On the water

Yesterday was the absolutely perfect day to get on the water.   Sunny, temp in the low 70s, light breeze.  So I put aside the to-do list and loaded the kayak.

I decided to go to my 2nd favorite kayak location, Black Creek, on the Scottsville end, where I'd get lots of twists and turns and plenty of trees.  Plus a handicapped-accessible loading dock that's a breeze to use.  Since the water is high, I wouldn't have to worry about the MANY underwater tree trunks this creek is loaded with.

I set out, happy as a clam.  After a short time I came to one of my favorite sights, an old double-bridge.  How beautiful is that?!  

As a rule, I go through the right side heading out.  Kind of like staying to the right on the road.  Hah!  I got about 80% of the way through and it was clear that unless I was willing to lay down backwards on the boat and somehow simultaneously work against the current, I wasn't going to get through. 

There was definitely not enough height to either turn around or back paddle my way out, so pushing on the 'ceiling' with my hands, I backed myself out without too much difficulty.  I backed up in the creek, deciding if I would risk the other side of the bridge, try to explore some of the other side-shoots of the creek (where I'd never been so had no idea where the dead ends were), or be sad and call it a day.  I decided to try the left side, and made it through without much trouble.

I paddled upstream for about 30 minutes and my hip was not just mumbling, it was grumbling.  Much  as it would make for a short trip, I figured I had to turn around and go back to the dock.  I took another photo of the bridge heading back, and it's really easy to see what was going on earlier.

Now, I've seen people fishing in rowboats with small motors on this creek in the past, and they've made it through the bridge.  The water is just high.  Everywhere.  This is apparently the 3rd wettest spring on record in our area.  I am NOT COMPLAINING!  I know lots of places are really hurting for water.

I wonder where I'll decide to head next week?

Happy Mother's Day

 Maybe you've been waiting to see what I'd do with those little woven hearts I made.  Mother's Day seemed like a good time to start my outdoor display this year.

I'm hoping it brings people smiles.  And that plenty of people leave hearts here for others.  Unlike my kindness rocks last year, I will not be making close to 500 hearts this year.  When I'm tired of making them, the display will be done.

WOW to hats and gardens

 The Ontario County Arts Council fundraiser was held last Saturday. I must say, they did a fantastic job.  The event was fun, they carried the theme well throughout the activities, and I’m guessing they did okay raising $$. (Although I’m positive that the event cost LOTS of volunteer hours. And of course u have no idea what their fundraising target was, so no clue if they hit it.)

I was pleased that both of my hats sold.  I think the winning bid on each was $30 each, but to be honest I sort of lost track. 

Here are 2 of my favorites.

If I recall correctly, the maker of this hat said she used actual peacock, goose, turkey, chicken, and duck feathers.  It was beautifully balanced and drop dead gorgeous.

This fun hat had a mama chicken and three little fuzzy chicks.  It made me smile.

Now for some beauty from my garden.  

My crabapple tree is always a knockout.  I draw lots of compliments from passers-by.  It has grown from a small sapling to a large beauty in just a decade.

A few years ago I planted a double-flowered kerria near the crab, and they always flower together with their beautiful complementary colors.

I wove a few scarves and have some more towels on the loom, but nothing to show yet.  Maybe next time you stop by.  ;-)

Recycling made wild

 What do these two items have in common?

Part of an old book... 

...and a colorful calendar?

I'm betting you'll never guess!

They can both be made into..................hats!

This particular creative adventure started with an announcement that the Ontario County Arts Council was having a fundraiser, and they were inviting people to make 'fantastical, imaginative' hats.  Those hats would be sold at an event to raise money.  I have almost never been motivated by such an announcement, but for some reason I was this time.    

So I grabbed a few old paperbacks that had been stagnating in my little free library, deciding that I'd make some altered books into a hat somehow.  I've not done this before, so spent some time online learning.  My hat theme, which seemed fitting for this event, would be The Mad Hatter's Tea Party.  I began by folding a book into a lovely, rather fancy teapot.  Before I was half done, I realized this wouldn't work.  The teapot alone would weigh a bit over a pound, and with everything else that would be needed to make it into a hat, that would be too heavy.  

Started again with another, smaller book, and a smaller design for a simpler teapot.  This was working, and here's my finished teapot.

