Fleeceful Kingdom

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time." --John Lubbock

Woolly Week Summer Camp for Kids

Day Five: Garden Loom Weaving

 

We wove in treasures we gathered on our nature walk, and bits of yarn from my stash.

Even my four year old granddaughter, Frida, enjoyed weaving on her garden loom!

 

 

 

 

So cool! Everyone's weaving was different; unique to their own individual style. This was my favorite activity of the week, even though I stayed up late the night before to finish all the looms!

We had an awesome week! Anyone interested in Woolly Week for next year?

Fleece,

Abu

“If you are a dreamer, come in. If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, a hoper, a prayer, a magic-bean-buyer. If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire, for we have some flax-golden tales to spin. Come in! Come in!” --Shel Silverstein

Flax harvesting (1904) painting by Emile Claus (1849-1924)

Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels, Belgium

Around here, once we turn the calendar page to August, the season changes as well. The days are cooler, it is getting dark noticeably earlier, the Canadian geese are already flying overhead.

Mind you, we still have sunny days. But it feels different. Like everything is winding down. Gathering in. There is a flurry in the kitchen, putting food up for the long winter. (There is nothing like opening a jar of vanilla peaches in the middle of February to take you back to July)!

And this year, I am gathering in the flax. It has been beautiful harvesting weather; cool but sunny. In fact this morning, I was wearing a hoodie. There was a slight breeze, which made the flax seed heads softly whisper in their rattling voices, "Pull me! Pull me!"

I was picking slow; as sort of a morning meditation; thankful for the sun, the coolness of the day, the beauty of the last tiny blue flowers rolling like waves on a sea of stalks.

The wind was playing with me. A sudden gust would bend the stalks this way as I reached and missed; then that way, reach and miss. I could hear a faint laugh; she's such a tease.

Then I grew frantic. I reached a part of the flax bed that is ready now, and from what I've read, it can't wait. The quality of the flax depends on the harvest. Waiting too long will make a coarser fiber. The voice in my head started saying, "Faster! Faster!" I started kamikaze picking, and developed a scoop method where I circled my had clockwise grabbing a handful of stalks from the left, pulling towards me, then up. There was a slight ripping sound as the earth gave up her hold. I clasped bundles in my other hand until I could hold no more.

The harvest is halfway done, but my back is beyond done. Still bent over, I make my way to the house, wondering if I will ever straighten out again.

Fleece,
Abu

“The Internet is just a world passing around notes in a classroom.” --Jon Stewart

Since Tia Sari is home, she is teaching me the ins and outs of Facebook, and I am going along kicking and screaming. (Oh no, another time suck)!

I really test her patience with my stupid questions trying to learn the difference between a fan, a favorite, a follower, until i use the other f-word out of my frustration!

She says the more I use it, the more it will make sense. (Am I just the wrong generation or something? I don't even have a cell phone, or a TV. Do I really need this)???

This version of Typepad will not allow me to add the Facebook widget, so you can find me here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Fleeceful-Kingdom/119028321514383

Please check out my page, maybe even "Like" what you read and see, as my little sheepies and I pass around our notes in the internet world!

The girls came over Sunday. Aimee loves a pony ride.

Frida and Aimee love to feed George timothy through the fence.

I've been kind of worried about Georgie. If you've been reading along, back in the Spring when we sheared, Georgie had his hooves trimmed.  There was a little blood when he was trimmed. Not a lot. But he was very sore and limped for about a week after.

I was going back through my photos, and I found a picture before he was trimmed.

This is what his hooves look like now:

Are they supposed to be all white? None of the other sheep hooves look like this. He seems to be walking okay. No sign of a limp. This just doesn't look right to me.

In the garden, the flax is ready!

When I returned from Costa Rica, I went to check out my dye garden. I mean my weed garden. Oh my gosh! How a little plot of dirt can get so carried away and go bad so quickly! I was a bit distracted with all the doctor's appointments, surgery, PT, etc. and didn't make the garden a priority. I walked in, took a look around, was so overwhelmed, I walked right back out!

But on Sunday, I made myself go in. Maybe there is something here that can be salvaged. Most of the flax has blossomed. The stalks have turned yellow green. I think they are ready to pull! So this week, in between getting ready for farm to yarn camp, going to help a blind lady with her weaving (5 hour round-trip drive), preparing fall classes, and family coming to visit, I will be pulling flax!

