Adopted from Abby, I am enjoying this exercise in being truly present and aware of the full sensory experience of my days.
Tasting: Fresh, homemade tortillas. We are addicts.
Hearing: Edith Piaf while I work.
Seeing: Budding leaves…budding leaves! My heart leapt.
Feeling: The smooth top of a blewit, just like a perfectly cooked pancake.
Smelling: The levain C has lovingly prepared for Sunday morning cinnamon rolls. Wild-caught yeast. Heavenly.
New felt in the shop tomorrow.
The boys are baking brown bread.
I’m staring at this:
…and I know it’s not everything. Four moves in one year has dispersed much of my paperwork throughout countless hastily packed boxes. I tried my best to keep it all accessible, but there were times when it just was not the priority. I’m sure in a few months (she says hopefully) when we really truly really unpack our things again, I will find a pile or two of receipts I could have written off, but oh, well. It’s not as if the government gives a fig if I short-change myself.
I should just get on it, get it over with and move on.
But I’m just so easily distracted.
There are things to finish and photograph and list and make and do and and worry about and there is a small person gleefully licking batter off a spatula to my left, the sun peeking through the clouds to my right…all signs pointing to the fact that there are better things to do with my day than sigh heavily at this stack of papers.
I will shrug it off to go play for a while, but I will dwell on the fact that there are pieces of paper hiding out amongst the rest of our things in boxes. Like our dishes. Those receipts are hanging out with the dishes and I want to unpack them. I miss the sound of them, the weight of them and the comfort in simply knowing where they are. You can replace “dishes” with any number of things one has in their home that makes it cozy and undeniably theirs.
This time next year, I will be taking my neat files out of the filing cabinet, where they have been sitting in the same place for many months, quietly accepting deposits. Everything will be right where I need it. I will be home.
I don’t have much to complain about then, do I?
Wool calls.
This morning, my dear friend Migraine had not yet subsided. She is an every-other-monthly visitor around these parts and usually she takes a hike sometime during the night and I wake up with a clear head. To my surprise, she decided to stay for breakfast this time around, so we curled up with a blanket, some tea and a hot water bottle (because Lady Migraine is always the harbinger of another special visitor) and relaxed with a project while she slowly took her leave.
The sun peeked in and out. I felt better. A walk was had in which it was discovered that the remaining oak galls are waterlogged and getting a wee…nasty. There will be no ink-making, then, as the dyebath from the previous post or two has been totally exhausted. Ink for my imaginary stone ink pot will have to come from another source and/or wait for a different season.
A little behind schedule, but some things are in their finishing stages…
Yes, Crewel and Unusual will be open shortly.
And new felt in the usual place later this week.
There were many things on the list that didn’t happen, but I feel accomplished despite waking up on the wrong side of my head. In fact, it was a perfect combination of forced relaxation and the compulsion to create. Did I mention there were cuddles involved?
In between said cuddles, the Boy turned his attention to property maintenance.
Monday will find me under a pile of tax-related nonsense. I shall attempt to make sense of it. Wish me luck!
This week I am grateful for:
* My hands. For a thousand reasons.
* The flow of fresh ideas.
* The perfectly-sized spaghetti squash we found at the farmer’s market.
* The Boy who says, “Mama, you’re special to me. I want to snuggle you,” even though I said “Just a minute” for the last ten fifteen minutes.
* Bubble wrap. And I’ll show you why.
So, Gratitude Friday is going to move over to…um,…how about Gratitude Thursday??? I have become smitten with Five Senses Friday via Abby Try Again and…well, Five Senses Thursday just doesn’t quite have the same ring, you know?
Yep.
Pining for the snow I have missed this winter, I spun up a little comfort:
xoxoxo
It worked! Check out the raw silk fabric on the right…a true black!
The fiber on the left is suri alpaca…I did not soak it in the vinegar/rust mordanting bath as it would likely have damaged the fiber. I am going to keep my eyes out for an iron pot or cauldron so as not to need the vinegar in future.
