Tapestries

I've always been fascinated by Sarah Swett's work. Zoom in on the details - just hover your mouse over the tapestry until the cursor changes to a finger pointing. How many frogs can you find? Why do I suddenly want to play Carole King?

New Fleece

I washed up the new Mary Pratt romney yesterday. Who knew it was going to rain all day? So here it is propped up and drying in the family room. Tomorrow is supposed to be really hot, so it should finish up outside - gee, I hope it doesn't end up smelling like barbequed ribs! I combed a lock with a dog comb and spun it from the fold. It's lusterous, but with a nice bloom. I was thinking of a rug, but I was looking at one of my tapestry books this morning and I'm thinking of trying a small one. I have a rigid heddle loom and one of those Schacht school looms which would be good for a tapestry. I have Nancy Harvey's book and I was looking at some of her work. Her flowers are sensational.

Oh yeah, those bags on the fireplace? That's my youngest son's job. He cuts samples for Benner's Gardens, they make deer fencing. It also makes great fleece dryers!

Late Bloomers

Thanks to our cool, wet spring my daylilies are very late in blooming. That's fine with me, because it's giving me time to get the garden cleaned up and weeded before they are in their prime. I finished this week's class assignments and can get into the garden tomorrow with a clear conscience.

Moving Mountains

I finally moved the last of the mulch pile. After sweeping off the driveway, then hosing it down, I opened up another parking space. That's important when you live on a cul-de-sac with no street parking and four kids, each with their own car, (one full-time, three part-time residents), and a '68 Cadillac permanently parked in one corner. (that's a whole 'nother story)

My Mary Pratt fleece came today and I already have it washed and drying. I'm sending the two corries to Ohio Valley tomorrow, but I think I may keep this one home and work on it myself.

I want to sit back, watch a movie and work on Sheepy, but I have homework. For some odd reason I didn't think I had enough to do this summer so I'm starting a masters program in Instructional Technology. It looks like I'll be able to take all of the classes necessary through Penn State's World Campus, with maybe a few visits to my advisor at a nearby satellite campus.

Look Ma - I'm not dropping it!

One of my goals for this summer is to try and master skills I haven't been successful with before. I have quite a collection of spindles, for someone who can't use a drop spindle for anything besides dropping! So I tried my hand at it again today. It went pretty smoothly, in fact, I only dropped it once.

I used some of the leftover dyes from my guild's dye day and put bunches of fleece in canning jars. Then I hand carded it and pulled it through a diz for a thin roving.

This is for the Go Fish exchange on ST. I'll spin up some for the Fulled Fish found in Knitters Stash. This will give me a small project to show off my first spindle spun yarn. I'll use the rest to needlefelt. I need to dye a few more colors - a bright yellow and maybe a deep gold.

Sheep Shawl

It's time to start the Sheep Shawl. I'm at that point in the Butterfly Garden shawl where it's getting repetitive, so it will go in the car for mindless knitting. But I don't think I ever got the charts in the pattern. I assumed it was on the inside of the insert, but that's just the row by row pattern. I emailed the vendor, but in the meantime I'm knitting from the row by row directions. Yuck! I love the way it's looking, but I really need the chart.

One More Day ...

Tomorrow is the end of a very long and stressful school year. Due to a very snowy winter, narrow borough streets that were hard to plow, and a myriad of other reasons, we had the year that would not stop. Fighting, runaways, dropouts, drug abuse, pregnancies (students' not mine!) reinforced the idea that education is not a priority for many of my students.

What keeps me going? It is that silent majority, the ones that don't make any trouble, that really do want to learn. They come to school almost every day, do their work, and try to succeed despite everything that is going on around them. One of my favorite students graduated yesterday. Actually, I never had her in a class, but she was a member of the Asian American Club I sponsor. She followed in her sister's footsteps as vice-president and then president of the club. But she was the rebel in the family. She found herself pregnant at the beginning of her junior year. Her parents insisted that she marry so as not to shame the family. She missed only three weeks of school and not only kept up her grades, but graduated with honors. She is going to Temple next year. She'll commute and work part-time to help support her family.