Cleaning Serendipity

Ok, I am in search of my Embellish Knit I cord maker. I know I have one and I know it is somewhere in this house. I will find it but the object is to find it before I forget about the project I have in mind which requires I find it in the first place.

As a result of this desperate search, I have now cleaned 3 shelves of my yarn / fiber closet. (Why do I get into these things?) Anyway, as I was starting on shelf # 4, I opened a box which had some of my well aged natural cotton fiber in it. Oh great JOY; I found the handspun, natural colored cotton tapestry necklace I wove sometime between 1995 and 1999. It has been missing since 2006. I knew somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind that I had put it in a box of colored cottons because I had used it to show the various cottons in a workshop I was teaching. I had long since searched the "other" cotton stash and never could find it.

This is like Christmas, my birthday, and the 4th of July all rolled into one big festive event. I have found a long lost friend which had hours of my work in it.



Ok, for some electronic reason the picture is coming up sideways. Please turn your head to view it as I have exhausted my abilities to get it turned the way it is on my computer. Some days Electric and Magic are indeed the same thing!

A Garden of Love

I have an area of my yard that Robert (who controls the grass for me) calls my Heart Garden. I love that name. I have planted things that I love in it just because I like them . There are amaryllis, rosemary, daylillies, tansy,coreopsis, and more.

I started looking around my yard the other day and realized how many friends have given me flowers. Jan C gave me double blossom daylillies. Ruth W. gave me spider lillies, and Eilene A. gave me walking lillies. All of those were transported from FL to here when I moved 9 years ago. It's like bringing friends with you.The amaryllis pictured above was given to me by my father over 17 years ago. Actually this is probably an offshoot of the original plant but I think of him everytime I look at it. He almost always sent us a red amaryllis for Christmas. I sent my sister 3 amaryllis a couple of years ago for Christmas hoping it would have the same special memories for her as it does for me.



The Bee Balm pictured above was given to me last year by my friend Cam. She is a wonderful gardener and our friendship extends over 58 years. I have some Spider Wort which I treasure because it came from the yard of Mrs. Camille, Cam's mother. When I look at it I remember Mrs. Camille's fabulous sense of humor and I feel connected to her even though she is gone.


Another friend, Maureen M, gave me some
Easter lillies from her garden this year. They
remind me of her sweet spirit and strong faith.



Dianne S is a special neighbor and friend. We share our love of crafts as well as our involvement in Emmaus. From her garden came these African lillies and it is so special to be able to look out my front window and see the mother plant in her flower bed.

I enjoy going to the nursery and buying plants but I think the ones I treasure the most are those that come with the love of friendship attached.

Pottery and fiber pictures

Here are the pictures as promised. The luscious fibers were purchased at SFFA. The tan/grey/lavendar is bombyx silk from Chasing Rainbows. The blue/purple braid is Merino and seacell which should be fun to spin.

The braid below is bombyx silk in, of course, blues/turquoise/purple.




You may notice something of a trend in the colors in the fiber and the pottery that I purchased. It's probably some sort of blue / purple sickness but apparently it carries over from the fiber to the pottery.



Ok, I finally got around to photographing the pottery I got in Seagrove, NC area. The problem is deciding what will be a gift and what I will keep.

Cleaning and playing

5, that's right, 5 big shelves that are now clean and orderly! One whole bookcase is done (except for what's on the very top but surely that doesn't count).

This milestone was achieved by alternating working on the bookcase, knitting, Bible study, playing with the dogs, and congratulating myself on being so productive. It takes a lot of more interesting things to balance the cleaning / straightening projects.

I'll have to think about what to tackle next. In the meantime, I am having such fun changing the persona on Firefox. I love playing with different backgrounds and Firefox makes it so easy. Today is all about pinks, and purples, and trees. There is a huge selection to choose from and, once again, it is a diversion from picking up the stuff I have accumulated. It really is my mission in life to teach people how to play. We often take ourselves way too seriously.

Starting to Shovel

You would think that completely cleaning out and straightening 3 shelves (not 3 bookcases, 3 shelves) wouldn't be such a huge deal. It has taken me the better part of a day. Most of the day was spent trying to get motivated to attack the shelves. Now this is where I could use a clone. The clone wouldn't throw out anything I wanted to keep and could do all the grunge work. Ok, maybe a clone without my procrastinator gene would work best.

It's such a shame that the bookcase is behind me as I sit at the computer. I need to turn around often. The rest of the room is still in the "surely a windstorm came through here" decor. That's what I mostly see so I'll be turning around a lot. Stuff in the middle of the room is so high I can't see the 2 lower shelves of the bookcase which I haven't cleaned and straightened. Hmm, maybe that's not such a bad thing.