The silk, however…I’m just thrilled with the results. Before we boil it down for writing ink, I’m going to try to find some raw cotton and linen fabrics to put in before the bath gets funky…
…not that it will be difficult to find more galls:
We weren’t feeling very inspired for Baking Tuesday this week…the sourdough starter is getting goooooood (C harnessed some wild yeast, so has grown his starter without store-bought. It’s very exciting), but oftentimes it’s nice to make something together that we can all of us eat. C and the Boy will bake their bread, but the other day we imagined up a Lunch Pie. Kale, potatoes, onions, eggs (I can tolerate pastured eggs every once in a while now…healing is occuring!), raw goat’s milk and cheese, pastured locally-raised bacon and a gluten-free crust. Of course, the fun was in that crust…lions and bears and stars and birds, oh my!…cookie cutters must be made of pure joy. While the pie was baking and then cooling, an entire hour was filled with pushing flour around the rolling board with the cookie cutter “graders.”
A new yarn style in the shop you will be seeing a lot more of:
Charlotte – a little bit of everything, carded up and spun using the long-draw technique. Light and fine, for your lace-y knitting pleasure.
Cheers!
We have experiments aplenty to fill our wet winter days.
Miss M and I traipsed about the neighborhood on a sloppy day last week and picked a basketful of sopping oak apples (aka galls).
We had to dry them out before they could be smashed into bits…
And now they are in a dyepot with raw silk scraps, a silk scarf, some suri alpaca locks and tussah silk noil. We brought it to a simmer for an hour or so, but otherwise the mixture has just been sitting around for a couple of days. Tonight, we combine vinegar and steel wool to make an acid/rust bath to dip all the material into, so as to darken and set the dye. The goal here is black.
Once the materials are removed from the dyepot, we will boil it down to make ink (we hope). I’ve been reading Diary of an Early American Boy and am now obsessed with the idea of a little stone inkpot and a crow quill to write with. I daydream about teaching my son the art of beautiful, thoughtful penmanship.
In the meantime, C has been working on a barn. It started out as a “doghouse” project to work on with the Boy, who desperately wanted a home for his stuffed doggie. It has become something much more than that…a work of love with mortise and tenon construction, wooden pegs, all the pieces fitting neatly together. It will be the Boy’s job to pound in all the wooden pegs and give it all a good rubdown with beeswax when construction is complete.
C needs to do a lot more of this…it’s where he finds his joy…he’s thinking rabbit hutches and coops for little wooden friends…
The rain has stopped…time to get out and explore the damp world. Loads of plying to look forward to when we come back inside…
This will be brief, as I had a full day of public transportation and an awesome felting workshop at Urban Fauna Studio today. I had a great group of students who all made beautiful pieces of nuno felt. I’m always very inspired after a workshop…expect some new pieces in the near, near future. Now, though…me sleepy.
So, C has picked a winner out of the hat (okay, no hat…more like crumpled pieces of paper on the kitchen table. Like I said, me sleepy).
The winner is Holly, who commented via LJ. Congrats and Hooray!
Thanks so much for playing everyone…WordPress might not have told you, but I did answer all of your thoughtful questions. 
As the Boy would say, I could fall asleep “right this even minute.”
After lights-out, the Boy often shares a Deep Thought or two. Sometimes he asks for my input on an Important Question…
Tonight he wanted to know why the stars are like tiny glowing lentils.
Love.
In other news, the rain hath given us a LAKE!
So, of course, we ran outside with a turkey baster.
Usually, there would be grass behind him, maybe some leaves and pine needles. Once pails and jars had been filled and dumped and filled again, and the baster sufficiently clogged with muddy water, we moved on to lake soccer!!!! We were sopping, dripping and bedraggled with glee when we finally came inside for some hot soup.
Sledding it ain’t, but we dig the H2O in all its forms. All our favorite haunts will be quenched and lush.
