gardening – ArgoKnot

St Kitts, Thomas Jefferson, Batik

January 11, 2018 | 1 Comment

That’s an odd assortment of names in the title, yet that is the diversity of what we have seen on this island!

The weather has us pinned down off the southeast coast of St. Kitts. There are no harbors here for protection, which is the case for many of the West Indies islands in the Caribbean, and boy do I miss the protected harbors on Antigua. After sailing from Antigua last Saturday, we attempted to anchor off Nevis, but the best anchorage area was too rough! It was only 2pm in the afternoon, so we sailed about seven miles further to White House Bay on St. Kitts, and then had to move again for more protection. We were finally settled, although not comfortably, just before sunset. The winds have been quite strong, which is typical for this time of year. They are called the Christmas winds and usually last until the end of January.

The capital of St. Kitts is Basse Terre, and in the center of the city is a roundabout with a clock in the center called Piccadilly Square.

Cruise ships arrive almost daily in Basse Terre, and we can see them come and go from our anchorage, a few miles to the east. There is a hospital ship in the same area that has to leave every time a new cruise ship arrives. We learned that this ship is a medical school and that since the destruction of the medical school on Dominica this ship has taken on the faculty and students from that university. We watch it come and go every day to make room for the large cruise ships. I wonder what the faculty and students think of that. I’m trying to wrap my head around the students practicing surgical procedures on a vessel that has to be rolling around even slightly, in spite of having stabilizers. I contemplate over each evening as we watch the sunset from Pandora.

Yesterday we hired a tour guide to drive us around the island. Normally Bob and I detest this kind of touring, but this island has many windy roads and switchbacks that lead through the mountainous terrain, and driving is on the left. It was a smart decision not to tackle it ourselves!

Alexander Hamilton was born on nearby Nevis, and Thomas Jefferson’s great-great grandfather had a large plantation here on St. Kitts. The plantation has become a historic site here, no surprise, as well as the site of a botanical gardens and a local business of women who make batik fabrics. I’m quite fascinated to learn—so late in life!—that some of our founding fathers had such exotic origins! Years ago I visited the home of George Washington’s family, Sulgrave Manor, that seemed to be ‘right down the street’ from Princess Diana’s ancestral home Althorp. Both these family manses are in Northamptonshire, in the UK, so not so exotic. Still, I was well into adulthood before I ever gave a thought to exactly where our founding fathers originated. I just vaguely thought of them all as English. History is far more interesting in the details, isn’t it?

Romney Manor was first the site of gardens for a man named Tegereman who was chief of the indigenous tribe of Caribs. By 1625 this site had become a beautiful Euorpean style home for Sam Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson’s forebear.

The gardens are good mix of natural landscape and cultivated gardens.

It would hard to ever leave a spot like this…..more lemonade, please!

Along with the gardens, which are well cultivated and include beautifully landscaped areas of quite a variety of tropical plants, a group of women also run a textile business on the property of the plantation. The women make wonderful batik fabrics and their business, which started in 1976, is called Caribelle Batik. After 40 years, they must be on their 2^nd or even 3^rd generation of women keeping this technique alive and well. I’d say I was watching the 2^nd generation of master batik makers demonstrating for the tourists, since all of them were about my age.

The shop was full of about anything you can dream up to make with batik fabric. There were wall hangings, clothing, all kinds of little containers, pillow covers. I bought a nice selection of things to bring home for friends and family.

The designs are drawn with a stylus filled with melted beeswax.

They do intricate designs, and the best thrill of all was walking through the gardens, surrounded by exotic plants, views of the ocean, and lines and lines of batik fabrics drying in the breeze. I think this will be the highlight of my winter!

In addition to a rainforest full of exotic native and not so native plants that have found there way here, St. Kitts also has a large colony of green monkeys. They are everywhere! Our guide told us that they were brought to the island by the French, who brought them on their ships from Africa, along with their human cargo destined to be slaves. Some islanders have taken young monkeys for pets. I got accosted by a heckler, who came up from behind and just put this monkey into my arms. I didn’t mind, but I would have preferred to be asked. I guess he knows well that if he asks, most people will say no. It’s better to just throw a monkey into your arms and grab your phone before you have a chance to think. It’s the way of life in this part of the world, so it’s best just to go with it. Cute monkey, isn’t it?….wearing a diaper, thank heaven!

We had stopped for this view when the ‘monkey man’ approached me.

