The Woolen Rabbit

Staying Busy...

Can you see a sound?
Can you hear a light?
Can you unite your senses?
Can you turn inward?
Deng Ming~Dao

I'm not going to lie, it's been a hard week here waffling between panic and gratefulness, like so many others trying to find a sense of normalcy in a very changed world.

Ken is still working every other day, so when he is home, I find it easier to stay calm, but on the days he is away, it's a bit harder, so I have been finding ways to keep busy.

My oldest daughter is an OB nurse, so I have been working on masks for her unit.  They are more work than they look like and I've had a number of failures, but I love to sew and knowing that every little bit helps, helps me.  I will be making some for family today and some surgical caps with buttons for my youngest daughter's friend who is a nurse in Boston.



I have also fired up the dye pots and will be doing a lot of dyeing next week.  I am not set up to go back to dyed to order with my inventory right now, but there will be some new colors and some old favorites in a few different bases.

I dyed this combination a few days ago anticipating some color work that I have wanted to do.  My friend Cara has designed this beautiful mitten pattern called Persimmon Flower and when I saw it, I knew immediately that this was the design I wanted to make. Cara is SO talented!

....and walking always brings calmness to my spirit.
It's where I do my best thinking.
It's been a rainy couple of days, so it's has been a bit more challenging finding time to go out while dodging the rain drops, but even when it's gloomy, I make time to get out and breathe and remember that we will get through this one day at a time.

What are you doing to stay busy during these challenging times?

Redirecting Thoughts...

Oh My Goodness...what a month it has been!
How are you all doing?  I have been working with Kym of Stepping Away From The Edge on a once a month fitness blog post since January, but needless to say, it's been a bit harder staying focused this month for sure!

I know myself in addition to worrying about family members, I have had to find that comfort zone in keeping myself occupied at home after working in the 9-5 world for the last 5 years.

Before going back to work when my dye pots were busy, I would print out orders the night before and plan my day.  It always included a healthy breakfast and a planned 2-3 mile walk before I got down to work in my studio.

While I haven't been very good about strength training this month, I have been good about getting outside and walking, in between the little snow storms that have become a regular occurrence this March.  Nothing too much, but just enough to be a bit of a hinderance.  

On one particularly gloomy day, I headed out feeling very overwhelmed by everything I was feeling.  Sadness for our children, worry for my grown children still in the workforce and concern for my parents.

Here is where the work I have been doing in self care kicked in.

One day when I went out for a walk, I saw a school bus stopping and was confused, but when I saw they were delivering school lunches, it made my heart smile.

The next day a little boy was waiting with his mom when the bus came and he had a big thank you sign. I thanked the bus driver and started to cry as I was walking and I immediately realized that I was allowing panic and sadness to settle in, so I asked myself a few questions that I have learned will help us find the root of our discomfort, such as...

"why are you crying?"

"because the children must be scared and confused"

"but he had a smile on his face"

"just me adding thoughts...just thoughts, not facts."

and with that I was able to quickly put it away and enjoy my walk and be happy that we live in such a caring small community. In the past I probably would have cried for a good 15 minutes.

As I walked along I saw signs of life that reminded me that we will get through this.  I saw new buds on the trees, squirrels running up and down the trees and the cows being put back out to their pastures.

These last 2 weeks I have felt almost paralyzed because like many others, I was laid off, so I was allowing the anxiety and panic of what was to come sneak in.  

Yesterday however, I sat myself down and created a schedule that included working out in my shop again, getting some physical activity, taking care of self care including eating that healthy breakfast again and preparing a healthy dinner with my husband and remembering that we will get through this, but we need to stay in today and not worry about tomorrow or think about yesterday.

Normally I start off with a quote from my favorite little book, 365 Days of Tao, but today I am going to end with one instead.

Dormant bulb, skin of tea-stained parchment,
Reaches into the water with pubic tendrils--
It is the roots that make tall green shoots possible.
Deng Ming~Dao

 

Weavings...

“Life is a constant series of opportunities.
If we don’t reach out for things,
if we don’t take advantage of what comes our way,
then we cannot be in harmony with the essential nature of life.”
Deng Ming~Dao

I'm always amazed when I tell myself that I don't think I will ever be interested in doing "such and such". 
I remember years ago when a friend lent me a drop spindle thinking.."why?"  Why would anyone choose to do something so incredibly frustrating?"
Then I tried a spinning wheel and well, you know how that went.  I think I have owned almost every type of spinning wheel that has been made and then sold them to new, appreciative homes when I wanted to try a different type of wheel.

