Tag: Montclair Early Music

Into the light…

Tomorrow (or today, depending on when I finish this post) is the Winter Solstice, December 21st at 10:30am for the northern hemisphere. No matter what holiday you celebrate, or don’t, this time of year, the seasons remain strong reminders of the power of light and darkness. The winter solstice marks the shortest day of the year, the light will return. And plants will grow, and nature will thrive in spite of us.

I looked out my window earlier this week and saw this. It is/was beautiful, I say “was” because it was all gone quickly when we had 3/4″ of rain the other day, and the temps got up to 60 degrees.

Meanwhile, in prep for all the cold weather approaching, I did one final sweep of the vegetable garden, and harvested the remaining chard, and late planted arugula. They were washed and refrigerated, and I’m enjoying the last of my garden harvest, well into December. And there is all that tomato sauce and pesto in the freezer…

Performance season is drawing to a close, it has been crazy and wild and a true honor to perform at so many places for worthy causes. I’m not a professional musician, I don’t want to be, so performing with a group for a worthy cause, like a nursing home, is the ultimate way of giving joy to those who don’t get much joy during the holiday season.

There was the Randolph, NJ Historical Society open house with the Mendham Consort. We were the background music and I played bass recorder.

There was the Holiday Tapestry concert for Montclair Early Music, I played recorder for the main group, and cello with the beginner group called the Musettes. That’s me way in the far end of the semi-circle with my cello.

My new cello has been just an amazing piece of equipment. It is lightweight, super responsive, and I can be much more relaxed about extreme weather conditions. It is a 3-D printed carbon fiber cello from Forte3-D.

I’m thinking that somebody needs to start producing looms and other weaving equipment on a large scale using more contemporary materials and processes, because if they can make a performance cello from plastic, surely they can make a loom. Like the little Structo I used for teaching…

Anyway, I played with the Mendham Consort again, at an event sponsored by Project Self Sufficiency, which is an incredible non-profit charity spanning two counties that that helps low-income families achieve economic stability through comprehensive support services like case management, job training, childcare, and emergency assistance. They sponsor a toy drive each holiday season, so no child goes without. Area musicians provide background holiday music for the “shopping” experience.

And the one that I worked the hardest on, the annual Suzuki concert with the cellos and violins (maybe 30 of us?) at a local nursing home. This is just a small section of the full group, musicians as young as 4, playing some pretty challenging stuff. I’m way in the back with one of the other adults. On my carbon fiber cello.

Good thing I’m a textile artist… two days before a concert where I would be playing my bass recorder, a Kung, Swiss made, magnificent piece, really powerful, so happy with it except… the cork broke. Two days before the concert. I do not own a repair kit, however, before there were corks sealing the joints on recorders, there was string. I had a cone of 16/2 cotton, and a cake of beeswax, and with a lot of patience, I carefully strung the joint, and it works perfectly. ( I should mention that this recorder, a 70th birthday present to myself, was more expensive than what I paid for my used 54″ 12-Shaft Tools of the Trade Loom, why do I insist on jumping down rabbit holes of very expensive hobbies…)

One of the other members of the consort I play with, is also a handweaver. She approached me after one of our performances and said she heard I’d given up weaving… Hahahahahaha! Why would I do that?

In reality, I stopped using handweaving as something that produced income. I don’t want to do it anymore as a profession. I left an 80 video YouTube channel, The Weaver Sews, available free (though the ads are annoying); it is everything I know about sewing handwovens, and I make nothing from it. I did not monetize the channel, it is my gift to a community that supported me for 40 years. And I spent about a year and a half indexing the videos, so you (and I) could find the content we want to access specifically. That index can be found here.

But I am and will always be a handweaver, as long as I can still crawl under the loom. (’cause remember, I’m a floor loom fan, not a table loom fan…) I was sitting in my bathroom, where I keep all my unread magazines, and picked up the latest Handwoven Magazine (Winter 2025), and started leafing through it. I spied a photo of some lovely towels, in a Monk’s Belt pattern, on a 4-shaft loom, by Malynda Allen, and thought… “Oh crap, I need to get my December Towel Run on the loom, because it is yikes! December…”

And so, I grabbed some natural 8/2 cotton, I have a huge stash of natural yarns for dyeing, and put 10 yards on the loom. Took me about a day and a half. I work quick.

