is fun to look at my heavily edited manuscript written in British English, British spelling, metric equivalents, etc. The article is available as a PDF download from their website.

And of course, through it all, I’m out there daily tending the garden. The planting is complete, for now, and my job is to keep everything alive. It is lovely to watch the changes each day. Something is always blooming. Though I do watch the weather app in my phone hoping to see some rain in the forecast so I get a break once in a while!

Lots of bluestone walkways. The landscape designer built a stream bed for heavy rain runoff, that meanders down along the “ridge”, under the shed steps, and through a trough out the back of the property. Those are Clethra bushes, Itea, and a couple of American Hornbeam trees.

One of the pond complexes…

The rebuilt gazebo

This is my view every morning when I eat my breakfast. There are baby koi along with the Shubunkins goldfish. They are quite hilarious to watch. Spunky little critters!

I’m getting to take lots of pretty flower pictures, all of these already existed on my property. The perennials the landscape designer planted are still very small. Next year they should start filling the spaces, so there won’t be dirt to weed and they shouldn’t need watering. Each day there is something new to appreciate. These aren’t native hydrangeas, but the landscape designer did plant a few native ones. I think they are white, but still early to tell.

I have lots of volunteer Fleabane peaking out around my property. I love the little white daisy flowers.

After we ripped off all the invasive Akebia vine from the gazebo, we were left with a structure in desperate need of support. We shored it up, and discovered we had a crossvine that was barely surviving, and this year the trumpet flowers from it were glorious. There is a large white willow that frames the gazebo.

My clematis survived, which I wasn’t sure about since it was tangled in a mess of oriental bittersweet.

And of course peonies are gorgeous for about 4 hours, and then the rains always come as soon as they open up, which makes them not so gorgeous. But for a day, I had beautiful peonies.

My landscape designer planted two southern Magnolia trees. The flower blooms are gorgeous.

And of course, I have roses.

Though the irises are gone now, they were the most spectacular I have ever seen them this past spring.

One very rainy day, I hunkered down in the basement and got the body of my pieced jacket together. It is quite fun. Only needs a lining and perimeter bias trim. Waiting for another rainy day, but the forecast is calling for hot and dry. In the mid to upper 90’s. Sigh…

And when I can, after dark, I sit curled up and continue working on the appliqué cat quilt, a project of my mom’s that she asked me to do for her, since this kind of work at age 93, is challenging. The kit is one from the 90’s from Maggie Walker. This is block number 5. I still have to finish embroidering the whiskers and stitch the name along the side, Abyssinian.

I’ve already started #6, which will be challenging, because it overlaps #9, and I have to wait to finish much of #6, until I build #9. This is the coolest puzzle I’ve ever assembled.

My retrospective at County College of Morris is still up, running through August 22. It isn’t open on the weekend but the new summer hours have been posted.

Wednesday, May 8 – Tuesday, June 25 Mon-Fri, 8:30am-4:00pm. Sat-Sun, CLOSED

Wednesday, June 26 – Thursday, August 1 Mon-Thu, 8:30am-8:00pm. Fri, 8:30am-4:00pm. Sat-Sun, CLOSED

Friday, August 2 – Thursday, August 28 Mon-Fri, 8:30am-4:00pm. Sat-Sun, CLOSED

And finally, my exhibit is up on their website.

All this means that I’m frequently asked to meet groups of weavers and sewers and friends, and relatives at the exhibit, (when I’m available), give them a tour, and go out to lunch, or dinner, or in the case of my sister from Maryland, have a glorious weekend of family, including the sister from NY. We saw my exhibit, and then my studio and gardens, and then headed to NY to see the NY sister’s new home and gardens. We even got to walk across the Hudson River on the NY Rail Trail bridge over the Hudson. Something I’ve never done. Somebody has a photo of the three of us on the bridge, I forget who!

And I did manage to squeeze in a visit last Tuesday to the MET museum last week to catch the final days of the Weaving Abstraction in Ancient and Modern Art, and the new costume exhibit Sleeping Beauties. My head was full, all of my senses on fire, and I was home by lunch time.

It was really important for me to stay busy this year. My son is still deployed in the middle east, and I worry about him daily. Keeping busy has always been my antidote for stress. I still play with Montclair Early Music, and volunteer weekly at the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ as a stitcher in their costume shop. My life is exhausting, but I couldn’t be happier, because all of these things I chose to do.