So when I saw the little inkle looms years ago....same.  I'll never use one of those, I'm sure of it.
Hmm...I think I will stop saying never..ha!

This little loom is called the Minstrel and is made by Windhaven Farm.  The base of the wood I chose is my favorite.. walnut..so pretty!
This loom is smaller so it can be used when watching tv or in the car, but I have quickly found out that for my "man sized" hands, it's not the right loom for me.  I really do have wide hands and fingers, so I am going to get a bit larger loom.

As you can see above there is definitely a little learning process here.  I love challenging my brain!
The band is supposed to be warp faced, meaning that you shouldn't be able to see the weft..and you can clearly see my weft.

As I started weaving with that goal in mind you can see were I was getting closer to where I needed to be.  Of course I ended up being a little "TOO" aggressive and snapped a warp thread..argh.  It's all good though..it's what helps to keep our brains engaged, right?

One of my bargains with myself in this year of organizing is if something comes in, something has to leave, so I will be selling this loom at a reduced price to a good home.
I also have a medium sized cherry triangle loom with a walnut stand that will be looking for a new home as well.
If any of this interests you, just give me a shout.

 

Slogging through Winter....

I apologize for being so quiet the last few weeks.  I think February and working 5 days a week now just kicked my butt this year.
Do you ever find that sometimes when life gets busier and you are feeling overwhelmed that it's easy to build a cocoon and climb into it, finding it easier not to do the things you should be doing, like cleaning your house..ha!  Instead we took frequent drives over to my favorite place to be, Pine Point Beach in Scarborough Maine. 
We were also treated to a few concerts from my children for Christmas. We saw Iron and Wine and Calexico with Courtney in Portland, which was a lot of fun and earlier this month we saw Bruce Hornsby in Portsmouth which was a gift from my son and his wife and was such a treat.

That pretty much sums up my February other than I have stayed committed to organizing and hoeing things out. I have also stayed committed to doing some sort of a work out every day except for last week.  I think I was just mentally worn out, but I'm back at it!

So this past weekend, we went to this wonderful exhibit called "Strong Women Move Mountains".  Go take a look at the website that I linked and watch the video...it's fabulous!  I know some of these women as friends, so it was such a treat to attend the opening Friday night.  I love how each one of these women worked on this magnificent piece.  My picture doesn't even begin to show how beautiful it is, but if you watch the video you will see it, along with the lovely gold Owl that my friend Laura Guptill made.  My other friend Gaye Freeborn had a huge hand in this painting.  She is a very talented painter!

All of the women had their own exhibits along with a few other talented women in the Mount Washington Valley.  It was nice to see their beautiful works.

This lovely pair of silver and gold birch tree earrings may have come home with me.  
Over the last few weeks, I have had a number of people support my dyeing business,
so it's nice to be able to pay some of it forward to my fellow artisans, especially when they are local.

Weekending and Organizing...

Kicking a pebble by the side of the road,
Watching it tumble pell-mell.
Chance and randomness become order.
Deng Ming~Dao

See that corner?  It has looked like this for years..seriously years.
I have a few corners in my house that look like this in the rooms that most people don't see.
As you may remember my word this year is Organization
I have been working on the mindful organization but felt it was time to start on the physical stuff that is occupying my brain.

I took all of this stuff and put it on the dining room table where I was going to have to look at it every day.  Amazing how fast that was sorted out and cleaned up!  The only thing left in that corner now is one organized camera/lens bag and my computer bag with a windows computer that I have to use now and then.

I moved onto the studio Saturday afternoon.  This will be an adventure and not a quick process. I will share pictures as I go along. It's a little harder to just get rid of things here and or throw them away because they have value.  However, some of this stuff I have had for literally 15 plus years and it just needs to go, hopefully not to the landfill, but no matter...it's going.
One of the things I am going to do is use my Woolen Rabbit shop page to de-stash items that others may want or need starting next month.

Sunday morning was super cold up here.  We had a few days of snow, then rain, then snow again.  It was so cold that the rain that fell was stuck to the trees days after it had rained, it was SO beautiful!
Even though I had to convince myself to go out snowshoeing with the extremely cold temps and a back that was barking at me from Tai Chi the day before, it was completely worth it!  It was like walking in a Crystal Palace.


It's been a strange winter up here.  We have had so many warm days, with very cold ones tucked in now and then.  I think it is confusing the animals and the birds.  On our trek this weekend, we saw many more animal tracks than we have seen in a long time.  Lots of rabbit, deer and little critter tracks.
On another note, there were some birders looking for a rare bird in this part of the US, a painted bunting youngster.  A few of them were able to catch some pictures of the bird.  Such a pretty lime green baby!
...and so winter proceeds...

