rambles

  

   

A rainy evening has kept me inside. I won't stress about the weeds that are taking over the garden, because they'll certainly be there tomorrow afternoon - much bigger and therefore easier to grab onto to pull out. I've managed to plant more seeds than pull weeds, this is the way I usually cultivate my garden. You have to know what's coming up where in order to gauge what you should do next.

The garden always looks the worst just before it looks the best.

Um.

It's always the darkest before the dawn.

Not sure that one works either. How about I make a promise to myself that I will get out there as soon as I can, and instead of worrying that it's not going to look like the "cover" garden from a magazine? I'll just enjoy the soft dirt beneath my hands.

Okay then.

I did a sketch of my garden at work the other day. I'm going to try to turn it into a little pattern for stitching.  The dark combed top is also spinning up nicely. I can't wait to combine it with the sparkly novelty yarn. One of my favorite parts of spinning is plying the strands together.

That's where the magic happens.

some sparkle

What may seem like a collection of random photos summarizes my day today. An assortment of textures and images from the studio and garden. I'm working on some new yarn - a combination of novelty yarn with sparkles and our dark brown top. I'm not sure what I'll use the yarn for, but there's always a place for sparkle in our lives, right?

I found the pinecones on one of my walks last week. They were all just perfect, strewn across the sidewalk. I filled up my purse and carried them home. I'm not sure pinecones really shout 'it's summer!' but I love their crisp and delicate edges.

Dried poppy heads. These friends have sat on my desk all winter long. Last week I went to bed with the window open and the wind blew over the vase. I woke up to a scattering of poppy seeds across my work. I carefully gathered them up - poppy seeds are one of the smallest seeds that I know - and planted them in the garden.

With any luck they'll grow and keep us company all summer.

grit embroidery sampler

Grit embroidery pattern can be found here.

This past week has been a whirlwind, I'm still recovering from Shepherd's Harvest, but each night when I get home from work I try to do something in the garden. Yesterday I planted some hollyhock seeds and some canna lily bulbs along the western fence. Tonight I pulled some weeds and praised the seedlings in the lettuce bed.

I'm finally posting my grit embroidery sampler to our shop. It was a thrill to create. It just sort of popped out of me and then I had to tackle a bunch of obstacles trying to figure out how I could make it work and make it into something I would hang on my wall. I got there, but not without pulling out a lot of stitches and a lot of edits to my pattern file in photoshop. Right now I'm printing the patterns using my ink jet printer, but I'd love to know how the pros do their work.

C'est la vie - such is life. Trial and error and a lot of pretty bits along the way.

I'm planting flowering kale in the garden this year. I love the way these guys "flower" without really being flowers. They look like those tissue paper flowers we all made in grade school to celebrate spring strewn along my garden walk. Fun and silly. I need that right now.

For those of you interested in how I framed my project. I got a frame on sale at one of those craft stores whose frames seem to go on sale to 50% off every month and then wrapped the fabric and taped it around the glass that would usually be used to protect the photo behind it. This might not work for a piece that's going to be hung in a kitchen or bathroom . . . but I placed mine in our living room. I also sewed a fabric edge around my piece and accented it with a feather stitch border.

I worked so hard on those stitches, I didn't want to smash them behind glass.

Happy evening, everyone.

thank you

I just wanted to thank all of our wonderful supporters (and customers) for such a successful Shepherd's Harvest for Crosby Hill Farm - and I want to give another shout out to the hard-working people who organized the weekend. They had to choreograph animals and vendors and make sure the right sheep and the right vendor ended up in the right place.

And it felt like most of them did.

I took a quick stroll around with my camera yesterday afternoon and tried to capture some of the 'flavor' of the event. None of the alpacas would strike a pose for me, but several of the vendors let me take photos of their wonderful work. I really like the needle felted turtles above. They definitely need to be stacked.

The top shot is some handspun Ashely and I spun up at turbo-speed over Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. It was a sampling of fiber from many of the shops at the festival. There was some angora bunny, alpaca, every breed of wool imaginable - in all shades imaginable - all packed into a plastic bag and free to spin for anyone who was willing to donate the finished product to a silent action, the proceeds of which went to a worthy cause.

Adventures all around.

I also want to thank all of the kind people who told me that they read my blog - thank you.

Thank you, so much. 

shepherd's harvest

We've been busy preparing for Shepherd's Harvest this weekend. We'll be selling our beautiful fleeces from our covered CVM Romeldale sheep, as well as our combed top, the spring collection of our hand-dyed yarn and hand-dyed combed top and finally our line of Hetty Yarns in several weights and natural colors.

Please ask us about our 2013 breeding stock. 

We hope to see you there!

red letter day

Red letter day: In earlier times a church festival or saint's day; more recently, any special day.

I stepped out my door on Sunday looking for shades of green in the landscape and instead discovered a variety of shades of red in the bud blossoms and flowering bulbs of my neighborhood.

Maple blossoms. I've always been a fan. I think its surprising to discover this vibrant shade of red in the spring - a teaser of what's yet to come in the fall. All of the maple trees that I came across on my walk were in other people's yards, otherwise I would have clipped a few branches and brought them home for our table.

The soup is one of my sister's favorites, it's called hardy lentil soup and it's loaded with lentils, barley, carrots, rosemary and oregano. The entire house smelled like rosemary and oregano on Saturday afternoon - and the leftovers have kept us through today.

cupcakes

It's always a good thing, when my husband reads my blog, and it has taken some time to get him to come around and check it regularly without my prompting. I guess he isn't naturally interested in knitting, flowers and fiber, but he is interested in me.

Sometimes the blog can backfire though, for instance when a husband sees chocolate cupcakes on it that he thinks look yummy and that should be made that night. Then ensued the mad flurry of making cupcakes on Wednesday night. We were out of vanilla, but our neighbor came to the rescue. These are the same cupcakes in my previous post and I topped them with a cream cheese frosting. They were as fantastic as I remembered, a real 'pick me up' with this looming cold and dismal weather.

Went for a walk on Thursday to see what I could see. The tulips are out, but they were in total protection mode - petals closed against the impending threat of snow and frost. Still pretty. Only the hardy succulents are hazarding to expose themselves to the weak sunlight. Maybe the collected thermal heat from the rocks keeps them warm at night?

As you can see, the embroidery project is coming along, I should finish it this weekend. I'm just looking for the right fabric to edge it with and the perfect frame.