These towels are really easy, great stash busters (I used 5/2 perle cotton instead of the suggested 6/2 cotton which I have in a bazillion colors, for the Monk’s Belt borders), the entire middle is just plain weave.

I pulled the 10 yards off the loom the other day, threw the entire thing in the wash, and voila! There are 9 new towels to add to the stack.

So yes, I still weave. And I play music. And I am surrounded by so many wonderful new friends, from garden people, to early music people, to textile people, to handweavers, and sometimes, they are part of more than one community. In this return to the light, may your days be brighter with each sunrise, may the holiday season bring hope of a better New Year, where we all can respect each other, especially our differences. There is room for everyone at the table.

Stay tuned…

Life Happens…

I finished up my last blog, and headed “down” the shore (a NJ expression) for an overnight, meeting up with an old college friend and her husband, who had just flown in from the West Coast. It was a lovely day that Sunday, and then hurricane Erin stirred things up, and Monday was a cold, rainy day, thrilled to get rain, but sadly not at home two hours north, and definitely not a beach day. I headed home Monday night.

Tuesday I spent the day with my sister at the NY Botanical Gardens, finally getting to see the Van Gogh’s flowers exhibit. It was pretty incredible. But more importantly, my sister is a superior gardener and well versed in native plants. We poked around, examining labels, identifying plants with my trusty app, and acted like two horticulturists, or in my case really, a horticulturist wannabee… We discovered all the different variations of Rudbekia (hirta, fulgida, and triloba, if you are interested…)

Tuesday night I started feeling sniffly, and by Wednesday morning I was sick. I was so sick, feverish, I got really suspicious. 48 hours before, I was with a whole group of people… hmmmm.

So I wanted to start this blog post with all the glorious pictures of my new costume, and my cello debut at the Montclair Early Music Medieval fest. Turns out, I couldn’t go because, I TESTED POSITIVE FOR COVID! Damn… Bad timing. So basically I cancelled my life for the next 10 days, until I tested negative once more. I was really disappointed, so many things planned for the end of the summer. Fortunately I was sick for just a couple days, and stayed in bed, and did what any weaver would do, took a loom to bed with me.

I cleared one of my Inklette Inkle Looms of a Supplemental Weft piece that has been on there for too many years.

I was on a roll, and couldn’t go anywhere, so I cleared another Inkle loom, this one set up for turned Krokbragd. Both looms were donated to Jockey Hollow Weavers for their loaner loom program. Two more looms out of my studio.

Meanwhile, the gardens, in spite of no rain, (in spite of being sick, I still went out and watered the critical things) my tomatoes are prolific.

So I made a pot of sauce…

And that warp from hell? The one that wouldn’t end? I was determined…

6 yards of 20/2 fine cotton. I initially worked through the Robyn Spady overshot sampler from a back issue of Handwoven Magazine, switching back and forth from Rose fashion to Star fashion, and then I just said, “Screw it”, and picked one of the patterns that appealed to me, and just wove. And wove. And wove…

So now I have this incredibly long sampler I will have to do something with. I think zip bags? At least a portion of it.

Which meant that I could move another warp onto that loom from my dwindling collection of Structos. I chose to move over an 8-shaft Quigley, the original pattern on the Structo I got from Tom Knisely’s book of Table Linens. It was designed by Diane Click and is a four-tied Unit Weave.

It is complicated to weave, and when I originally posted it on my blog, a couple of years ago, Diane actually wrote me, told me she taught a workshop in this structure at the 2015 Florida Tropical Weavers Guild conference (I’m pretty sure I was there teaching) and generously sent me her handout. Since I had already set the loom up, I didn’t do much with it, but now that I had the opportunity to rethread, bingo! Now I can work through her handout and really study the structure.

I was on a roll, and though I finally tested negative for Covid, I decided to move the warp on the 4-shaft Structo I had set up with Doup Leno. I wanted to prove to myself that I could weave Doup Leno on a Structo, but table looms are painfully slow, so once I moved the warp, I blew through a half yard in a sitting. This is 10/2 cotton.

