travel

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Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have the energy of our best days everyday!  I can’t seem to manage that.

I’ve made good progress on my current sweater, a design that I cannot give proper credit since I’m working from a photo-copy given to me by a friend.  It’s a cute design that has been fairly boring to knit.  Lots of stockinette that luckily I churn out quickly, but also lots of fiddly small items that had to be knitted separately and sewn to the sweater.  I’m almost there!

The button bands are knitted separately and sewn to the body (a task I detest). After I sewed on the first band, I sewed on the buttons. Then I made button holes in the 2nd band by

buttoning on to the first band as I knit in order to get the spacing just right.

Also, I’m up into the headdress of my medieval spinner.  I’ve been looking forward to weaving the intricate shapes of her headdress!

My friend Willa had an art opening this week, and her energy inspired me!  She is part of a group of women exploring their cultural heritage through their line of female relatives, all of whom immigrated here from other parts of the world.  The exhibit is called “Ah, Motherland!” 

Willa’s heritage is Japanese, and she found inspiration from the many noren (entrance curtains) on display at the Serizawa exhibition that we visited together back in early February.  She made her own set of noren and painted images significant to her grandmother in her unique, painterly style. 

My own head is full of ideas I’d like to pursue that were generated by seeing the Serizawa exhibit.  I wish I could work as quickly as Willa does!

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The second amaryllis to bloom this year is ‘Apple Blossom.’  It’s almost my favorite!  I cannot remember the name of the one that opened first this year.  It was a variety that I had to search out at the Philly Flower Show a couple of years ago, and now I’ve forgotten it’s name (no label in the pot either!)…

A few signs of spring in the greenhouse! 

More amaryllis in bud

Color in the greenhouse:
peach dragon wing begonia in foreground with peach blooming albutilon (flowering maple) just behind it. A few magenta geranium flowers in background, and a purple flowering bromeliad in the upper left. 

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It’s St. David’s Day, soon to be followed by St. Patrick’s Day! My English friend sent me photos of yellow aconite blooming in a church yard near her village in Cambridgeshire.

We are currently buried in snow with damaged trees all over our yard, but the house is unscathed.  Right now I’d relish the chore of cleaning up all our broken trees just to get outside, but that chore will have to wait until the snow melts. Our new view of the neighbors:

I saw my first robin this morning, in spite of the fact there is no ground showing for him to find food! He was hopping about on the snow!

May there always be work for your hands to do.
May your purse always hold a coin or two.
May the sun always shine upon your window pane.
May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain.
May the hand of a friend always be near to you and
May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.

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I have to interrupt my weaving and knitting updates to comment on the weather.  What a lot of snow we have gotten this month!  Supposedly it is going to snow here for  three days straight.  I’m not sure that has happened in my lifetime!  It snowed heavily all day yesterday, and is snowing lightly this morning.  Will it really continue through tomorrow?

When my husband uses the snow blower, he loves to make a wall of snow.  Can you tell he is quite proud of his creation?

I’m looking forward to staying home today, nestled in to weave! Meanwhile, spring arrives in the house with the first of the amaryllis in bloom!

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I cannot count the times I’ve heard or read a reference to tapestry that has annoyed me because it is obvious that the author of the statement has no idea what tapestry is.  Ugh.

But now I think I need to put pettiness aside and relish every reference to this ancient technique because it is not a given that it will stay in our vocabulary, which might mean the real activity might also, someday, disappear.

A couple of years ago on public radio I was listening to the program that Patricia O’Connor hosts about language. Someone called in to ask her what ‘tow head’ means.  They had been called this as a child, and the caller had always presumed it to be an insult. He wondered if it had something to do with tow trucks.

Ms. O’Connor actually didn’t know what the term meant.  I remember I was driving in my car and had to find a place to pull over so I could call in to set the record straight.  My call was taken, unfortunately after the show had ended, so the man never heard from me what the term meant.  I hope he knows by now.  Ms. O’Connor and I had a lovely conversation about phrases that go out of use. Interestingly, she noted that if an idiom is based on political or social situations it stays in use longer than if the phrase is domestic or agricultural.  Our domestic situation has changed so drastically in the last hundred years, and here in the US, very few of us have any notion of farm terms.  Idioms from these areas have passed into the forgotten. Personally, I didn’t know that ‘tow head’ was out of use.  I don’t hear it often, but I still do sometimes, as well as corn silk, to describe blonde hair.  My husband is a tow head, and I briefly had corn silk hair when I was young…

So, while the word tapestry is being misused a lot in recent times, at least it is a word that continues to pop up in descriptions and conversations.  I am thankful for that!

Here is what’s happening on the tapestry front in my studio this week:

Yesterday I had my monthly visit to Archie Brennan and Susan Martin Maffei.  That always gets my creative juices flowing, and here is the result of my work today:

Slow, but steady, work on Rob: