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My mother grew this in the rock walls of the patio. It survived purely on the moisture retained in the stones. Not hardy in zone 6, it self-seeds happily when conditions are right: dappled shade, moisture. It is Cymbalaria muralis, a sweetly descriptive plant name.
I pulled some cuttings before she died. These are like the Johnny jump-ups. They go where they please, and I don't try to regulate location, size, or spread. They are a link to my origins and memories.
Falling asleep after prolonged sleeplessness is like dropping a stone into still, deep waters: ker-PLUNK.
And then, it is gone, into the dark, inky nothingness of unconsciousness.
First, there was the light of Cummington, the Massachusetts Sheep and Wool festival. Martha drove, Claudia rode shotgun, and I mumbled incoherent sentences from the backseat. I had been on call all night. (There had been too much surgical activity and not enough sleep opportunity. ) Who wouldn't have done the same thing? How could I miss Cummington? It was my spinnaversary! One year ago, Cassie sent the Spindicate to hunt down the woman on crutches and teach her drop spindling.
Last year was about drop spindles, beginner roving, and yarn. This year? One picture speaks for most of it:
The festival swarmed with bloggers. It was so good to see our people again. Two barns, one outside area of tents, and blogger collisions were frequent and thrilling. (Sleep deprivation adds piquancy to life.) Mamacate, a most practiced and experienced enabler, pointed out that we were five minutes from the Exhibit Hall opening up after the fleece judging. I wanted to see what they were judging. I was also visibly malleable.
There were some beautiful fleeces inside. One in particular caught many eyes, but was passed by because of sheer volume. Twelve and a half pounds! Purebred Coopworth! Blue ribbon! I asked Claudia what the etiquette of purchase was. "Whoever gets it to the register first and pulls out her credit card takes it home."
I turned to Carole, who was looking at a fleece across the aisle. "Wanna go halfsies?" queried a drunk-on-adrenaline Etherknitter. Carole didn't hesitate for a single heartbeat. "YES!"
Several other people are fondling the fleece, eyeing the locks, looking at the magnificent staple length. I restart my grasping of locks. As soon as two other arms withdraw, I pull the bag up around the wool, and IT IS MINE. Ohhh. Yeah, I forgot. OURS!
Carole's husband schlepped it over to Still River Mill. Greg Driscoll smiled, and told me to write down on the factsheet that he was doing another fleece of mine so they would both get done at the same time. (He recognized me from New Hampshire's escapade with Felicia, the Romney/Corrie X. I think this qualifies as an Ominous Sign. We're skirting on Bad, here. Heh.)
Mamacate does a fabulous post-festival gathering. Beer. Pizza. Bearpoop. Wheels. Tea.
We left only when we had to. I wanted to do more of the Mamacate-athon, but adrenaline only carries one so far. The blackness of the inky depths of sleep pulled me down with silken fingers, and it was good.
The lawnguys harvested hay with seedheads mowed the lawn yesterday. I can finally get out into the garden without participating in my own personal harvest of wood ticks. Parkinson's Law applies, because the garden's toil has not only filled the time allotted, but has grown beyond. The weekend discovery of said tick hitchhiking on me, the ensuing hysterics to remove it, and the discovery that husbands on crutches move R E A L L Y slowly in emergencies, morphed knitting and spinning into preferable pasttimes this week. I'm over it now. (I lie.)
I'm about to turn the heel on the latest generic sock. The yarn is Schaeffer Anne, which is their odd dyelot line. The fact that I could get through six cast-ons for this (two stupid ribbing mistakes, three sizing errors) means that knitting is coming back to me.
I also started a scarf that refuses to sit still for a blogphoto. Karabella Boise is 50% merino/50% cashmere. It is a yarn whose sole purpose in life is to be run through the knitter's fingers once: soft beyond soft, and untinkable without major damage. It will either fluff ethereally during wear, or morph into a ferret with alopecia. The pattern turns out to have an attractive WS that was joyfully discovered as inches of scarf developed. It's Wavy Rib, December 30th, from the Knit Stitch a Day Calendar from 2005.
The April garden was all about yellow. May's theme is bell-shaped flowers. I wonder about the pollinators for this shape, and whether dangling organs of plant pleasure are an evolutionary advantage. The shape of the flower protects its naughty b1ts from the weather. Bees are sheltered, and can gather food in positions only Cirque du Soleil performers can normally manage. The flower tipped in green is the unpronounceable Leucojum aestivum. It's considered a minor, or miscellaneous bulb in most catalogues.
The tree is Halesia carolina, or Carolina silverbell. It does well in forest understory, but needs some lime here in the Northeast. I've seen it wild along the roadsides, so it can't be too finicky. Mine gets some 5-10-5 fertilizer thrown in her general direction every year, and a mulch/compost mix spread around her feet. I missed the fertilizer part last year. I don't see any pouting worth noticing.
I'm often asked, "What is your favorite wine?"
It's not an unusual question, often posed to people who have some wine knowledge. The answer? "Whatever is in my glass right now."
So it is with the garden. What is my favorite flower? "Whatever is in bloom right now."
J is for Johnny Jump-ups. Sometimes called miniature pansies (same genus, different species - Viola cornuta), they are happy-face volunteers in the sunnier areas of the landscape.
The rain has not bothered them at all.
It was COLD. It was drenched. It was like Noah was being called once again. Alas, I was not one of the anointed called onto the Ark. I was left to jump and wade the puddles with the rest of the fiber-afflicted. (Let me just say one word: sneakers. That's all we will say about THAT.)
It was blogger/commenter/knitter/spinner dense. Links and a reasonable bedtime are mutually exclusive this evening. If I left you out, do the Harlot thing and call out in the comments.
Blogless Sharon was a ship passing in the night, as was LauraJ. (LauraJ was the only person I saw even close to the alpacas.) Carole, Julia, Manise, Maryse, Kellee, Stitchy, Wendy, Elisa, Dave, Norma, JoVe, That Laurie, Knitigator, PumpkinMama, Cheryl, WoolyBuns, Lucy Lee, Pat from Wild and Woolly, Mamacate, Sandy, and all the other usual suspects swam to the festival despite the monsoon.
Streams formed, rivers coalesced. Ponds became lakes. Dave's blog has pictures.
I fell fast and easy. Ward Brook Farm, run by Ingrid Byrd, seduced me quickly. I succumbed to a Corriedale/Romney X fleece from a sheep named Felicia. In what would become the theme of the day, bloggers rolled past, offered their 3 cents worth ("oh YES, that is a good one DO it") and rolled through. The fleece was soft, well-skirted, clean, and a color that hummed at me. When Ingrid *cluckclucked* over a stray piece of hay that she found as we examined the fleece, I knew I had found a good woman. Kellee enabled me, and then helped me ease Carole into the fleecy way. (In my own defense, Carole FORCED me to help her. I was the best that was available at the time. Luckily for me, Kellee and Mamacate also strolled by the Coopworth booth within that same ten minute time interval, and rubberstamped an easy decision for Carole.)
I am now sourcing roving and fleeces through people I will see again. I bought some exquisitely prepped Icelandic roving, and know where to call if I like this, can spin laceweight from it, and aspire to a Hyrna.
Foxfire Farm provided a source of stunning cashmere/silk roving in colorways that had most of us swarming the booth shamelessly. The picture doesn't do justice to the depth and variety of the green, but I can't leave you with just your imagination.
Skyeview Alpacas finally sated my lust for alpaca fleece. Grey, some color variations, soft. Grey does not show itself on grey days. Pictures will follow when I start to spin it. I'm going to try it straight from the locks first. It is very clean. If the discontinuity involved in spinning locks makes it difficult, I'll send it out for processing. I'll try that soon. (How could I not??)
Maryse made the day very special. She gave me a talisman of bone mojo that she crocheted. Here, a picture is most definitely worth a thousand words:
I keep looking at this blank screen: "Compose a New Post". Then I run off and read blogs. I come back here to see no spontaneous generation of text. Then I leave again, and immerse in catch-up emails. Focus, Etherknitter. Focus.
How can I focus when I'm busy spinning Nancy Finn's Chasing Rainbows fiber ("Crocus", 50% merino, 50% bombyx silk) from Carolina Homespun?
I felt like Sally Field in the movie 'Sybil'. She scurries around as one of her multiple personalities, frenetically muttering, "The people! The people!" It was wonderful to be amongst the bloggers. Sil and Claudia flew down with me to save me from an eight-hour car ride. A good sisterly relationship is a thing of beauty.
Cassie and Juno joined me in revelry and in retail. The wines? Gone quickly. All the glasses supplied by the hotel had holes in them. Bloggers kept swarming into the room, until knitting needles became dangerous in the crowded space. Jenn of the Hair, Claudia, Sil, Norma, Rachel H, Julie and Theresa joined us in vino veritas: 1999 Guigal Cote Rotie, Brune et Blond, (subdued, pedigreed aristocrat, barely past young manhood, a Tim Robbins of a wine back when he was in Bull Durham), and 2001 Thorn-Clarke, William Randel Shiraz (a full, rich deep Marlene Dietrich, opulent, blowsy and forward, promising everything and delivering in full).
The festival...I had to be there immediately. The vendors agreed with me, and Persimmon Tree roving was my first bag. In my defense, I only had to make one trip back to the car all day, but it was a mighty load.
Rachel Knittiot and consort came along for the splurge. Mr. Knittiot served a glorious and selfless role, encouraging his not-particularly-reluctant spouse to indulge her whims. Such discipline - natural colors predominated, per her chosen summer theme.
The knitbloggers overtook my visual fields by 11am. Judy and Linda (another superlative pair of sisters) joined in the fray. Wendy (That Wendy), Naomi, Julia of Vesper sock yarn, Rosemary, Cara, RockChick, June, and then I lost consciousness. The evidence was preserved in my camera.
Left to right in each row: Cassie at the wheel, Rachel indulging multiple fibery appetites, Sil siesta, Claudia feeding someone else more Kool-Aid, Claudia and Sil, and Jenn of the Hair.
I awoke in my hotel room surrounded by fiber. I was dizzy with fiber. Some highlights (despite Typepad's placements, I'm sure you can figure out which is which) -
Shetland, 8 oz, from Shadeyside Farms in heathery greys
Hanks of Carolina Homespun and Chasing Rainbows fiber
Ellen's Half Pint Farm sock yarn in 80% wool/20% nylon, and wool/tencel blends
a stunning periwinkle Wensleydale yarn from Spinning Flock Farm, for a workhorse simple crewneck sweater that will be my next mindless knitting project
Heathery 43% wool, 43% hemp, 14% mohair from Dzined, with an additional four skeins of heathery grey in the same blend for a vest for the friend who stayed with Mr. Etherknitter during the Fiber Weekend.
There were multiple other minor altercations, as evidenced by the bags littering my bed. The Cormo booth spit some 60% Cormo/40% alpaca roving at me. Brooks Farm had a limited edition sock/shawl yarn in wool/silk/viscose, 400 yds that came home with me for a pair of socks. There was some lovely blue roving that came home with me from Spinner's Hill, and the Coopworth dyed with bugs (cochineal) by that clever spinner/dyer, Handspun by Stefania, who owns the oldest Schacht wheel you can imagine. You'll see pictures of all these soon enough.
There was a disturbing absence at MDS&W. The alpacas were conspicuous by their virtual absence. The booths selling alpaca fleece were scattered and ruinously expensive ($50/lb). That gives me a mission at New Hampshire Sheep and Wool, where the Northeast Alpaca association is having its annual fair alongside the sheep. One fleece. That's all I ask.
Our house has had odd buzzing noises, and vibrations audible through the timbers for the last 48 hours. I can trace it to Kellee's call to arms legs, sent out to the knitting community. It's difficult to say the words "thank you" in a different way, that would put how we feel into those simple two words. So Mr. Etherknitter sends you this:
"Healing is more than just car repair,
Darning, patching, or weaving in ends,
It takes hope, and maybe, some prayer,
And welcome wishes from all our friends.
Thank you, all, for the positive vibes. Especially as my recovery lags, the spirit and love is very heartening."
I've sent him many links, and watched him smile. Thank you.
So. I'm doing my share. How about an FO, which began in ambivalence, and ended as a gift of my time and love to a broken husband-unit who enjoyed watching each foot of knitting unfold?
I lost the pattern at the end. Claudia looked at me in disbelief when I mentioned this last week. In order to salvage some small modicum of knitting chops, I skulked home, looked at the cabley beginning, and figured out a simple cabley ending. No big deal. She was right. (She always is. Damn.)
Pattern: Plymouth Cable and Rib Afghan
Needles: #10 and #10 1/2 Addis
Yarn: Plymouth brushed baby alpaca, color #1000, 13 balls
Started: 11/25/05 Finished: 4/28/06
I plied the Cormo/alpaca neppy, felted roving. I got about 232 yards of almost DK weight yarn. It actually looks far better than I expected.
This is prewash, on the niddy.
I truly hate to admit that it was a great learning experience. It worked on multiple levels.
-I stumbled into an algorithm that allowed me to spin it into the best yarn possible for what it was.
-The comments from other spinners acted as an effective workshop. Helpful, to the point, and informative, I learned good stuff from them.
-For the first time, I have had the experience of plying as a way to improve my singles, rather than as a way to ruin some good singles with a second variable. It was a sea-change in my thinking about plying and spinning.
I am Maryland-bound on Friday. Roving? Spinning tools? Sock yarn? Fleeces? Who knows? That's half the fun. I'll be wearing a Boston Red Sox cap, and waving a bottle of red wine around at the hotel. Any takers?
It is the popcorn season of gardening. Everything is tightly furled, like popcorn kernels. I can't predict what will pop into bloom next. Tiny explosions of color focus my attention until it's all in bloom at once.
The Queen of Green is putting on her prom dress. During the winter, she strips naked. You can see her languidly acquiring undergarments in early spring. The gardening audience holds her breath, waiting for the new designer gown to be complete:
Acer palmatum dissectum 'Viridis'
Other popcorn players are teasing me mercilessly.
The performances remind one how delicious it is to be alive.
Clockwise, from left top, Wisteria sinensis, Betula lenta inflorescences (AKA birch pollen), Paeonia suffraticosa (tree peony), and Syringa vulgaris 'President Lincoln' (lilac)