Then I decided to move the warp on another 8-shaft Structo with a Honeycomb draft, from Malin Selander’s Weave a Weave. Here is the original piece I cut off the Structo before I moved it to my 8 shaft 36″ floor loom.

This probably wasn’t my best idea, I should have waited for a smaller floor loom, but I wanted to reach out to my contact at FIT in NY who is patiently waiting for me to clear Structos. I wanted to make it worth the trip for her.

This is going to be a bit technical, so if you are not a weaver, just skip to the picture and move on. Malin Selander’s book is written for a sinking shed loom. I have rising shed jack looms. In a sinking shed loom, in Honeycomb, only one shaft gets pulled down at a time, the rest stay up. Easy treadling. (Though I’m curious because I’ve never seen an 8-shaft loom with a sinking shed, at least from the era the book was written). I have rising shed jack looms, like I said, which means, to have one shaft stay down, I have to lift 7, 36″ wide rock maple shafts. This is quite the workout. And yes, I could weave it upside down, but trust me, you don’t want to do that in Honeycomb. Cause I’m kind of designing as I go… Not only that, one of the designs in her Honeycomb sampler calls for 18 treadles. I have 10. It is easy to weave on a table loom, you just pull levers and engage the shafts you want. (There are 254 combinations of shafts in an 8-shaft loom) Not so easy on a floor loom. So I jumped down a rabbit hole, determined to figure out a skeleton tie up so I could use more than one foot, and get the tie-up down to 10 or less treadles.

There is an old program on the internet called Tim’s Treadle Reducer. I went there, and either it is no longer functioning, or I blew it up. If anyone knows its status, please let me know, it was a really handy tool. So I was on my own.

I sat with the draft for an hour or so, after transferring the tie-up for a rising shed loom. And slowly I worked it out to be able to use less than 10 treadles, two or three at a time, but set up in a way that one foot could press two at once, having the treadles adjacent to one another. I was pretty damn proud of myself. (I tweaked it further, shifting the plain weave to the middle, the photo shows the middle of my calculations.)

I haven’t woven that one yet, but this is a different design in her Honeycomb sampler, it is a very cool weave structure, but I’m going to be with this one for a while, since there are something like four yards on this 16/2 cotton warp.

Yesterday was an interesting day. First, it rained. We have been under extreme drought conditions here, I’m struggling daily to keep my plants alive, and Wednesday we planted another four dozen native bushes and perennials. It started raining Thursday night, resumed on Saturday, and well into this morning. I’m thinking we got more than 2″ of rain. For that I got on my knees and gave thanks to the universe for taking care of its own.

Secondly, if you own a PC with Windows 10, you probably know that October 15th is D Day. Microsoft will no longer support Windows 10 with security updates. Which is really problematic, leaving any computer with Windows 10 vulnerable. My tech guy came over yesterday, I was not going to try this myself, to upgrade my two computer systems to Windows 11.

Yeah, so the first computer, my laptop I use for teaching online, which I can annotate with a pen, set up in my studio, the processor in it won’t support Windows 11. So $1000 later, I have a new laptop on its way. Apparently the processor in my desk top computer will also not support Windows 11, but my tech guy, who is really brilliant, found a work around, and got everything on my desktop updated. Of course I have high anxiety knowing by the end of the week, I’ll be ripping my hair out making sure all my programs work on the new laptop, finding registration codes, passwords, etc., and getting a new code for Fiberworks. Which I definitely need that critical piece of computer software.

So one computer is safe and updated. And it rained. And I’m Covid free. And my sister didn’t get it. And my garden continues to delight and astound me. Leaves are starting to turn, things are beginning to die back. And I just cleared a number of looms, all going to good homes who will use them for teaching.

And I looked at the calendar and my eyes got really big, and I realized I have six weeks to make as much stuff as I can for the guild sale, inventory sheets are due the end of October. OMG! Fortunately I have a 5-yard plus Overshot sampler to start with…

Stay tuned…

My First Love…

This is going to be a long one, grab a cup of tea and settle in…

It is incredible to me how full my life is right now. Too full if that’s possible. I’m doing all the things I love, almost to excess, because, why not, I am a free spirit, exploring new worlds, new communities, and I know how fragile life can be, and how it can all be gone in a heartbeat.

So it is August. My least favorite month. I’m so tired of the heat, 90-100 degree days, no rain in site. It is painful to be out tending my gorgeous gardens every day, but I committed to this and I wouldn’t change a thing, except I pray for rain hourly, and check the radar like a crazy person. I’m assured that native plants can handle drought well, and I’m trusting that. But I’m getting tired. I’m glad I live in NJ, where we garden for six months of the year and things go to sleep for six months. I have an indoor life, so I’m happy to let things rest.

I’m going to visit a friend down the shore tomorrow, so I wanted to make sure I got the lawn mowed, and the ponds topped off and critical plants watered, etc. I’m always rewarded by the most remarkable happenings in my yard, I have a Monarch Butterfly and sometimes his friend that love to follow me around the yard, doing long lazy figure 8’s, buzzing by my head, taking a quick drink of nectar and off again. He even flew by my big window while I was eating lunch, wondering where I was?

I have all sorts of insects in the yard, besides the huge population of native bees and wasps. There is the swallowtail butterfly…

The Spicebush Swallowtail…

A hummingbird moth… (I had to look that one up!)

And I watched two dragonflies tied together doing their dragonfly thing…

And today, I was watering the newly planted Persimmon trees, and a hummingbird buzzed around me, checking me out, and looking for I’m not sure what, but I understand they find spiders and feed them to their babies. After he checked me out for awhile, he flew up into the curly willow tree and watched.

The flowers are beautiful, even though everything is stressed from the drought.

And of course, my fish greet me every morning when I come out to feed them, they are voracious little piglets…

And I have the most beautiful pond lily…

Last Saturday, I went, with two members of my weaver’s guild, to a memorial service for a beloved guild member, Hedy Lyles, who passed away last month. It was a beautiful memorial service, her handwoven fabrics were everywhere, and the stories of her life were beautiful and poignant and a testament to the full life she led. After the service, there was a repast back at her house with a lovely spread by her family. It was comforting to be with weavers from the Philadelphia Guild, the New York Guild, my own guild, the Bucks County PA Guild. Hedy was beloved by so many people.

At 1 o’clock, they opened her studio and all of its contents, yarn, books, fleeces, warps, more yarn, handspun, weaving tools, sample books; most of the things were reasonably priced, but I looked around and there was nothing I needed or wanted. I’m finished with the acquisition stage of my life, and being in Hedy’s studio, amongst all the things that made her the fantastic weaver she was, I thought again, how fleeting life is, but how weaver’s stashes get spread out through the weaving community like dandelion seeds, and was happy knowing that life will continue with the next generation of weavers.

However, there was a table in the lower level that had commercial fabrics on it. With a sign, best offer. The fabrics were mostly upholstery fabrics, brocades, decorator fabrics and all I could think of was, I could make costumes out of these! And what I can’t use, I can donate to the Shakespeare Theatre where I volunteer as a stitcher in the costume shop.

So all of this came home with me…

Mulder picked his favorite right away. The grey raw silk.

Meanwhile, on the trip back, one of my guild mates asked me about a native plant place near where we were, as we headed back to NJ from PA. I mentioned Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, the largest native plant preserve in the US, and they sold lots of native plants. A quick check on the phone, and it was 16 minutes away. How did we ever get along without a GPS?

They had to drag me away, because I filled two carts with plants, and the driver of the SUV was convinced they weren’t going to fit in the car with the loom and all the bags of yarn and my fabric purchased from Hedy’s sale. I was determined, even if I had to sit with a button bush shrub and a couple of Elderberries on my lap in my handwoven dress for the two hour trip home…

I think it funny how my priorities have changed. Now I buy plants, not yarn. I have too much yarn, you can never have too many plants, especially if you find one that is hard to find! So I have to get all these planted, in August, in a drought, which isn’t the best idea, but they were available and I don’t often get to Bowman Hill Preserve.