Then I made a cup to accompany it.  Twice, as I didn't like the first one.  But....how would I put these things together to create a hat?  After I'd done a lot of thinking about options, I spent some time wandering the aisles of a local dollar store.  Without further ado, here's the finished hat.

Um....okay.  It looks decent sitting on a table, but how could that be worn?

I must say, it's a bit tippy, and someone who moves more smoothly and gracefully than I will have to model it for the show at the fundraiser.

Now, I was satisfied with that hat, but somehow wasn't done yet.  I had another, completely different idea for a second hat.  I wasn't at all sure it would work but wanted to try.  Someone in my BuyNothing group was getting rid of some calendars with large color photographs, so I took them off her hands.  Spent some time trying out cutting, folding and gluing them into spikes before I got the look I had in mind.  The second hat, titled I'm Fascinated, makes me really happy.  The spiky part is tied and glued onto a narrow headband, so it's easy to wear.

This is my (ahem) artistic take on the fascinators that I first saw on the Royal Family at a wedding.  I've since seem lots more of them.  I'm sure none are made from an old calendar.  :-)

The fundraiser will be held next weekend.  I'm excited to see what creative things others have come up with, and hope the Arts Council raises a good chunk of change with this event.

Rocks...and more

 In 2023 & 2024 I had Sssid, the Rock Snake outside my home.  Sssid encouraged people to paint rocks and place them along the sidewalk.

People definitely participated.  If I recall correctly, I had something over 100 rocks placed each year.  Some clearly painted by little kids, some truly mini works of art.

I wanted to do something different last year, so I created kindness rocks.  (Truth be told, I'd been painting and distributing small numbers of kindess rocks throughout my neighborhood for over a year by this time.)

I clearly had NO IDEA when I started what this would grow into.  By the time I stopped in September, I had distributed almost 600 rocks!!  99% of those were rocks I had painted.  I had to first find rocks of the appropriate size, rocks that relatively smooth on at least one size so they could be written on.  Then I painted all the rocks, on both sides, with a lavender outdoor paint I had, and then I could write on them.  On one side (what I considered the back) of every rock I had written Kindess rocks!  On the other I'd written various little sayings encouraging people to be kind.  

This year I did not want to do the same thing, although I do want to send a similar message.  IMHO the world really needs people who consciously put kindness and caring into the world.  Every day.  In both large and small ways, but probably focusing mainly on 1-1 interactions.  So I have a concept that I'm working on.

Have a heart.  

I haven't yet worked out exactly what my sign will say.  Something on the order of "Find a heart, make a heart, have a heart."  But I am most assuredly NOT making many hundreds of hearts.  These little woven hearts are the start.  I intend to walk along the beach - when we actually have some decent weather - and hope to find vaguely heart-shaped rocks.  I plan to get some polymer clay and make and bake some hearts.  I hope I can find some natural items (pine cones?  acorn caps?  other things I haven't yet thought of) that I can use a dab of hot glue to stick together in roughly heart shapes.  Leaves or flowers would be great, but they will blow away too easily.  

I want part of the message to absolutely be for others to find and/or make hearts and leave them here to share with others.  I'd kind of hate my sign to say something like 'please take only one' (I know for a fact that plenty of people took more than one rock last year), but I don't know what the best words are yet.  I'd love your suggestions.

WHAT? WHY?

Why, after almost 2 years, am I putting up a post now?  Because I spent 3 days moving 176 posts from my WP site to here, it got me in a head space that said I should do a current one.  So...

Here's my most recent weaving...

I've sent 2 of these lovely lace shawls to The Copper Shop, a gallery in East Aurora that usually has a few pieces of my work for sale, and put 2 up in my Etsy shop.  

 All warp is 10/2 mercerized cotton, sett at 20 ends per inch.  Both of the Peach Sorbet shawls are 50% cotton and 50% silk.  Lovely drape and feel.  As for the Lemon Sorbet, one is 100% cotton, the other is 50% cotton, 25% cashmere, and 25% silk.  That last is just so....sublime.

I had such a good time weaving the shawls, that I'm going to modify the weaving draft slightly and weave a few scarves with basically the same lace pattern.  Then I have more ideas, having been inspired by looking at 850 (!) old blog posts.  You'll have to watch and see if I decide to post more.

Two for May - YAY!

I finished this towel warp a few weeks ago, but realize I forgot to include it in my last post.

I wove 8 of them, these 3 with a cream weft, and a different color weft for each of the remaining 5. You can see them in my Etsy shop. Along with this shawl I showed you on the loom in early April.