How about a monkey in its natural setting. They are pretty shy so we haven’t gotten close to the wild ones.

In the middle of our day our tour guide took us to a local restaurant–just a couple of picnic tables under an awning, with a ‘kitchen’ in an attached shed. No refrigeration. Our guide said all the food was prepared daily so no need to refrigerate anything. Well, hmmm. The choices were pretty varied, so it’s hard for me to imagine that they used everything up everyday.

Yeah, I know! It looks pretty rough, and I’ll admit that I was nervous about the food. It was all delicious–barbecued pork ribs, rice and pigeon peas, green salad, and Caribbean mac n cheese. Others had baked chicken, or baked mackerel with same side dishes. No one got sick.

I am staying onboard today. The wind has abated, although our weather guru says it’s best not to change locations until the weather is more settled at the beginning of next week. Sheesh! It’s only Wednesday! I plan to spend some time working on a small tapestry that is getting embarrassingly old, and then I will spend some time on my little Norwegian woven band. Later we will meet our cruising friends for sundowners at the beach bar, SaltPlage, where the view of the sunset will extraordinary! Well, as you can, we already had our sundowners…I could not get this post online yesterday.

So, that’s my report. St. Kitts is an interesting and unusual mix of history, lush flora and fauna, and beautiful local textile work. All good for me.

Summer Weaving

July 13, 2017 | 1 Comment

Summer is a time when my weaving projects must take priority since that’s when I’m home to work! Yet summer offers SO many wonderful distractions! The garden, family and friends visiting, lots of conferences to attend. I want to kick back and enjoy the season, but I also feel the pressure to make as much progress as possible before I leave home again.

These are the scenes that greet me each day on my walk along the Connecticut River, although the peonies and iris have shifted to roses, and now the roses are being overtaken by hydrangea.

It’s been a banner year for roses in my own garden. I have to give all the credit to Bob since he has fertilized every time I’ve asked, and he’s also used some kind of eco-friendly spray when the gypsy moths fell out of the trees on to the rose bushes.

We have a granite wall that is about 100′ long and planted in pink and yellow roses, interspersed with lavender, daisies, and boxwoods.

I’m going to back up a bit and reminisce about the trip I took to Tennessee to attend the Southeast Fiber Festival back in April. Back in April? Time flies! I took three weeks to drive down to Gatlinburg and back. It was a perfect mix of relaxation and adventure. After spending Easter weekend with my new granddaughter and her parents, I continued south to meet my good friend and tapestry weaver AnnaByrd to make the rest of the trip together. We had a wonderful 500 mile drive through the Shenandoah Valley and into the Smoky Mountains. Both going and returning we stopped in New Market, Virginia, and enjoyed lunch in a cafe at the civil war museum there. We were both taking a 3-day class with Jon Eric Riis on Coptic tapestry techniques.

In spite of the terrible destruction in Gatlinburg by last autumn’s fires, Arrowmont is still a stunning place. There is plenty of evidence of the chaotic and destroying force of fire, but I was relieved to see that there was still plenty untouched. This view is not the direction of the fire came from.

A view of the main building from the dining hall. The dining arrangement is the best I’ve had at a conference. I wish I’d photographed the dining room. It is cafeteria style, and the food is excellent. You sit at real wooden dining tables that have real chairs. Although there are a lot of tables in this large room, it feels quite like gathering in a home situation because the food is excellent and so obviously prepared with care, and the setting is so comfortably home like. Well done!

My few photos from this trip are not memorable, but the memories they conjure for me are too good not to use. Here is Jon during his keynote address for the conference.

The slides of his work covered most of his weaving career. I had no idea he’d been weaving for 50 years–how can he be old enough to have had such a long career? I have always loved his Icarus tapestries, and I no idea just how many works he’s done over the years. Look at this assemblage of pears! I know, it’s a bad photo– what can you expect of a photo of a projected slide during the presentation?

AnnByrd took this photo of Jon and me together, and it’s a great memory for me, even though blurry. Some day the memory of the workshop will become like this photo….a bit out of focus–but hopefully not too soon.

On display in the instructors’ exhibit were a series of partial faces that Riis wove entirely in metallic yarns. I don’t know HOW he got such a beautiful surface with such challenging materials. On the last day, after this work was crated, he unpacked a few and let us pass them around. Look at the curve of the chin–and the shading!

There are 20 partial faces in this series that hang together in a grid. The piece is called “Diaglogue.” You can see it here.