So the costume thing. Every Friday I go to the Shakespeare theatre costume shop and they give me some outrageous assignment, you want me to do what with this? I’ve gotten really good at taking apart things and remaking them into other things, borrowing parts from other things, and engineering a way to make it all work. It has made me look at my own closets and stash. Truth it, I don’t need any more clothes. I have a killer wardrobe, almost everything made from my own hands. But I love to sew, it is my first love, and the world is at peace when I’m one with the sewing machine. Which is saying a lot.

So next Sunday, the 24th, Montclair Early Music is sponsoring a medieval fest, and I’m going to perform with two groups, starting at noon, cello with the beginner group, and bass recorder with the regular early music group.

I have a hankering for a new costume. It’s a week away, I’ve got time! I took one of the fake suede upholstery fabrics from Hedy’s stash and some trim I bought last year from the going out of business sale at M&J trims in Manhattan. I made this…

I chose to use cording to make loops, instead of grommets. I’ve never been very confident with grommets, I don’t have good tools to apply them, but I can always devise an alternate method for pretty much everything in the textile world. So I took apart a commercial frog, and used the cording for loops and bought a pair of shoelaces for the ties. Now I have a new vest. But I kept thinking about a dress I’d seen, long and slender, lace up the front, and I started poking around my closet…

I found this…

I had made this dress, and hand beaded vest to stand for my friend Candiss Cole at her wedding in England to Roger Footit. I wore it again when I stood for my mom when she remarried in 2006. The dress was a bit legendary, but it has been hanging in the back of my closet for a long time. I haven’t figure out yet what to do with the vest, but the dress was exactly the style I had envisioned for a medieval costume, laced up the front over a full skirt, hopefully full enough I can get a cello between my legs.

I thought about it all day while I was watering and watching my insect friends. Basically I needed to cut the dress right up the middle. Armed with my new found confidence to make anything work, thanks to my vast experience now in the costume shop, after dinner tonight, I cut right up the middle of the dress. I needed something to work for the loops for the lacing, and I have bags of frogs, but none of them were the right color. I took a bunch that were shiny white, and stuck them in a pot of green tea. They came out perfect.

I used some yarn from the studio, and made a twist ply rope for the lace cord. And voila! I have a new medieval costume to wear! Still have a lot of handsewing, but I have a week!

I’m poking around in my closet to see what I can put under it. It is an outdoor event, and I’ll be sweating my butt off, but I’ll look pretty spiffy and medieval as I play early music with my friends.

Meanwhile, as plant season is drawing to a close, I’ve spent little time printing with the plants. So I grabbed some PAS mordanted silk, from maybe two years ago, and some of my favorite leaves, and created a couple of very cool pieces of silk, leaves dipped in Fe, with a logwood blanket and the second one, an osage orange blanket. The green leaf in the second one is from a nine bark cultivar, best printer on my property.

And yes, I’m still weaving, though this is getting kind of old… I have currently on my small 8-shaft floor loom, the warp that never ends. Kind of like that girl scout song, about a song that never ends… Yeah, I have a warp like that. Originally when I set up a bunch of Structo looms for teaching, I put on some ridiculous warp, like 6 yards, of 20/2 cotton, which was never going to be woven off, because students would just weave samplers to explore the technique. I want to clear all of those looms, as a number of institutions want the looms for teaching and I don’t want to do that anymore. So I’m transferring the warps, one at a time, to a floor loom so make the weaving easier. Sooo much easier… This is an overshot sampler from Robyn Spady.

After a couple yards of the sampler, I decided to change colors, and just pick one of the samples and weave that. I can use the fabric for making zip bags, or totes, or I don’t know what, but the point is, I want to weave it off.

And there is still an unknown amount on the back of the loom…

And so, between daily practice on the cello, and recorder, and new early music communities I’m rejoining, and the gardens and gardening adventures, and my volunteer work, and my vast studio stashes, there really aren’t enough hours in the day to fit in all I want to do… But I try…

Stay tuned!

A Summer Routine…

My mom mentioned she hadn’t gotten to read a blog post from me in a while. I said, just reread the last post. Life is basically just a rerun during the summer. Get up, have breakfast with my little buddy, and then go out and water.