I made a Journey Loom to take a "test drive" with before camp starts. Oh, it felt so good to get my hands on some fiber, even if it was just putting on a warp. When I get grumpy, I need to remember this! Fiber: the balm for my soul!

I'm also playing with finger crocheting roving to make a small floor rug, which will be felted, a mini-version of this under some farm picked peaches:

Tia Sari is spoiling us with her fabuluous cooking now that she is up and around and off the crutches. She can make summer taste so good!

Enjoy all your tastes of this season,

Abu

 

"It is thus with farming: if you do one thing late, you will be late in all your work." --Cato The Elder

I haven't been able to get in the dye garden. Either it has been too rainy/wet or it was too hot! Yesterday was the perfect garden day; sunny, blue sky, and a temperature drop of 30 degrees!

Boy, was I in for a surprise.

The flax is coming along great, but the edge needed to be trimmed and the bed needed weeding!

There. That's better. The Professor gave me some advice. Weed more like a meditation, not like your life depended on it. Then it's not so overwhelming.

So I started to weed. The sun was warm on my back. A mommy robin built a nest in the bird box and kept me company. There was a nice breeze.

But then I got to wondering. What if it did matter? What if there was no Walmart, Target, (enter other big name box store)??? What if the clothes on my back were the result of my own hand???

I've been following Rebecca Burgess and her Fibershed project since last fall. http://www.rebeccarburgess.com/fibershed

Her goal is "To live for one year, in clothes made from fibers that are solely sourced within a geographical region no larger than 150 miles from my front door; this includes the natural dye colors as well!"

This was part of my motivation to have a flax and dye garden. A challenge to myself. Could I grow my own clothes??? I have the Shetlands for my nice warm woolies, but what about the one day of summer? Cotton is out. Can I grow flax and hemp in Central New York?

In my research about flax, it is a 1-1/2 to 2 year project, from seed to actual garment!!! Can you imagine our fore sisters growing their own clothes? Which is probably why they only had one dress. And why clothes were handed down and stitched and patched and stitched some more. Which brings me back to the thought about telling time through cloth.

I'm embarassed when I open my closet! (But now I see it as potential). I haven't done a F*R*U*gal project for a while, so it was time to dust some of those clothes off and make something of them.

In case you missed my previous posts, F*R*U*gal means I'm a Free, Reuse, and Upcycle kind of gal. Here is what I'm working on today:

Em, if you're reading this, stop here!

M's birthday is coming up, and I thought I would make her a market bag type thingy. My inspiration came from a bag a woman brought to Saori Worcester last month.

The "What if it did matter?" will continue to be a big question for me. It brings me back to all the research I did in school on fair trade, child labor, the environmental damage caused by the textile industry, women's cooperatives, my idea of bringing back the local mills (they were all up and down the outlet at the turn of the century), putting local people back to work, knitting from wind power, connecting with other local fiber producers, etc., etc. Oh, I need to go and weave to calm myself. This is too big a question for my little brain!

Fleece and be calm!

Abu

 

"The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself and carry you away." --Pierre Auguste Renoir

Well, I got carried away. My dye bundles were just begging to be unwrapped, for me to take a peek inside.

Just those few little hyacinth blossoms I picked off the stem gave all this beautiful color!

Too pretty to toss, I pressed them in a phonebook for some future project. (Everyone in my house knows not to throw away a phonebook without checking for hidden treasures)!

Now what to do with all these pretty cloths? I can hear a low whisper. Maybe piece them together? Stitch. Sew. Pull. Cut in strips? Weave. Hmmm. I'm listening.

I finished the lilac scarf on Friday.

I couldn't wait to get a new warp on the loom. But I ran into a wall. I was reading a post about Saori and realized, it's not so much the color or design that makes the fabric. It's the texture. I'm really frustrated because I don't have a candy store of yarn to choose from when I sit at my loom. So Friday night I thought, "I won't let that stop me. I'll just have to make my own!" I sat with my drop spindle and some colored roving left over from a class. I gathered bits of threads, leftover fabric scraps, thrums, embroidery floss, etc. But by then, after pondering this dilemma all day, I was tired, and decided to wait until morning.

Saturday, I thought, "Don't make too much of a deal about this. Just listen to the yarn. Don't start with any preconceived idea about what it will or will not be. Just do it!"

I opened the cupboard, threw on the warp, dressed the loom in record time, because company was coming, and I needed to get the warp tied on. Sometimes maybe a little deadline pressure is a good thing.