About 10 days after I returned home from this adventure, I was off to the Cape with a couple of lace making friends. We were headed to the Sacred Hearts Retreat Center in Wareham, Massachusetts, for the annual weekend retreat of the New England Lace Guild. It’s a wonderful setting near the beach, all our meals are served to us family style at big tables in a large dining room. We have private rooms and shared baths, and we can stay up all night making lace if we like, go for walks, take classes, and even buy stuff from the Van Scivers who always come. For the past two years I’ve opted not to take a class, and instead, filled my days sitting in the sunroom with a couple of my own projects that needed uninterrupted attention. There are plenty of other lace makers who do the same.

I spent the weekend working on this project while also keeping track of the eagle cam that was following the eaglet Spirit, on the Anacostia River, just off the Potomac in Washington, DC. You can just see Spirit at the edge of the nest (upper right) on my computer screen.

Here is one of the two classrooms….. since the center is in a large Georgian house, the rooms are generous and furnished from decades past.

Back at home, with the summer unfolding, we’ve celebrated our 40th anniversary, and been treated to a long weekend with both our sons and daughter in law, along with cherished new granddaughter Tori and a few good friends. I’m working on a couple of floor loom projects and two tapestries.

One tapestry is the line of text that our son Christopher asked me to weave. As of this week, I am 20% done. It seems like an insane thing to weave, and even Archie tried to dissuade me from this project, in spite of having woven quite a lot of text himself. Yet I find it both relaxing and challenging. Chris made the font and then hand manipulated the spacing of letters for my cartoon. I am not making any marks on the warp, since I’ve found that I have more success working from a cartoon when I let the cartoon be an idea of the weaving, rather than trying to actually follow the cartoon slavishly.

And here is the work in progress on the design I created in Riis’s Coptic workshop. The workshop was titled “Unraveling Coptic Weaving,” and we were to bring family photos to reinterpret in a Coptic style. I balked at that idea and brought a lot of other images that intrigued me more–Minoan dancers, Greek vase paintings, and one of the bas relief religious figures from the facade of St. John the Divine Cathedral in NYC. Anyway, after playing with those compelling ideas, I settled back on the idea of a family member…..dear little Tori.

The warp is sett at 16 epi, which is considerably finer than the finest sett I’ve ever used before — 12 epi. Between the fine sett and the neutral color of the warp thread, I am struggling to see what I’m doing! Still, when I pick the right threads, the weaving is also compelling.

It was a good challenge for me to draw this cartoon. Tori will be surrounded by clouds with hearts in the corners….schmaltzy for sure, but I hope to balance that a bit by using some tertiary colors. Each cloud and each heart is somewhat different from each other….the only way I can do it. We’ll see.

This morning I measured the lace that I started at the retreat. It’s also for Tori. I just photographed it after I put away the measuring tape. It is now a whopping 32″ long!

So I’d better get back to work on these projects so I can get some of them finished before the season changes!

Dominica, Our Final Destination

April 4, 2017 | Leave a Comment

This is the final week of my Caribbean winter. When we left home in January, we had no idea how many islands we’d get to visit. As it turns out, it was less than we imagined, but what a trip it’s been. We have only been through the Lesser Antilles, or Leeward Islands so far. Dominica is our final destination before turning north to return to Antigua in time for my flight home this Sunday. It is magical place that has entranced both of us. We will be back again next year.

In the past Dominica had a reputation as a trouble spot for cruisers. A group of locals realized that Dominica is such a gem with so much to offer tourists, as well as so much of traditional island lifestyles that could support the locals, it was worth making an effort to make this island a safe place to visit.

Bob and I arrived just a day before the weekly Saturday market in Portsmouth. We learned that almost everyone on the island has a little plot of land, a small ‘farm,’ that may be only a small fraction of an acre, but is bountiful in supplying so many crops and a few chickens. The market is full of tropical fruits and veggies, like pineapples, bananas, sour sop, Caribbean pumpkins, coconuts, nutmeg, along with plenty of European vegetables like carrots, onions, corn, peppers, eggplant, and even some cold weather veggies like lettuce and cabbage. Many people also have jobs in tourism or government offices, but they all get up extra early each morning to tend their farms. It is quite impressive.

Look at all these coconuts! There were several trucks like this at the market on Saturday morning. We learned that Dominica used to be the biggest exporter of coconut related things until coconut oil took a serious downturn years back during the ‘fat scare.’ Now there are more coconuts than the locals can keep up with, and every time a coconut falls to the ground it germinates into yet another coconut palm.

