Author name: ozweaver

It is glorious in southern New England and I am thoroughly enjoying all the perks of living in a house!  Laundry!  Cooking!  Puttering in the dirt!  In spite of the harsh winter all my perennials are showing signs of life–except one peony, but I’m pretty sure it had died before last fall’s first frost–and I have scattered some seeds which causes me to excitedly search for signs of germination each morning and evening when I walk around the gardens to take stock of new life emerging.  As of this morning I have poppy seedings! Rejoice with me!  I plant poppy seeds every year–and never get any.  Dare I hope??  Rain is expected tomorrow and I sure hope it will be gentle on my tiny seedlings.

There are a couple of wonderful volunteers in the lawn this year.  Some pansies from my window boxes self seeded along the front walk.

There are violets everywhere in the lawn… makes me want to dissuade Bob from mowing. He’s not here now to mow down these sweet gems.

And this is a new volunteer this year, and something completely unknown to me.  I have just googled yellow wildflowers in spring and found that this is Leopard’s Bane (Deronicum).  It blooms at the same time as daffodils.  I hope to transplant this into one of the gardens before Bob arrives home with mowing on him mind…

My first bouquet from the garden….daffs, hellebore and forget me nots on a handwoven runner on my desk where I write these posts at my computer.

And now, along with getting as much weaving done as I possibly can, I am turning my attentions to my older son’s upcoming wedding.  It’s time to look for a wedding outfit.  I am in the unfortunate, but not so unusual, predicament of having two, yes TWO, mothers of the bride, so my fashion choice must accomodate theirs!  Anyway, I have decided to attempt making my own outfit.  This decision is entirely based on catching up on two seasons of Downton Abbey since I returned home one week ago.  My son calls that ‘binge’ watching–and he’s right!

I am thinking of making a boat neck tunic out of pale to medium blue silk charmeuse and embellinging the neckline with ribbon embroidery….. very like this tunic that Lady Crawley wore in a couple of episodes. (I have a collection of photos of Downton Abbey costumes–taken while pausing the show to snap the pix! I wonder how many others do this too!)

I am imagining trailing vines in greens and browns with some roses and other flowers thrown in (color choices will be based on the overall effect going with my favorite brown silk pants with the pretty Chinese knots that run down the outer leg). I will stop by Banksville Fabrics on my trip to New Jersey later this week.  If I can get a lovely blue silk there I will then make a trip to Thistle Needleworks in Glastonbury to get the silk ribbons for the embroidery.

I am also dabbling in some Romanian Point Lace that intrigued me at Saturday’s monthly lace gathering.  My friend Mary is trying it and she shared the information that she has found recently.  There is a lot on Pinterest, and there are two older issues of Piecework that describe this technique  (March/April 1998, and one from 2001).

I must have garments on the brain (too much Downton Abbey for sure!)….I think a border of this lace would be stunning on a tunic.  This time I envision a handwoven silk fabric with Romanian Point Lace at the neckline.  It would also look wonderful on the collar of a melton wool coat.

So, with puttering in the gardens and doing just the smallest bit of spring cleaning in the house, I have not yet managed to touch any of my looms.  As I finish this I plan to bring up my portable easel and get back to my small Portuguese Man of War tapestry that I started on the boat.

Today is a glorious day for weaving outside!

It has been a bittersweet journey home–the drudgery of packing up years of stuff from one boat, then riding around in an overstuffed van for 10 days before unpacking it all onto another boat.  In the middle of the 10 days between one boat and the other we were driving south–inland to Columbia, South Carolina–to attend the wedding of a very dear friend.

It was one of the sweetest/saddest things I’ve ever participated in.  My younger son, now 29, became friends with groom in kindergarten, when they were both five.  They went all the way through high school together, and I have lots of photos of them–mostly predating digital images.   I have vivid memories of playdates from those early school years when the two of them had a massive collection of mutant ninja turtles.  Either one of them would arrive at the other’s house with a black garbage bag full of action figures.  I remember the yearly man hunt game on New Year’s Eve which always ended with sparklers at midnight, preceded by wonderful dinners together for the parents.  I remember hearing all that wonky music from the various Nintendo games–Mario ad infinitum, Donkey Kong, Dungeons and Dragons.  These games led to more complicated computer games and more geeky science and computer interests as the boys grew.  When they were young many people thought they were brothers.  They each had a brother, but it seemed they looked more like each other than their real brothers.

Now both boys have grown into handsome men–refined, even elegant.  Seeing them together as adults makes me wonder where the boys have gone.  Chris’ friend is tall and lean, and very handsome.  He is articulate and moves with grace.  He was recently ordained a Lutheran minister so he is comfortable in crowds and is surely a good public speaker.  He looked perfectly comfortable with his stunning bride who made us all think of Kate Middleton.

In this photo Chris (on the left) is standing with his two oldest friends– the groom is in the middle. I took almost the same photo 11 years ago when these three graduated from high school.  They were so awkward and youthful then–so comfortable and confident now.

The saddest thing about the wedding day was that the groom’s mother and father could not be there. The father was in the hospital at the end of a long 18 months of trying to stop the cancer that had been spreading for over a year.  He lost that battle only 3 days after his son got married.  It was heartbreaking to be there without the presence the parents who have been such good friends to us for 25 years.  It will probably be one of the happiest/saddest events of my life.  I would not have missed it.  In fact, Bob and Chris and I jumped through more than a few hurdles to get there.  It breaks my heart that the hurdles for getting to this wedding were bigger than humanly possible for the parents of the groom. (yes, I am wearing the sweater I had hoped to finish in time for this occasion.)