Stay cool dear readers, it is summer out there and record heat doesn’t bode well for the future. Enjoy your gardens, or volunteer in one, and get your hands dirty. And when gardening season ends, there will always be fiber to play with…

Stay tuned…

Mom of 3000…

Mother’s Day is tomorrow. I honestly don’t pay too much attention to Hallmark holidays. This time last year we were in Japan. My daughter bought me flowers last night, and a small piece of my favorite cake, Tiramisu. That’s a holdover from my late husband, something we both loved… And she made these tiny arrangements out of a Lego knock-off that are lovely and will sit in my window in the kitchen. My son is half way across the world doing military duty. I wish he were home.

This has been a crazy few weeks. I wanted it that way. With my son away, and drama all around me, I wanted big projects to stay as busy as I can to focus on that which I cannot change.

Everything came together in the last week. Last Sunday my music group, Montclair Early Music had their spring concert. Called Myth and Magic, it celebrated the Renaissance, and fantasy, video games, and Harry Potter. I borrowed a dress that was more fantasy than Renaissance. So I can now cross that off my list of things to focus on.

I finished the cat appliqué quilt block number 4, and this one was really really hard. All that feathery cat fur was very challenging to appliqué.

I’m working on block 5, my goal is one a month and finish by the end of the year when I can give it to my mom. It was her project, quilt block of the month from Maggie Walker, purchased in the late 90’s. She asked me to make it for her since she is in her 90’s and her eyesight and arthritic fingers make it too difficult for her to work on. I found the endless stitching to be centering, soothing, and really really good for my mental health.

This past Thursday night, my retrospective at County College of Morris, in Morris County, NJ reopened. Though the magic of the first opening will never be matched, a number of my guild members came and we had the most lovely time, chatting, talking about weaving, and we met a new fellow weaver wearing an awesome handwoven scarf, which we were all over, and convinced him to join the guild. Which he did. Our numbers are growing…

Monday I give the keynote address to the Morris County Teen Arts Festival, and then that will be behind me. The exhibit will be open through the summer, now through August 22. Hours are M-F 9-6. There is hope that there will be Saturday hours, but a lot of people have to agree, including security, and they aren’t always on the same page.

Meanwhile, this week, my landscape designer, who has been here for more than a month, finished planting more than 3000 perennials, with a couple dozen bushes and trees, almost all native, and designed to attract pollinators, and bloom from early spring into late fall. I have so much to learn. But I’m starting with something.

My job is to keep everything alive for the next few weeks until root systems are established. A couple hours of watering a day will be required. I knew what I was getting into, but what I didn’t know, was how magical early mornings are, with robins, and butterflies, and bugs, and nature all doing its thing. I’ve never spent so much time outside. There is a robin that comes and finds me every morning. And a pair of cardinals that lurks nearby. And there is a painted lady butterfly that is checking out all the new plants. I’m learning each type of plant the designer put in. We went around today and labeled things so I’d be able to learn to recognize plants from their earliest spring sprouts through blooming, and dying back in the fall. The ponds continue to be a challenge, but they are full of happy fish.

The designer laid two palettes of gorgeous bluestone. Some of it is surrounded by grass, but the rest will eventually be buried in beds of phlox and violets. All those little plugs will fill in and there won’t be visible dirt to weed.

I’ve had well meaning friends wonder why I don’t just invest in sprinklers. Not only is that an indiscriminate waste of water, but what I water and how much depends on each plant and its location. And if it rained recently and how much. This is sort of like having a new baby, scant directions, developing new instincts, flying by the seat of your pants, because you have little idea of what you are doing. But I’m trying, and hoping to keep my 3000+ charges alive. And make sure the southern Magnolias and American Holly don’t get root rot.

And I’ve been clearing a decent size bed, between my property and the edge of the backyard next door, of bags full of Creeping Charlie. And other invasive nasties. I’m thinking this is where I want to put my dye garden. I just have to look up what to plant. I’m going shopping next week! In search of dye plants… And maybe start a watercolor gardening journal, there are some really beautiful things in my yard…

I’m doing what I love, learning something new. Discovering a new magical world. And I am willing to work hard to keep it all alive. We didn’t kill all the invasives, there are still a lot on my property. Mostly what’s left serves a purpose, privacy, screening, shade, beautiful fall color. Bit by bit, as the newly planted trees and bushes grow, I’ll be taking a lot more out. And I’m finding things I didn’t know I had, violets, fleabane, and some other cool things the landscape designer identified, but I’ve already forgotten. And yes, that is an Alaskan Weeping Cedar, and no it is not native to NJ, but as my landscape designer said, it is a really cool tree…

So Happy Mother’s Day to my mom, and everyone out there who cares for something, whether it be a child, a dog, a cat, goldfish in a pond, or a tree. There is something healing about caring for something outside yourself. It takes a village, it takes a planet.

