porcupine precedes paper

5:58 am, i wanted to find the little whippersnapper...

that burl-like nodule...that's the critter...

busted

this is one unhappy found-out porcupine.

and then a surprise at the end of the day, waiting for me. the yahoo handpapermakers 2009 swatch swap X anniversary book.

yep, it came with all those little hearts. 

it's always fun to see the swatches in this book. and akua wrote a poem for it, so i have lots to read, touch, smell, and look at. no, i will not taste any.

this gentleman is my neighbor, arizona (i think his name is arizona) a big half draft, half quarter horse. he's been here since i moved here, 23 years ago. he was so excited when i stopped my car to take a quick photo this morning. i was foolish and had no carrot. an alliterative red letter day, porcupine procurement, horse happiness, and papermaking pleasure. 

mud season arriving, tuesday afternoon

a woman and her dog

what the porcupine did

maple sap from the injury above

it's coming

it IS

wuh-hoo!

although there is little mud here, there is plenty of punky snow and accumulated detritis. and yesterday morning i saw the porcupine falumphing out of the yard and into the woods. i didn't get a photo, though, because i also smelled skunk and wasn't sure where it was. never surprise or annoy a skunk.

confession

dateline: north of the blue line (figure that one out!)


headline: the camera works

reason: brilliant daughter said, did you try different batteries? i replied, of course! she said, try the remote batteries, we know they work. (remote, you say, in the luddite house? yes, dvd has one!) so i did try. camera popped out it's lens and said, let me shoot, woman! and i am humbled and rejoicing. 


photos: after i nap. i also have a sinus infection. staying home from yoga, even.

shifu, linen warp, paper weft: thai unriyu and indigo kozo 

springing, early

a lovely day. windy and sunny and warm--in the 40s and some bits of ground showing. i hung laundry out this morning. thinking of growing things; i'm not much of a gardener. there's a perennial border where i grow some plants i like. last year i cleared a spot to grow flax. i have done so several times before, but have never had the lovely white flowered flax that i purchased years ago from mrs. chase in (i think) maine. last year i grew a blue flowered variety, and the growing season was not flax friendly. 

my old computer died last fall and took along with it my pictures of the whole season. but here is the flax harvest retting. it's dry and ready to hackle in preparation for spinning or papermaking. the flax was short, and fine, and of poor quality.


on that same growing spot, i will spread some compost and manure, and will grow this year's crop, indigo. first, though, i need to rent a space in a friend's greenhouse and start seedlings. it's that time of year, and i'm ready to grow polygonum tinctorium, japanese indigo. i hope i can find a grower with extra space!


farmers buy and sell springing heifers (in the world of huge farms, i think that kind of exchange may be disappearing). i like the word springing.

adjustment

my wonderful canon powershot won't turn on. i am vexed and miffed, and more than a little of both. when you pay $230.00 for a camera it should work for more than one year and one week, especially if it has had as much tlc as this one has. arrgh!!!! 

i will post later, but i feel like my process is out of whack! weird. so here's a photo. i feel exactly like this when dealing with technology. this is a crocheted raffia basket, dyed with black walnut. the body is about 3 inches in diameter and it's reversible. 

collaboration

when someone makes something both useful and beautiful, it comes from somewhere, it doesn't occur in a vacuum. i make plenty of useless objects, some beautiful, some not. some are, i hope, provocative. sometimes something is just plain fine. just before my camera died, i took two shots of these wristies, or fingerless gloves. i had some machine spun, sock weight wool with nylon that i space dyed last summer. the dyes were acid dyes, dye baths that were hanging around after dyeing vellum. i think i might have used three or four baths to come up with the variegation.

hannah knits wristies and for these long, elegant ones, she picked this skein. i think they're lovely, but find them too long for my taste, they bunch up more than i'm happy with. they're quite long, about 12 inches. if i were less curmudgeonly, it wouldn't bug me.


one pair of fingerless gloves = four dyebaths, two friends (carol and mark) to dye vellum with, one knitter, one dyer, one skein of wool. she thinks they're "eh". i think they're lovely.

joke's on me

louise has a sister/brother and a mom, because there are three and it's obvious they are "together". all three of them hung out in the back yard today. north of here, where i work it's mud season, but here we still have enough snow cover to still be in winter. that's why louise and family like my yard, red pine needles, spots of grass, and the brushy areas i leave because i don't live in town. yesterday i spotted two of them resting and chewing their cuds. i actually saw them chewing!

so, ok, i am not a sports person, but i did watch a bit of the olympics at my friend's place and last saturday hannah and i spent a l...o...n...g... time watching curling. and being a textile person i thought to comment on the norwegian team's argyle pants. but hannah's done it for me on her blog. 


i'll wait for the next olympics, it's a summer one, right? when maybe i'll get to see ian millar, my hero, ride again. for me, it's all about the horses. and me, i once rode in the same flat class with him. wonder of wonders.

(s)pineview

spine view of the shifu cover and linen tackets, the ends of which were tucked back in.

signatures of handmade papers, shifu covered flax covers, a book meant to be touched. a few more pictures of this book. it's in the mail. it smells good!

completed

i've finished a commission for a friend. i don't usually take on this kind of project, mostly because i can't be honest working like this. other issues get in the way. but this piece didn't work like that, i took a chance, and i was able to combine my loves, paper, shifu, dyeing, sewing, and put them all together for someone who trusted the work, trusted my work. trusted my work. isn't that amazing?

8:15 saturday

so we're getting a bit of the snow, but at 36 degrees, it's just more slush

not bad to look at, though i'm not looking forward to shoveling the driveway.