I even have a large stack of books to take to knitting tonight to share, with the understanding that they don't come back to me! Naturally none of them are knitting books as I am still actively doing that.

Again, the clone thing would come in handy as one could knit, one could dye fiber, one could spin, one could make paper and then books, and one could go out for food when necessary. I could rotate around to which ever activity appealed to me at the moment. I may be on to something here.

I have taken the pictures of the pottery but in this mad burst of cleaning/sorting/tossing I haven't uploaded them yet. I will soon. You just know this shoveling thing isn't going to last.

Harry lives!

Ever have one of those just plain fun days? Today was one of those really extra special times . I went to a Quidditch match between LSU and the Texas Aggies. Great time! Five of us from the knitting group went having learned about it from Ravelry.

So we ate a late lunch, knitted and watched some great Quidditch. Kudos to all who play and survive. Great spectator sport between watching what's going on on the playing field and looking for the snitch. The funniest part was when the snitch opted for the lake in order not to be caught but between the ducks and the water lillies it may not have been the best tactical decision. The LSU seeker managed to finally get the snitch despite having his head put under water for an instant.

I learned that wooden brooms are better than plastic brooms as they don't break as easily but on the other hand, if something is going to connect with some part of my anatomy, I'd just as soon it broke. However, the players don't see it that way and they prefer the wooden brooms.

If you hear of a Quidditch match near you, I encourage you to go. It is a fast paced game which is not gentle and requires quite a bit of athletic ability on the part of the teams. If you are not familiar with Quidditch then immediately read all the Harry Potter books and then go see a game. It's worth the trip.

I am still knitting on the enterlac tote bag but should finish within the next day or so and can then felt it. Feel like I have been knitting on it for a long time but it is just a week. I am enjoying working with the Knit Picks yarn and will definitely use more of it in the future.

I'll get a picture before it is felted and then another one after the felting.

The weeds in the garden are calling.

2 Springs

The only thing better than one gorgeous Spring, is 2 gorgeous Springs which I had this year.
The dogwoods in NC were really awesome and I would have taken lots of pictures . The problem was that I was usually driving down the road at 70 mph and it is really, really hard to get a good picture that way.

Speaking of roads...one of my favorite ones is Hwy 64 in NC which runs between Asheboro and the Raleigh area. It's a very pleasant drive, good road and the scenery is so peaceful. Just south of Asheboro is Seagrove which I discovered this trip. I had read about it but never been able to stop before now. Talk about pottery heaven!!! There are at least 100 potters in the area and I only had time to visit 10 of them but did manage to load up the car with some interesting items. Some will be gifts if I can bear to part with them. Still thinking about that. I love my friends but this stuff is really great. Functional pottery in blues are a weakness with me. Still looking for the perfect squatty teapot but I'll find it one day. I have a vision in my head of exactly what it will look like. I'm enjoying the search and it has certainly led to other wonderful things.

Southeast Fiber Forum was lots of fun, particularly getting to visit with Dan and Cheryl. I chickened out on staying at the rental house on the side of a mountain. I have discovered that I am a flat lander and really don't enjoy driving on narrow roads that go up , around, and have sharp turns with big drop offs. That sort of driving does terrible things to my insides.

As a result of this, I ended up staying at a motel in the valley which welcomed dogs. There was about 3/4 of an acre for the dogs to wander (although I never did take them off leash). Behind the property was a wonderful fast moving stream which several mallard ducks were enjoying. It was too funny watching them paddle upstream and not move from where they were.

Allie and Conner thought the water in the stream was nectar and they almost fell in several times trying to get a drink without getting their feet wet. Shelties are very fussy about getting their feet wet sometimes and Allie is worse than most. At one point she was almost standing on her nose with her rear up in the air hanging over the edge of the stream. Naturally, I didn't have my camera with me then either. On the plus side, I did manage to resist the urge to give her a shove just to see what would happen.

The class on entrelac knitting at SFFA was great fun. Very relaxed and entertaining to knit. I am still working on finishing my bag but it is an enjoyable knit. The instructor, Lorie Helms, was great and I look forward to taking another class from her in the future.

The next thing on my list is getting another cell phone which has GPS. I got lost twice on this trip--silly mistakes but it took time to get back on track of where I was supposed to be. Also managed to leave the a/c charger for my cell phone in the motel room which of course they don't have. Seems it is now hard to get them for the phone I have so if I want to charge my phone, I can do it while driving around. SIGH.

Great to be back home but the weather in NC was wonderful and I miss the coolness already.

Oh, I purchased some merino/seacell fiber and also some dyed bombyx silk all of which is in the blue / lavendar color range, of course. Had to buy some fiber to put around the pottery.