Last post I talked about how much rain we were getting. This month, not so much. There was that flooding 5″ of rain a week ago, but nothing since. So out I go to water anything that was just planted in the last couple of weeks. Which is a number of plants!

I mow when necessary, weed when necessary, which is all the time… The interesting thing about native plants, is when they fill in, you don’t need to weed under them, but you do need to watch out for things that suddenly appear out of nowhere and are 4 feet tall because some bird pooped out the seeds. Today I pulled out four Northern Catalpa trees. There were a few Tree of Heaven seedlings, which I instantly eradicated. And though the pokeweed is native, and I kept a few bushes because they are an important food source in the fall, I don’t need 485 seedlings. So I’m always on the hunt for things that shouldn’t be on my property, and I use my plant app on my phone hourly.

The gardens are magical.

Even the lily pad in the koi pond bloomed.

My landscape designer ripped out a 40 foot tall non-native trumpet vine, and we replaced it with an American Wisteria (Wisteria frutescens), who knew there was such a thing, not to be confused with that monster non-native thing that destroys buildings.

I had additional path lighting added to one of the new planting areas. It was magical to sit in my window and look out at the lit path as dusk set in, during a rain storm.

The insects are everywhere, except mosquitos, for some reason I don’t have them. Dragonflies are everywhere. I hear dragonflies eat mosquitos…

There must be 50 different types of bees in my yard, all different sizes. Here is one on the Rattlesnake Master.

Lest you think that my life is one giant play in the dirt kind of existence, which it mostly is right now, I’m heavily into the early music world, playing recorder with a couple of different groups, and now the cello, with the early music beginner group. We had a performance at the Tenafly Nature Center last Saturday night, I wish I had a picture. It was for a Faeries and Fireflies festival, and there was a quintet of us, along with a drummer and a couple vocalists, all set up in a life size eagle’s nest built on a platform. We were in our medieval costumes and it was just the greatest experience. We even had a mama doe and four baby fawns stop to listen to a few songs.

Our Medieval Festival is coming up the end of August, and I’ll be playing bass recorder with Montclair Early Music, and cello with the beginner group called the Musettes.

I think a lot about this new path I’ve chosen, especially on the cello. I’m not particularly good at the cello, but I am always prepared, organized, and I show up. And I practice a lot. That in life, counts for a lot. Talent is a gift. But the professional part of showing up prepared and practiced counts for more! So I practice, and I show up with my music ready, in order. And I play my heart out. And each time, I get a little better.

Meanwhile, my local library in the next town has a botanical drawing class once a month. True botanical drawing requires precision. Especially on location. Laying on the ground using calipers and measuring devices, to sketch accurately a particular flower or leaf, isn’t quite my most favorite thing. I much prefer to draw from a picture that remains static, and isn’t influenced by a breeze, or by changes in lighting. One of the things I tried was to take a great flower picture. and then trace it onto my sketchbook. That way it is accurate size wise, and then I could fill it in with watercolor. But that sort of becomes like a coloring book. Which I use to love as a kid.

But now, I just want to look at the picture, figure out how things are shaped, and do a quick line sketch, toss in some color, research what I’m drawing, and call it a day.

July is my least favorite month, I hate the heat, obviously I’m a sweater girl, because I make them. But July is filled with loud thunderstorms, and fireworks, and I have a couple of animals that get traumatized easily with loud unexplained noises. So I always plan to sit on the floor of my basement, during July nights when there are fireworks or thunderstorms, with my dogs, one of them has to be sedated, and have my knitting at hand. I started a new sweater, because September will be here before you know it.

And yes, in spite of my crazy busy life, I’m still weaving. I have a powder room on my first floor, off the kitchen. It is located in the interior of the house, no windows, and therefore some protection from things like fireworks, etc. One of my dogs lays on the tile floor in there a lot.

I was using the powder room the other day, sitting there, like one does, with the dog curled up around the sink, and noticed that there was some kind of rubber debris scattered around the floor. Right away I assumed the dog chewed up something. I looked at the little bathmat on the floor, not remembering at all where it came from or how old it was, and it looked intact, so I was confused.

I turned the rug over and yikes! The rubber backing was disintegrating before my eyes.

Damn, that means I have to add to the list a trip to get a new rug for the powder room.