The tomatoes and cucumbers here are beyond belief–even better than home grown. How do they do it?

This woman was selling flowers along with food. She would not allow us to pay for the flowers, and when we added a few ECs (Eastern Caribbean coins) to her total she threw in a few bananas. She is stunning in the traditional madras head covering.

The next day we hired Faustin Alexis to take on a river tour of the Indian River. He is an excellent guide, so if you find yourself on Dominica you should ask for him. All the guides through PAYS (Portsmouth Association of Yacht Security) get training, and in Faustin’s case, he has become very committed to the traditional way of life and wants to return to it himself while also helping others preserve it for future generations. His enthusiasm for the plants and animals of the rainforest was moving, and it was impressive to see his knowledge of plant life, birds and bird calls, and fish. He says he’d like to return to living in the rainforest when his children are grown.

No motors are allowed on the Indian River, so after Faustin picked us all up from our boats (8 adults and 2 toddlers, plus Faustin which made 9 adults) he walked to the front of the skiff and began rowing into the river. In spite of rowing upstream, he kept up an ongoing conversation, pointing out plants, birds, and bits of traditional lore.

As we entered the river, another tour boat was exiting. I think these tours are highly organized so that there are never more than two boats on the river at once. We could not resist getting a shot of these adorable kids on the other skiff.

We had our own adorable kids onboard as well. They belonged to two Dutch families who happened to meet just before their Atlantic crossing in the Canaries. I hope someday we can share this wonderful experience with our own granddaughter, Tori.

These amazing trees were all along the river.

There was lots of bird life that we saw and sometimes only heard. There were parrots in the upper story, although we could not see them. But we saw the shore birds feeding along the river’s edge. Here is a white heron looking at the little crayfish at the water’s edge.

And a green heron. There is even a type of duck in Dominica, but I missed the name.

And there were so many plants that Faustin identified for us that are used for food or medicine or for general health. He often jumped off the boat to peel some bark from a cinnamon tree, or to pull a branch of bay for us to smell, or a nutmeg laying on the ground, or to show us plants used to make poultices to heal wounds, and the bright magenta leaves of another plant that would be used to wrap as a bandage around the poultice. His knowledge seemed quite encyclopedic. He told us that the older person on record came from Dominica and was a woman who lived to be 127. His own great uncle lived to be 115. Faustin showed us which trees are used to build the traditional houses and which trees are prone to termite infestations.

At the farthest point of the tour upriver we stopped for a bit of a walk, and explored a set of traditional buildings where a couple of men served flavored rum to the tourists and demonstrated how they make it. Here is a big batch of gooseberries being boiled down to flavor a new batch of run.

We all enjoyed the day’s drink offerings which were a coconut rum drink or an ‘ultimate’ rum drink. I also had a small taste of the medicinal rum that Faustin had– flavored with ginger root, nutmeg, bay leaves (a very pungent type of bay that must not be bay laurel), a few ingredients I’ve now forgotten, and ganja! What a surprise!

The next day we arranged for Faustin’s nephew Fitzroy to take six of us on a walk through the rainforest up to an impressive waterfall. There were Carol and Bob from Oasis and Dave and Chisholm from Pantine, along with Bob and me.

Fitzroy had a similar respect for the wonders of Dominica as Faustin has. He was an excellent guide. He recognized many bird calls and pointed out to us that the main birdsong we were hearing was that of parrots. They were all around us! After straining and straining to see them in the canopy of leaves, two parrots took flight and shocked all of us with their bright flash of color. No one got a photograph.

This is the forest we walked through. Sometimes there were openings to the sky as here, and sometimes we were in deep shade with the canopy of the trees about 150 feet above the ground.

Looking up into the upper story where plants get the most light, we could see many orchids and bromeliads growing on the tree trunks, as well as huge vines.

In the deep shade there was plenty of plant life too.

There were places with great vistas–

And places so deep in the understory that it drew our focus into the details.

There are even wild amaryllis in the sunnier parts of the rainforest.

Bob and I were particularly on the lookout to see orchids and tree ferns, and there were plenty of both. There are traditional uses for tree ferns in Dominican culture. What we know it best for is a planting material for epiphytic orchids. Fitzroy was surprised to learn that is all we used it for back home.

Tree ferns are very ancient plants, older than humans.