I have been enjoying the dark, damp days, but the low light level did not help me get a decent shot of the most recent batch of kimchi put up in the crock today. This time, C used watermelon radishes, kale and dragon carrots. The colors will seep and blend as the mixture ferments, but the bright pink disks of radish, deep green of the kale and the blood orange colored carrots made for quite the mouth-watering vision of loveliness. The Boy had a blast choppity chopping.
Tomorrow I will be fulling a batch of long-draw 2-ply yarns. I have been loving this method of spinning batts, whether textured or smooth, but it is quite time-consuming. They are, however, quite fine and would be lovely for lacework. I’m getting about 90+ yards per ounce.
I’ll leave you with something tweedy (Dijon Tweed):
Don’t forget to enter the ‘Tangled’ GIVEAWAY! Scroll down or click here to comment on yesterday’s post before midnight Friday. I’m enjoying everyone’s comments and questions! Off to answer some.
Oh, and thank you, AmpuTeeHee, from the bottom of my heart, for sharing Pride and Prejudice as told using Emoticons. It brought a smile to my face, too.
When the world gives you rain…and LOTS of it…make butter.
Miss M used pasteurized cream and it came together very quickly and while the butter was very nice, it left her with thin, watery buttermilk. My mother-in-law put lemon salt in half of the butter, which was AWESOME.
I cannot digest pasteurized milk so I used fresh raw cream for my butter and while it took forever to separate, I have rich buttermilk (we will use it for baking) and amazing butter. I thought about adding herbs while it was so soft and creamy, but it seemed a shame not to allow the full butter flavor to be the star of the show…just some salt and it’s perfect. I think I need a churn. And a dexter cow.
Which would require getting away from this horrid urbanity. It’s killing me slowly and I need to get back to the woods. After four years away, the Bay Area feels stifling and oppressive. I am adrift, cut off from my dearest friends and community whom I left 3000 miles behind, longing to return to my rural existence. I thought I would feel somehow at home, coming back here, but I just feel like I’m going to crawl out of my own skin.
Our search takes us up into Oregon…the job hunt is difficult without word-of-mouth connections as we had in Vermont, but perhaps enough of our at-home biz pursuits will come to fruition so as not to need the day job. We shall see.
In the meantime, I’m working on wholesale orders this month, scheduling workshops and stocking up for a new event:
CRAFT HAPPY! This event is happening March 20th, 10AM at the Niles Banquet Hall in Fremont, CA. I’ll post more about it later as the event gets closer, but if you’re local, please do save the date!
And, because every stormy day needs a GIVEAWAY…
Please leave a comment on this post between now and Friday midnight and I will draw a winner on Saturday for the above-pictured ‘Tangled’ nuno felt scarf/necklace.
One stipulation: in your comment, tell me something about yourself and/or ask me a question you’d like me to answer. No pressure. If you want to just tell me your favorite ice cream flavor, that will do as well.
Off to read to the Boy, and when C gets home from working on a leaking roof (which I’m thrilled about him doing in this thunderstorm, let me tell you) they are going to build a doghouse for a certain favorite stuffed animal. Wednesday has been “woodworking day” these past few weeks, and it’s been a joy and a challenge to find projects that hold the Boy’s interest…so far, we know he does not enjoying prolonged periods of sanding. Today, he’ll be hammering in pegs…I’m pretty sure that will bring him a great deal more satisfaction.
Hello!
So, I was going to post a link to a nuno scarf I donated to Craft Hope on Etsy. But, it’s gone! Hooray, you awesome people! All proceeds from Craft Hope’s sales are being donated to Doctors Without Borders in Haiti. So, please, go visit them here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/crafthope and check out all the other wonderful contributions made by Etsy artists to support the relief effort. And, of course, if you are an artist, I hope you will consider making a donation.
Peace.
More tomorrow and a giveaway. Tee hee.
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