As I sat there, I started to think… Which one can do easily sitting a powder room…

I had just transferred a warp from a table loom, onto my floor loom, or one of them anyway. It was a colorful Rep Weave, about 25″ wide, and would be much easier to weave off spread over 8 shafts on a large floor loom instead of struggling trying to separate a dense warp on 4 shafts on a table loom. I had blown through half the repeat in just one sitting already. Yarns are vintage Silk City Fiber Contessa, Rayon/Silk, variegated, circular wound on a board to create an ikat effect.

So I got to thinking… I wonder if I could just finish that little Rep rug, and if it would fit in the area in front of the sink in the powder room. I went out to the studio, turned on some music, and got to work. Within a few hours, I had woven off the rug, stitched the ends, tossed it in the washer and dryer, and bound off the edges with some silk noil bias I had laying around.

It is my new favorite thing in the house. I love that I can instantly fix a problem with something that comes from my hands.

Oh, and the original rug? My daughter told me later, when I showed her the replacement, that the original mat had been given to her by a former co-worker 9 years ago when the co-worker was leaving the vet practice and cleaning out her locker. The co-worker kept it in her locker for her dogs when she would bring them to work with her. It didn’t owe us anything.

So my days are full, of flowers, of music, of yarn, of animals, I only wish there were more hours in a day. Fortunately I live in a climate where by late fall, the gardens will go to sleep, and I will have a few months of inside time, and by March, when I’m tired of the inside time, things outside will start to wake up. Meanwhile, there are vegetables to harvest and eat, and we are coming into tomato season, and there are a lot of tomatoes out there!

Stay tuned!

On turning 70…

May flew by in a whirlwind of events, opportunities and some major gardening…

It rained…

It is hard to figure out what to start with, since May is the month of blooming flowers, and my gardens didn’t fail to impress me. Things I planted probably 15 years ago, popped up, like foxglove, which I thought had died, but there they were in all their magnificence.

And the bearded irises, I thought all the pretty colored ones had vanished from my yard years ago. My landscape designer says it has to do with not mulching, and disturbing the surrounding soil, things that were dormant in the ground suddenly come to life.

Azaleas were gorgeous…

The red columbine climbed high…

And the peonies…

The native Cross Vine was in glorious color over the front of the gazebo.

And I discovered a Christmas fern, tucked under a Hosta, which I’d never seen before. I drew it.

It rained in May. A lot… 10.5 inches according to my frequently dumped rain gauges…

I found the most interesting insects, like this one… A Lady Beetle (lady bug) larvae. The pictures on the internet of it morphing into a lady bug are adorable.

And my frogs. Almost unheard of anymore in NJ, I have a few. They found my ponds. I look for them every day. They just sit on the rocks by the pond, zapping up bugs and flies and things that all contribute to a healthy ecosystem.

The first year growth of all of my newly planted natives is unprecedented.

Because you know, it rained… Did I mention that?

And then this happened…

My neighbor, who has a healthy amount of young grandchildren visit regularly, wants a sterile yard for her grandkids to play in. She isn’t happy I have a huge host of native bees, snakes, koi and goldfish ponds, frogs, and all sorts of beneficial bugs. She wants her precious cargo protected. It is hard to explain to people the destruction of entire ecosystems, and how much we are destroying all we take for granted with such short sighted actions. I’m compiling as much data as I can find on what the company uses, a synthetic version of Pyrethrum and hoping to at least give her a bit of education. Wish me luck…

On a happier note, I finished knitting my socks! I started them a couple years ago. Obviously there is little time for knitting. But I started a new sweater, hopefully that won’t take a couple years.