There were plenty of orchids too. Bob was thrilled to find a few brassavola nodosa in bloom on his previous walk, and plenty that would soon be blooming. We saw lots of orchids on our walk to the waterfall, but none in bloom. There were some very tiny orchids and some very large terrestial orchids.

The goal of our walk through the rainforest was a large waterfall. The path we followed crossed the river several times, the final time involved swinging across the river on a large vine, Tarzan style. Here is Bob swinging through the air.

And we’re on our way to the waterfall along the relatively dry river. The rainy season will come in another couple of months. That is our guide Fitzroy in the distance.

You can see how high it is based on how small our fellow travelers are!

Along the edges of the forest there are houses and small farms, places where the locals have burned a bit of the rainforest to create a small plot for growing their own food. Here are lots of banana trees, coconut palms, and plots of vegetables. This plot which was labor intensive to start is for a type of yam vine. Each tuber was planted into its own mound of soil.

And the locals are growing coffee plants and cocoa plants. This is a branch of unripe coffee beans.

–and a branch of rather ripe cocoa seeds. Inside these pods are strands of thick cocoa. I bought some in the market and they have a deep chocolate aroma.

At the end of the day Fitzroy asked me what I use all the plants for that I grow. I was left a bit tongue tied by that. Use? I grow a few herbs and vegetables, but mostly I grow plants for the sheer enjoyment of it. That is all I could tell him. He was surprised by this. What a very different culture we were experiencing here on Dominica. This is my lesson from visiting this place. Perhaps I can figure out how to be a bit more conscious how I can be more self sustaining.

Yesterday we began the trek northward so I can catch my flight home on Sunday from Antigua. We have returned to Terre de Haut in the Saintes and treated ourselves to a wonderful dinner out last night at Bon Vivre. We were happily surprised when Judie and Phil from Rum Runner walked into the restaurant shortly after we sat down. We shared a table together, and tonight we will have them aboard Pandora for a last dinner before we each head our separate ways.

Weaving and Dreaming

July 25, 2016 | 1 Comment

I’m dreaming about my next project as I zoom along on the current one. There are always surprises, and this yardage has had its share. Last fall I decided to make the warp a yard longer than I’d figured when I bought the materials. Yeah, so, it should not have been a surprise when I ran out of warp and had to fudge a second warp out of a solid grey to blend into this handpainted warp.

Then, for some reason, I neglected to make the mental leap to realizing that if my warp is now a yard longer than planned I might not have enough weft! That only occurred to me after I started weaving, about 2 weeks ago. Really, I amaze myself sometimes.

So I’ve spent this morning thinking about what I might use as weft for the rest of this yardage. I have not yet run out of handpainted JOY weft, but it was time to decide if I should switch to a solid color now so I had enough yardage that is clearly different to make a significant part of my garment–like sleeves or front bands.

I spent some time this morning digging through bins stacked pretty high, looking for a bin of tencel. Luckily most of these bins are clear so I can what’s in them. But wouldn’t you know the bins at the bottom of my various stacks are not clear so I had to unload everything to check out what is in those bins at the bottom of each stack. No luck in finding any tencel. I have lots of tencel, but at the moment I have no idea where it is!

So I moved on to looking at color cards for tencel, and found that there is no coral shade that comes even close to what I want. That led me down the rabbit hole of looking through my silk bins and silk color cards. I have the perfect shade of coral that I’d love to use, but not nearly enough of it! So I called Treenway and have placed an order for two 1000-yard skeins of a loely coral color #27. Those skeins will not arrive for almost three weeks. Sigh…Does this happen to you? Please say it does!

Fast forward to the end of the day. I wove another half yard today, in plain weave now, with the handpainted weft. Just moments ago, when I advanced the warp, I saw that I am only about a yard away from the end. That means I will have 5 yards of fabric instead of 6. The mistakes just pile up faster than I can keep track of them! I could swear I made a 7 yard warp and that’s why I ran out of materials. I have no idea what happened last fall, and I don’t know where my notes are! I hope this sounds familiar to you. Now I think I need to call Treenway and cut my order in half!

Luckily there have been some marvelous experiences lately to balance the derangement going on in my weaving. While others are busy heading off to Milwaukee for Convergence, I have gotten to enjoy some inspiring events much closer to home.

First is an exhibit in Providence that will be closing soon. I wish I’d seen it sooner so I could have spread the word earlier. I believe it closes this weekend. There is a small gallery called The Reading Room of the AS220 gallery, on Matthewson St. where Kate Barber has a wonderful exhibit of her recent work, called “Forward Folding.”