Weekending and Swatching...

Dawn is a shimmering of the horizon.
Dusk is the settling of the sky.
Deng Ming~Dao

What a beautiful weekend we had up here!  Saturday I went out for a walk in the morning and then on to Tai Chi. I spent the afternoon doing some organizing and cooking.

Goodness...Tai Chi was challenging due to how much I have forgotten and how out of shape I am!  Just doing the basic movements left me with sore arms..ey yi yi!
I am going to a beginner's class on Monday nights, to get back in sync again, but I will continue with the more advanced class on Saturdays to keep myself challenged.  I know it will click fast, kind of like riding a bike, but I definitely need a refresher course.

Sunday we took a ride over to the coast.  It wasn't quite as warm as last week, but still so beautiful.  
We are expecting some snow this week, so it was nice to go for a visit before it's covered in snow again.
We were going to do some snowshoeing before heading to the ocean, but Ken irritated his shoulder doing something, so it was better just to let it rest even though he would have gone out if I really wanted to go.  Umm..no, he needs time to heal.

I just love seagulls, especially the brown seabirds.  Yes, I know that they are scavengers, but their voices as they soar over the waters always makes me smile.  Now pigeons on the other hand...not so much.
While the main beach at Pine Point was pretty busy for a February day, the dock area was pretty quiet.
It gave us time to just hang out and enjoy our time there.  I spent some time discovering pretty rocks that came home with me.
Ken is a patient soul, he indulges my strange curiosities with humor.

Sunday night I knit a few swatches while we were watching the Superbowl.
This yarn is Dove and the swatch is for the sweater Donner by Elizabeth Doherty.
I am deciding whether or not to knit this in a wool blend or use the suggested linen.  I have some kicking around, so I will watch with that as well and make a decision.  I have to say that I really do not love knitting with linen, but I do love the end result, so we will see.
I do love her designs!

Coming Up for Air and Fitness Friday...

There are no ancients before me,
No followers behind:
Only the vastness of heaven and earth
On this mountain terrace.
Though heaven may know the ultimate,
Joy or sorrow is our own will.
Deng Ming~Dao

Look at that tangled bunch of yarn above, it's what my life was like last week as I was dyeing this yarn for a yarn club order in addition to the full days at my new day job.  It was a super intensive method of dyeing that took me twice as long as it would typically take, but I love the combination of colors!  This colorway was was inspired by the sweet little otter pictured below and it's called..."Otter Be Knitting".  The yarn is for Lisa of Indie Untangled's yarn club where a certain percentage of the yarn sales goes to the Fish and Game Department.  I love that part of this yarn club!

The yarn is safely on it's way to it's new owners and I hope that they enjoy it as much as I do.  I will be looking for a different way to dye this though in the future to make it less time consuming. Because this was for a big mailing, I didn't want to vary much from the original 2 skeins that I dyed for the yarn club picture, but I have a few ideas kicking around.

One thing I did realize though is that doing big orders like this now that I am working 8:30 -4:30 every day, is that I'm getting too old to keep the pace of working all day and then working in the shop until 9pm.  There are SO many new, young indie dyers in the fiber world that I will leave this kind of work for them.  Their young backs can probably handle it better than mine these days...which brings me to the last part of my post.

Fitness Friday!
I will be posting along with Kym of Stepping Away from the Edge about fitness goals and accomplishments.  
Now that I am in my 60's, I don't recover from things the way I used to, especially since my back surgery years ago, so one of my goals for this year has been to work on getting stronger and more fit, especially in my core and back.  I love that this will help keep me focused on my goals.

As you know I truly enjoy walking in the mornings and have been really working on making that happen each day which has been challenging with the darkness of winter.  I have to time my morning right down to the very minute to get outside and off to work on time,especially with the morning dog chores that have to wait until it's starting to get light.  

It starts my day off though in the most fabulous way though! Not only do I get to see the sunrise most mornings, but it feels good just to be out in that cold air that makes you feel alive.  I am however going to start incorporating some strength training into my life soon.  I bought some light weights to start out with at home and my plan is to start working with a trainer at a new to me gym in a few weeks.

Kym and I will be doing Fitness Friday on the last Friday of the Month, so I'll report back next month how it's going.
What are your favorite ways to stay fit and strong?

Elorie!

Truth perceived gives assurance.
Skill yields self reliance.
With courage we can defy danger
To increase power, increase humility.
Deng Ming~Dao

Pattern:  Elorie
Designer: Elizabeth Doherty
Yarn: The Woolen Rabbit, WW Kashmir
Needles: Many, but I sized down the largest needle to size 9 to get the right gauge and matched the rest of the steps down to this one.
The fit....perfect!  I should have steamed this again before modeling it after a week of sitting folded.