In other fiber-y pursuits, I was motivated to do some embroidery. In my pre-teen years my Mom taught me how to embroider wit designs stamped/transferred on fabric. Honestly I don’t remember what I made. Pillowcases? Towels? Something else? Sure beats me. Then as a young woman I ‘graduated’ to counted cross stitch. After my husband died I created new Christmas stockings for the kids and I. Counted cross stitch on navy backgrounds. All using someone else’s designs.

A year ago I took a beginning embroidery class at the Weaving & Fiber Arts Center. We hadn’t offered such a class in many years, I knew I liked the teacher, and wanted to be sure the class wasn’t cancelled for lack of enrollment. I didn’t expect to learn new stitches, and I didn’t. I also didn’t expect to be motivated to do something new, but I was. In January I stitched my Christmas cards for 2024. I started with someone else’s design and ultimately made a few of my own. They were all admittedly simple designs, as was appropriate for their purpose.

Then a few weeks ago a friend sent me a link to an upcoming unjuried show. Some years ago (I looked it up – 2018! Where doe the time go??) I’d participated in a (juried) show called Co-Crafting Democracy. Well, the same people who’d organized that on were doing another. The 2024 show will be at the National Women’s Hall of Fame in nearby Seneca Falls. (Aside – coincidentally, my wonderful son went there with me for my first-ever visit for Mother’s Day this year.) With the subtitle Fiber Art and Activism, the focus is on the (mostly immigrant) women who worked in the knitting mill there until 1999 and those who fought for equal pay and other essential women’s rights.

I wasn’t going to submit, but one morning I woke up and had an idea. I would embroider something! I went to the local craft stor and purchase a hoop that would become part of the finished piece, as well as two adult coloring-type books that I hoped to pull design inspiration from. I made several modifications to one of those designs and transferred it to some cotton I had. (That wasn’t as easy as it sounds and there were a few mis-steps in the process.) Although I did have some design help with that book, this was at least 80% my own design.

I

knew I wanted words in the center of that circle. The specific words changed a few times as I worked. I looked at several online embroidery alphabets, none of which suited my skill level or space availability. (Mind you, that hoop is only a 7′′ diameter, so my letters had to be small.) But one of them set off the lightbulb in my brain...I could create the phrases in a Word document, print i out, and use that. So that’s what I did. This time I’d figured out an easier way to get the letters onto my fabric. Then it was time t do some sample embroidery to see what stitch(es) would work best. I decided on a simple stem stitch, with tiny stitches to accommodate the frequent curves.

They are far from perfect, but I am satisfied with my result. All I have to do now is figure out exactly how to deal with the excess fabric, affix the embroidery permanently to the hoop, and back it. There’s enough time to do that.

I finished the stitching itself on Memorial Day. That struck me as appropriate. If we – by which I mean humans – were simply kin to each other, stood up for each other, and joined hands with those different from us – wars would be a thing of the past. A girl can dream, right?

Moving on. So many lovely things happen in the spring. I put my roof rack on the car and got out for my first kayak of the season last week. Looking forward to many more.

After having it on my to-do list for weeks, I finally got a mess of rocks painted so I can once again start depositing kindness rock on my morning walks.

And I’ve been really enjoying my gardens. Weeding and mulching aren’t a drag for me; I enjoy the time spent there, especially in the spring. Here are some recent beauty shots. A lovely deep pink clematis.

A beautiful blue flax, with bronze fennel and golden spirea in the background.

And some peonies my son dug out of his side yard last year. I was hoping they’d be an heirloom variety with a gorgeous fragrance, but no such luck there. They are beautiful nonetheless.

The sad news is my Redbud. It has some type of lichen, which is really just a symptom of an underlying problem. I contacted my county’s Master Gardeners, who told me I needed an arborist. I was thrilled when I learned that my town employs one, as the town planted this tree on the right-of-way 8-9 years ago. I’ve left him a voice mail and sent an email with pix and hope to hear back from him soon. Keeping my fingers crossed that we can save this little tree.

I had bearded iris that definitely needed thinning. I posted on my BuyNothing group that I’d be digging rhizomes and when & where they’d be available. These large piles were gone within an hour, maybe less.

Now I really must go walk Jack. It’s already too late today, but maybe I can get the kayak in the water again tomorrow.

May 29th, 2024