Tuesday it was 85 degrees. Today it was 43 degrees, cold, windy, and bone chilling. This is spring in NJ.
Still… My son came and helped me clean out the vegetable garden, and I got my lettuces planted. It felt wonderful to play in the mud…
My goal was to finish the natural dye class I started a year and a half ago, through Maiwa in Vancouver by the time spring came. I valiantly plowed forward, through the winter, through the snow storms, creating color and embracing knowledge, and it has been a fantastic journey. I have a huge pile of samples, that have been washed, ironed, and are ready for final tagging, putting in a journal, and putting on the shelf. I’ve learned so much. I’m going to try to keep the indigo vat going, we will see how successful I am with that. I have an herbal friend, whom I’ll be taking a medicinal herb class starting the end of April, through the county arboretum, coming tomorrow to help sort and label all the samples. She has lots of dye stuffs, and I look forward to dyeing with a friend in the coming weeks.
As the weather allowed, I started wandering the gardens, looking for things popping up, digging under all the leaf mulch from last fall, to find smothered ground cover. I was rewarded with a lovely snow crocus, not sure where they came from, not something I planted, but a beautiful, lovely surprise.
So of course, I grabbed a bunch of yarn and dove in. Cause I had an empty loom…
I wound all the skeins into cakes, noting how much I had of each.
I wound the warp…
I threaded the loom…
I beamed the warp…
And I started sampling wefts, deciding on a lovely brown wool, though I probably won’t have enough to do all 10 yards. I’ll see how far my stash takes me and then come up with plan B…
My pond guys came today. They do a spring cleaning, drain the ponds, removing fish and apparently I had a frog, who knew, power wash, refresh, hook up filters, and get everything ready for the spring. I have two ponds, which I’ve talked about extensively, I got to see the tank holding the goldfish (and frog) while they cleaned one of the ponds. I had to leave for rehearsal so I didn’t get to see all the very large koi from the second pond.
Considering how brutal this winter was, I was so happy that it looks like all my fish survived. I had some damage to the second pond, a huge crack in the upper spillway, which my pond guy tried to repair. I may have to take a hair dryer out there by the weekend to get the patch to dry. It is damp and rainy at the moment. The waterfall had a leak, which he fixed as well. I’m crossing my fingers the water level holds. I hate mucking around the ponds when the water is freezing.
The end of March, I had my first of many spring concerts, this one with New Jersey Early Music. I played both bass recorder, and cello. That’s me in the back row on the right. It is so much fun to play/perform, with some really great, talented people. We all spend countless hours practicing, rehearsing, dressing up, and performing. All volunteer. They have all been so patient and kind as I try hard to learn the cello. I’m finally at a point where I don’t wince as I draw the bow across. Much of the time now, I love the sound I get.
My next concert is April 19th, with Montclair Early Music.
I took a drive down to Maryland last weekend, to have a good visit with my almost 95 year old mom. She has had some issues this winter, which was tough on everyone, and spent much of it in and out of the hospital. I couldn’t believe how fantastic she looked when I got down there, I want to be her when I grow up.
I’m hoping any day now to hear the Sweet Georgia Yarn Podcast I recorded a few weeks ago. And a week or so ago, I was a panelist on the Handweavers Guild of America Careers in Textiles Symposium. As I sat staring at the screen, in my best professional expression, Mulder is getting into all sorts of situations to grab my attention… This basket sits on the desk where I’m recording… He makes me laugh…
We have had some pretty rainy weather, and earlier in the week, on the way to one of my many rehearsals, it started to rain, even though the sun was shining. Sure enough, as I headed southeast, every time I turned a corner or went around a bend, there was the most spectacular rainbow waiting for me. I felt like it was a sign from the universe that all will be well. At one point, I went around a bend and there was a double rainbow.
The world is a mess right now. I’m sick with worry about things I can’t do anything about. But spring is here, and nature has a way of thumbing its nose at the stupidity of man, and blossoming forth in spite of us. I’m energized, and hopeful. My daughter gave me a portable watercolor set with sketchbook, so I can draw my garden wherever I am. I drew the first spring flower I saw.
Stay tuned…