Stay tuned…

While I was planning something else…

Most of you know at this point that my son has been deployed to a place in the middle east that is challenging. My goal this year was to stay so busy I wouldn’t have time to think about that challenge. And so far that has been my life saver. The exhibit was one of the greatest things to happen to me professionally. It is down now, or rather the 41 dress forms have been moved to a smaller gallery, the Titan Gallery, around the corner from the main gallery. That leaves the main gallery for their end of semester student show. I had wanted to get there to see it. At the beginning of May, the full exhibit will return, exactly the way it was, to the main gallery, with another reopening May 9th, coordinating with the Teen Arts Festival. The exhibit will remain up until the end of August. I expect to be there the final couple days before reopening to check that all the labels are correct and all the clothing hanging the way I like it. Lots of zhuzhing up…

Here are a couple images from the Titan Gallery.

The show will reopen with a formal opening from 6-8PM on May 9th, that’s a Thursday, and the hours of the show, from what I understand, are M-F 9-6, and probable Saturday hours, but that’s not confirmed.

The response has been overwhelming, carloads of friends, guild members from across three states, friends from my High School in South Jersey, I’m touched and honored at the support. What a beautiful way to end my professional career, allowing me to do fun things that retired people do. Like weave, knit, garden, volunteer, you know. Have fun…

I made the decision last fall, that I really needed to remove the invasives from my property, and so I hired a fantastic landscape designer, highly recommended, to basically redesign my property. I mentioned this before in my blog. She has been remarkable. Covered in mud at the end of the day, she is out there with her one helper, hauling dirt, hauling trees, moving boulders around my yard. This is just one area that she has cleaned out and reworked, and the hundreds of plugs of perennials will eventually be added. My entire property will basically look like this but full of perennials. My only job is to keep this watered and weeded until everything is established. No problem she says with complete confidence…

Meanwhile, I had this beautiful vine covered gazebo that became invaded by a horrifically invasive Akebia vine. Which I did not plant. It killed everything else, except one pocket of cross vine, struggling for any kind of survival. I gave my daughter permission to start ripping. 11 bags later to the brush recycling, and the structure had been so compromised that we decided to purchase a similar domed structure that would help support the crossvine and any new ones we planted, and anchored the two together. It will be a few years, but I’ll have my gazebo back.

So while all of that is happening, I signed up for a three day workshop through my guild, with Rosalie Neilson, on Rep. Rep is a warp face structure, with alternating thick and thin wefts. It is great for rugs, and bags, and I just wanted to hang with my weaving buddies. Day 2 was entertaining in that we were about 15 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake that struck western NJ. It was felt up into Boston. They are still talking about it. 4.8 magnitude. Not common on the east coast. At first I thought the building had been hit by a truck, but the rumbling and shaking kept happening. It took us a long time to figure out it was an earthquake, and so we ran outside. I have to honestly say, it was an incredible experience to feel the earth under my feet swaying back and forth, like waves, subtle but very intense. I’ve never felt anything like it. It was a powerful thing to witness. We stayed outside for about 15 minutes and decided we were cold and went back to the workshop. No discernable damage, we kept close watch on our phones for any updates. There have been something like 85 aftershocks, none of which I felt.

We ended the workshop on Saturday, and though I still have warp left, I cut off what I’d done, and we all got to take pictures. I’ve done rep before, so I understood it, but I had never tried Warp Floats, which is a sort of turned Honeycomb structure, except both sides are the inverse of each other unlike weft Honeycomb. I want to try more of that.

Sunday, one of my guild buddies and I headed into NY to the NY Botanical Gardens Orchid show. It was of course gorgeous, and I couldn’t take enough photos. Their infamous glass house of course had other types of plants, and I’m always up for cactus and succulents.