After the wedding we had a couple of days with Chris as we continued south, back to Florida, with a destination at our new boat.  Chris flew back to San Francisco; Bob and I began unloading that van into the new (improved!) Pandora.  Bob and I had barely gotten all the boxes onboard when it was time for me to fly home.

Now I’m back in Connecticut, in the blinding yellow of daffodils and forsythia and the deep blue of the Connecticut River that glints like a sapphire in the silver setting of last year’s marsh grasses glowing in the late afternoon light.

Today I bought pansies for the window boxes on the front of our house.  I’m waiting for the trees to leaf out.  I’m going to start weaving the projects that I left on my looms in December.  Right now there is a pot of carrot tops simmering on the stove and a hank of silk waiting to be dyed.

Life goes round and round–until it doesn’t.

 

Let’s start with ridiculous.  This is day 1 of unpacking Pandora–utter chaos, and NO fun!

It’s hard to pack things when you don’t even have room to move….

I thought packing up a boat would be a piece of cake compared to the three houses we have packed up in the past few years…..but in some ways this is harder!

Bob put boxes in the rented van while I tried to straighten up the main salon so we could have dinner without too much clutter.  The van is now 2/3 full, with the back seats folded down, and we still have a long way to go!

At the end of the day we decided to go for a walk.  First we passed this other example of living small.  I bet it wouldn’t take any time at all to pack up your belongings from this little abode–but I wonder how many people think that about our boat!  I guess there is always something smaller!

And always something larger….

Of course, if I lived here–Tryon Palace– I certainly wouldn’t be doing my own packing, would I?

Tryon Palace was the Governor’s Palace of provincial North Carolina in the 18th c. before the American Revolution.  After independence it burned to the ground just before the end of the century.  This reproduction was built in the 1950s and is now a museum.  I thought I was done taking photos of gardens, but I guess I just never will be!

Walking through the gardens at Tryon Palace is rather difficult on a Sunday afternoon at the height of spring.  I can’t speak for other times–but it would not surprise me if this place is popular all year ’round.  There were two brides, each with her own camera crew, and a newly engaged couple with a crew of camera toting family.  Everywhere we moved we heard sighs and saw gestures–frustrated gestures, not rude!–that we were invading someone’s Kodak moment.  In trying to get out of the way of one bride we were always moving into the way of the other!–or the engaged couple!

But I would not have missed a walk through these gardens for anything!  What surprised me most were the anemones and batchelor buttons.  You expect to see tulips and daffodils, but anemones are such a happy surprise!  This is not a great photo, but I love these iris which were in gardens all over town–mixed with batchelor buttons.

Tryon Palace is in a residential part of town that has houses from all the architectural periods since this town was settled in the early 18th c.   Since each house has a formal garden I wonder if you have to prove your gardening skills before you can move here.

The daffodils, tulips and wisteria are already past their prime…but en masse they still have a vivid impact!  I have been seeing tiny yellow rose like flowers on a climbing vine everywhere, even along the highway climbing up trees.  I just learned it is a climbing rose named Rosa Parks.

I can just imagine these homeowners picking their colors to coordinate with the azaleas.

Now it’s the morning of day 2.  I am going to have some coffee, or rather Bob’s amazing latte, and get back to packing. We hope to end each day around 4pm this week so we can take a walk through this pretty town!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mother Nature has been pretty good to us as we head to our final destination for Pandora, in New Bern, North Carolina.  We stopped for two days in Oriental, where we enjoyed a free dock with easy access to town.  On the dock with us was a boat from Colchester, England.  The older captain sailed alone across the Atlantic about a year ago.  At some point along the way he was adopted by a small black kitten he decided to name Mogs.

At each port Mogs goes visiting.  Maybe one day he’ll decide to stow away on a new boat.  At least that’s what Bob and I hoped when Mogs made himself very comfortable on Pandora. We began to think he might stay with us…. but as the English boat made ready to depart Mogs headed quickly back to his familiar digs.  Ah, well….

Friday was our final sail on this Pandora.  I could have wished for a bit less wind, but perhaps it’s for the best.  There is nothing like a couple hours of seasickness to make one willing to say goodbye to a boat!

In a little over a week we’ll be commissioning a new Pandora in Ft. Pierce.  As you can see, she’ll need a name change!

New Bern is a pretty city.  We are on a dock at the New Bern Grand Marina, where once you walk up the ramp you find yourself in the heart of the historic district!  Lovely! We had dinner at the Harvey Mansion on Friday evening, our first night in town.

Saturday morning we went to the well attended Farmer’s Market, and then headed out to Raleigh Durham airport to pick up a mini van to load up with all our gear and provisions from Pandora. Unfortunately that was the most economical place for a car rental, but it was a long day with 5 hours of driving round trip.

It’s Sunday morning and I must wrap this up to begin the decommissioning.  Hopefully we’ll get a bit more sight seeing in this week, during breaks from packing and cleaning. I know there is a weaving shop in town because I visited it a year and a half ago by car on my drive home from Beaufort! I cannot pass up a chance to see that again!

We have to be out of here on Friday morning!  There is LOTS to do before then!