This postcard image is a detail of one her works on display, and it is stunning. Her exhibit is in an intimate setting with beautiful lighting. I stayed longer than I would have imagined to view her 22 pieces. There was such zen in the room I could not tear myself away. Kate is doing wonderful things with shibori on the loom which she uses to create crimped cloth. Some of the works are also dyed and embroidered.

There is a wonderful mascot at the gallery who watches for visitors and then greets you at the entrance. I’ve now forgotten her name. She is so calm that I almost mistook her for a ceramic dog!

Across the river, in Old Lyme, my local area weaving guild members are hard at work getting ready for the annual town festival where some of us will demonstrate various textile techniques. The big Clemens loom is ready for demonstrating the weaving of a traditional Canadian rag coverlet bed covering. Jody will the be first weaver, although she needs three helpers to do this. This is her coverlet that will be woven first. It will be 9 ft. wide by 9 ft. long. It’s a big undertaking!

This Saturday, July 30, Jody and her crew will be weaving on this behemoth loom, and others in our guild will be demonstrating various textile techniques. I plan to bring my spinning wheel to spin some lovely tussah silk sliver that a Connecticut woman who calls herself HoneyBuns prepares and dyes. I am spinning a wonderful colorway of rosey coral and gold.

Yesterday Jody and I went to see a wonderful film about an exhibition that is currently traveling through Europe. It was a stunning film and almost made up for the fact that I won’t get to see this exhibition in person. The exhibition is called “Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse,” and the film has the same name. The Royal Academy of Art put this exhibit together. It was quite moving, and I enjoyed sharing it with Jody and two other weavers from my local guild who also attended.

There were scenes of the exhibition itself, including a large room where Monet’s waterlily triptych has been displayed together for the first time ever, since each of the three pieces is owned by different museums. There is current footage of the gardens where each of the artists painted a century ago, and there are wonderful old photographs of the artists. The best image was Renoir’s portrait of Monet in the garden at Giverny, doing a painting of his own. I did not know that this portrait is owned by the Wadsworth Atheneum, so sometime in the future I will be able to view it in person!

Here is a short excerpt from the film:

Here is one more video with the curator discussing Monet’s Agapanthus triptych.

To all of you heading off to Convergence, have a wonderful time! I’ll be thinking of you and what I’m missing. Meanwhile, I am enjoying the down time of being at home in the studio. Maybe I’ll soon get to start the next project I’m dreaming of–I didn’t even tell you what it is!

Summer’s Swan Song

September 13, 2014 | 2 Comments

A few images from our morning walk into Essex to have coffee at our favorite spot.

Today really feels like autumn, and I wore long pants for the first time this season. All the gardens along our way are bursting with everything they’ve got in the last weeks before frost. It is a breathtaking time of year!

Sunflowers in a long border of sunflowers, zinnias, and roses.

One of my favorite houses where the Kousa dogwood berries are framing a view of the front door.

And right next door is my friend Jane’s house. She has beautiful gardens, and at this time of year the focus is purple Russian sage and bright yellow sunflowers along her picket fence.

Right near Jane’s house is a house where the older residents grow a very large vegetable garden. To me it verges on being a farm. They have pole beans, various types of squash, corn, tomatoes, and in late summer the pumkin vines grow almost out to the street.

Clever Mr. Farmer has trained the longest vine onto his big apple tree.

While having coffee we met a man who just returned from Portugal, where he and his family have a house in Nazare. His wife was born there, so they visit each year, and he had lots of good advice for us. I will get busy honing the details for our trip…

And on this first crisp day I will warp my new copper loom for the upcoming Joan Baxter workshop. I am leaving tomorrow for a whole week at an inn in Rockport, Massachusetts, where 12 of us will spend time with Joan developing our individual cartoons for tapestries about the sea and the shoreline. More on that when my idea gains some clarity.

Also, today, I am making the second batch of baguettes from the recipe in the current issue of “Cooks Illustrated.” (If you want the recipe you have to buy this issue!) The first batch was the best baguette I have ever made myself (thank you CI!!). I reached my goal of making a baguette that could rival Balthazar’s Bakery in NY….a goal I’ve been heading toward for decades!

And while I wait for next round of dough to rise, I’m having a fresh tomato sandwich with mozzarella and basil on day old, lightly toasted, leftover baguette. Hard to imagine anything better!