Lots of inspiration here, especially for dyeing…

Meanwhile, because I’d pulled a lot of old work and scraps from the attic looking for things for the retrospective, I had piles of scraps, still, from the production years in the 1980’s. I hate to just toss all of it. I keep thinking that there has to be some fun thing I can do, some patchworky thing, besides all the ornaments, bags, totes, greeting cards, etc., I do already for my guild sale. These are not my best fabrics, these are plain weave, mixed warps, all from the early and mid-1980’s. But they are still valid fabrics. So I thought I might try my favorite sweater jacket pattern, and maybe a larger size, so someone bigger than me can fit into it at my guild sale. I started to lay out the fabrics in a blocky random way.

I have lots of colors in scraps of silk noil, that I made into bias tubes to put between the butted handwoven scraps, which were fused onto a backing. I added a layer of punch needle fleece, so when I stitch down the bias tubes, I’d be essentially quilting the jacket.

I wasn’t sure at first, but now that I see the back finished, I’m really liking it and can’t wait to see it as a finished jacket. There is a four part series of this piecing technique on my YouTube channel, The Weaver Sews. They were some of the last ones I recorded.

Meanwhile, I’m continuing work on the cat appliqué quilt blocks my mom gave me last year, something she wanted to start in the 90’s, but never got around to it. She asked me to make it for her. I was horrified at first, but then started playing around with it, and truth be told this is so much fun. I love watching each cat build from the fabrics they give you. This one is particularly challenging with all the fringy fur. But I’m finishing up quilt block 4 of 9. Blocks 1-3 are in previous blog posts. This cat is a Persian, and all that is left is the face, which has something like 35 pieces.

And in between all of that, I’m rehearsing for a concert in May, with my early music group. I love the music, Renaissance music is fun and fun to play, and this particular concert will also include music from video games like the Legend of Zelda.

I should have been at rehearsal tonight. But life sort of got in the way. You know, things happen when you are planning something else?

So Tuesday, I was running around shopping and packing boxes to send to my son overseas. He asked for some things like K-cups and snacks, and I’m a good military mom, and got right on it. Trying to fit everything into one box proved challenging, so I went out to our recycling bin for a second box. I was running up and down between floors, my house is 125+ years old and there are practically steps between every room. I came down carrying the second box and missed the last step and next thing I knew, I’m screaming in pain, and the indignity of it all, and please don’t let it be broken.

I did manage to get to the post office, to ship two boxes of stuff to my son in parts of the world that are challenging. I left the post office and knew at that point that it was broken. Three hours in the ER confirmed. I’m pissed of course, because I’m having fun, and keeping busy doing the things I want to do. I want to be in the gardens. I want to be at music rehearsal. I want to be weaving, and planning, and volunteering. The diagnosis is a cortical avulsion fracture at the dorsum of the navicular, with a possible fracture at the lateral aspect of the cuboid. Or in simpler terms, I broke the top of my foot.

They gave me a temporary splint, and a pair of crutches, and may I say that giving an almost 70 year old woman a pair of crutches is pretty dangerous. I almost killed myself a half dozen times on the way home.

I saw the foot specialist today, and in the corner of the waiting room was this really pretty fake hydrangea. I got a picture of it. I loved the colors. I’m already thinking it will be my next warp. The foot specialist put me in a boot, but wants an MRI, scheduled for Monday to make sure I didn’t tear the tendon coming from my ankle. I doubt it, and I’m in absolutely no pain. There isn’t much swelling, and I’m learning to navigate with this giant thing on my foot. Please don’t tell me I’m doing too much. There is no way I can sit on the couch with my feet up for anything longer than an hour or two. I just can’t do it. There is too much going on, animals to attend to, and too many fun things I want to do. So I will find a way. My next goal is to figure out how to get out in the garden, sit my butt on a cart, and continue pulling out invasives. A broken shoulder two years ago didn’t stop me, and a broken foot won’t either.

So I’ll be at my opening in a boot, I’ll give the Teen Arts Festival keynote address in a boot. I’ll perform at my early music concert in medieval garb, with a boot. I’ll take a workshop in natural dyeing at Peters Valley in a boot. And I’ll drive to a farm in south Jersey for a lecture on growing dye plants, in a boot. And I’ll do what I always do. And if I have to weave on a floor loom, I still have one usable foot. Mostly I’m working on table looms, so that isn’t an issue at the moment.

I’ll post the updated promotional materials for the exhibit once I have them, and I’ll keep you posted on the gardens and all my other adventures. The pieced jacket will probably be on hold a bit, because when I build these pieces I stand at the cutting table. Standing is a bit challenging at the moment, but I’ll figure out a way.

Enjoy your spring my friends, heavy rains due in tonight. Everything will get a good drink of water.

Stay tuned…