Mother’s Day, weeks ago at this point, my beloved son came and cooked for me. He made beer batter fried cod tacos, they were delicious. He hated my knives. He said he figured out what to get me for my birthday…

A couple weeks ago, I turned 70. It was a big deal because I’m triumphantly moving into Act III of my life and enjoying every minute of it. The world around me is imploding as I write, and I’m so appalled I’m paralyzed, but in my own small space in that world, I do what I can to make the world a better place, especially for the future. Leave things better than you found them…

I had no plans, so I asked a music friend to take me to lunch in Montclair, NJ. We play recorders with Montclair Early Music, and he lives in that town. I went to college in that town as well, so it holds a special place. He took me for Thai food, we had a lovely lunch, and then as a surprise, he took me a couple doors down from the restaurant to the Arthur Murray dance studio, for a tango lesson. It was just the most glorious fun. Backstory, at the spring concert for Montclair Early Music, we played a couple of challenging tango numbers. The director of the group brought in the principal dancers from the local Arthur Murray dance studio, who performed a tango for one of the numbers. My friend and I remarked about how much fun it looked and wouldn’t it be something to try… And so he signed us up for a lesson. I’d like to find a way to fit dance lessons into my already overflowing schedule. These are first world problems I know… I wish I had a picture!

That night, my son promised to take me to a new restaurant in town, very high end, and raved about on social media. We walked to the restaurant, in the rain, did I mention it rained this month, and to my complete shock, my sisters and their husbands, and my daughter who had just left for work just a couple hours before, or so I thought, were all sitting at the bar waiting for me. I was touched, one sister drove up all the way from Maryland for the occasion. It was a glorious night, and my gratitude for my son and sisters for arranging it all, knows no bounds.

Besides dinner and dancing lessons, people who know me well, gave me some much appreciated gifts. A wooden puzzle from my friend…

A hand crocheted sunflower for the garden from another friend…

New knives, which are razor sharp and beautiful from my son…

…and my daughter, who vacuums the house once a week, was appalled at the shedding pleather on my office chair, and so she ordered me a new one, which I don’t have a photo of because I’m sitting in it…

And I bought myself a beautiful used cherry wood Kung bass recorder, something I’ve always wanted, a high end performance bass. It is spectacular…

My little buddy Mulder is never far away. He curls up and makes me sit still for just a few moments…

And last Sunday I had my cello recital. It was really fun, I won’t say it was the best I’ve ever played, but I’ve come so far since last September when I first learned how to hold the cello and bow. I have a recording of my solo, which was really a trio with my teacher also on cello, and a piano, I played “Bring Him Home” from Les Misérables. Then I joined all the little cello students and we played Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and many of its Suzuki variations. I wasn’t great, but I had a blast…

And yes, I’m still a weaver and slowly working through looms when I get a chance especially when it rains, and did I mention there was a lot of rain this past month? I wove all five scarves on the warp that was inspired by the stained glass puzzle of cats.

Between each scarf I left 3″ of fringe to be divided between each scarf, with hem stitching starting and finishing each scarf.

I did a tutorial for my guild on hemstitching. I do it this way, so the entire length of all 12 yards can be tossed in the machine to wet finish. Which leaves the front and back end fringe that can get pretty messy in a washing machine. So I fuse a strip of fusible knit tricot along the fringe at either end of the 12 yards, before I throw it into the wash, which keeps things tidy, and then that gets cut off when the scarves are pressed.

Taking advantage of a now empty 8-shaft floor loom, I immediately grabbed one of the Structo table looms I’d set up a few years ago, and transferred that warp onto my floor loom.

This was an 8-shaft warp, in Tencel, in Shadow Weave, four colors and black. The pattern was from Webs. It didn’t take me long to get the six yard warp transferred, and then weave the first repeat. So much faster on a floor loom… I should get two scarves plus from this warp.

This morning, I was interviewed for a podcast, The Straight Stitch: A Podcast About Sewing and Other Fiber Arts, with Janet Szabo. We had a great time, and she told me the podcast should drop tomorrow. I’ll listen while I’m out in the garden…

This weekend marks the ninth anniversary of my husband’s death, Father’s Day weekend. I think he would have been so proud of how the kids have grown up, and what I’ve done with his beautiful gardens and ponds. I replaced the water feature I had installed right after he died, it was time. It has a little light at the top of the ball.

My landscape designer came today, to rip out more of the invasives that plagued my property, the last of the Japanese Barberry is gone, and most of the Burning Bushes, and Morrow’s Honeysuckle. She brought paw-paw trees, persimmon, ninebark, sassafras trees, and sumac. It was glorious planting in the rain…

Stay tuned…