Another thought. Maybe a little of something is better than a whole lot. Like chocolate. It's nice to savor. To let the rich flavor roll around and melt in your mouth. It's really fun to do the interlock technique, but maybe just a little bit here and there gives more interest.

I've sent in an application for a juried Art in the Park show at the end of June, so I will really have to hussle if we get accepted (Em will be selling her handknitted baby items). New items have been posted to Etsy. Please check it out:  http://www.etsy.com/shop/fleecefulkingdom

I planted the flax garden and transplanted my dye plants, and then we had a week of heavy rain. Oh, my poor little plants. I've prayed over them every day. I'm not much of a gardener; I have a lot to learn. They looked so sad.

But yesterday, the sun finally broke! The flax is up and looks good!

I am following the Japanese method of no-till gardening. I spent the winter reading the "One Straw Revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka. He is a pioneer and practitioner of natural farming. We'll have to see. It's an ongoing experiment!

The sheepies have discovered the breakfast bar is open 24/7!

May you have a fleeceful 24/7!

Abu

"We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves." --Lynn Hall

I'm back from Saori Worcester! I had a fantastic, intensive couple of days. My schedule actually was condensed from five days to three, so I wove my little heart out to complete my first "official" Saori-style scarf.

I wanted to challenge myself to use colors that I normally would not/have not used before. Isn't that the reason to go to a workshop?

The warp is cotton. But the weft? I started out using the same weft. My instructor, Mihoko, very gently suggested I try different yarns. She said that because I have a weaving background, the hardest thing for me will me to "unlearn" everything I already know. In traditional weaving, you would usually use the same yarn. Not with Saori. The world is your palette. And Mihoko's studio is a "candy store" of yarn! Oh, the colors! The textures! I just had to touch everything; feel it flow through my fingers like rivers of streaming yarn.

The subtitle of the Saori book is, "Self-Discovery Through Free Weaving." It is giving yourself permission to play! To play with color and texture. To tap into that inner space and let the weaving flow from your heart. It is not an excuse for sloppiness, but a challenge to go beyond yourself.

I found the quote above this morning and thought it was so appropriate! My love for weaving began in Mrs. Beach's third grade class. We had to do a report on a country, and I was assigned to report on Peru. Well, that did it; I saw pictures of beautiful Peruvian weaving, traditional dress, women spinning while doing chores. I must have driven my mom crazy, because for Christmas that year, I received my first inkle loom. I still have it!

Like a typical kid, I picked it up on and off, until my last year of high school when I went to an alternative school. The art instructor had a four harness loom, and everyone got to weave on  a large tapestry that was to hang in the common area. That was the first time I wove on a "big" loom. During that year, I also wove on a small frame loom. I made a small woven pouch in the Navajo style, and someone stole it out of the display case! I was really pissed, but I remember thinking someone must have really liked it!

All my weaving study in college was on a four harness loom. So now I think I have come full swing. Back to the beginning. Back to what attracted me to weaving in the first place. I love to manipulate the threads with my fingers. To get in there and feel things and move things around. To push the threads up and expose the warp threads, or to pull tight and gather them in. I think I am finding my clear self.

With all this weaving energy flowing inside just wanting to bust out, I was trying to find a way to make it a little more portable. Since the Professor and I share a car, there are times when we are on errands together and I have to wait for him and vice versa. I can't stand to just sit there! Usually, my knitting would fill the bill, but my hands are giving up on me, so I am giving them a rest to see if they just need a break.

I found a small wooden frame. (I think at one time it had a little chalkboard in it). So I pounded in a couple of nails.

When I was in art school, we used to do quick gesture drawings as a warm up before we began the "real" drawing. I hope to do some quick "gesture" weavings just to loosen up. Maybe applique the patches on t-shirts, or keep them for bookmarks, or whatever. They're fun and portable!

Well, back on the farm, the Professor will be building a fence around the garden to keep our little four-legged friends on "their" side!

I planted my flax when I returned from Worcester. I thought I would never get it in! It has been the wettest, rainiest, muddiest gosh darn spring I can remember!

On Mother's Day, we had the joy of taking the grandkids to the park and back to the house for lunch. Aimee is growing up so fast; she's shot up about four inches since her December birthday!

Frida is going to be a future track star. She just loves to run, run, run!

After lunch, we decided to collect dandelions for the sheepies.

George loves dandelions!

And finally, the shearer comes today! I called him back in April, and it has just been too wet and cold. We have a sunny day today; a perfect day for a haircut!

Thanks for reading!

Pray for fleece,

Abu