I did make this a little longer than the original because this yarn is warm and I wouldn't be wearing another shirt under it.
I am definitely going to make this again with linen for the warmer months.  I really love how this sweater fits!



We had a solid 8-9 inches of snow last night and because I really enjoy snow shoeing and the weather was agreeable, we headed out to our favorite spot to first take some pictures of the sweater and then to do what we knew would be a strenuous trek because we had to break trail in the fresh snow.

Ken being Ken thought it would be fun to keep snapping pictures without stopping, catching me in all sorts of unflattering pictures.  
This is when I was trying to turn around for him to take pictures of both the back of the sweater and the back of this cloche hat designed by Amy Herzog for a yarn club I did. I still love it after all these years!
BTW...Grace is NOT my middle name.  Thankfully he did not have the camera when I tripped over my snow shoe and fell..sigh.



We worked hard on this trek.  Plowing through all that fresh snow, making the way for others is a lot of work, but so rewarding when you are done.  Tin Mountain is such a little gem here in the mountains.  So much to see everywhere and so many different trails for many levels of endurance for the every day person.

I love this trail sign!  I have so many chickadees in my yard and I so love listening to their songs every day.
This trek while short was very steep.  It was definitely a challenge for those of us who have been too sedentary!

The rest of the weekend was filled with dyeing work that I will talk about tomorrow.

I hope you had a wonderful weekend in your corner of the world!

 

Mindfullness.....

I purchased this beautiful beach stone necklace a few weeks ago when I made a trip to Boothbay Harbor to see the amazing lights that lit up their local Costal Botanical Gardens. (click on the link...the light show was AMAZING!)
 We took a little break to spend some time in Bath Maine, a place that I love and I found this little gem there.

I find that when I am feeling a bit stressed and I have this necklace on, which is frequently, I tend to just reach up to feel the smoothness.  It brings me right back to a warm summer day on the beach and the peacefulness of the ocean on a calm day.

Unlike most people who search the beaches for beach glass or sea shells, I collect rocks that somehow speak to my soul.  I have a pottery bowl that I made and each one of the rocks in that bowl have a date and a place where I found them.
I love this little bowl of memories.

I am working with a group that focuses on mindfulness and this little stone helps me remember that I am valuable and I need to look closer at stress and stressors.  It's definitely going to be a journey that I am looking forward to with a little bit of trepidation.

As many of you know, we always spend a week in August at our favorite place...Cape Cod.  It is a place that we have been visiting since my 2 youngest daughters were still living with us and it is still a place that we look forward to each year. The frosting on the cake is that we get to spend time with some dear friends that we don't see nearly as much as we would like to.

A few days ago, I sent a note to the landlord where we stay to let her know that we were excited to spend another week in our little house and asked her when she needed the deposit.  I didn't hear from her for a few days which was unusual, so I wondered if she was away or just busy, but tonight she told me that her sister, who is a co-owner has retired and wants to spend the month of August in our little house.  Instant stress...argh!

Now, I truly understand this...truly, I would love to spend an entire month there, but I just wish they had told us sooner because it's hard to find places this late.  Ken being Ken immediately became stressed, which of course created some stress in me.  I can't tell you how much the smoothness of this beach stone decreased my stress as I kept searching.

When I came upon a listing that had a weird time schedule (tues through tues) and I saw the above picture, I knew that this was the place for us.  It's no secret how much I love our Blue Herons and Great White Egrets.
I am very excited, not only for our new venture, but for a journey this year discovering mindfulness.

Life's journey is such an amazing thing that we are blessed to have with all of it's twists and turns.
We never quite know how or where we are going to end up, do we?

Have a wonderful weekend in your corner of the world!!

Much Better Today....

I am so much better today after getting some medicated drops to heal up the scratch in my eye.  Sheesh, this is not the first time I have done this so shame on me.  My mascara comes off in tubes which I love because it NEVER smudges, but if I don't take it off, I leave myself open for a day of pain, which sucks, especially if you just can't take the day off.  I looked like a prize fighter all day..LOL

So...look at that lovely bird feeder and what do you notice?  It's completely full even though it's been up for weeks.
Last year I had it hanging off the barn where it was close to some bushes, but I won't way I wasn't worried about rodents also being attracted to the feed that dropped to the ground.  I never noticed any evidence of them, but I did see a lot of cardinals sneak over to eat the seeds that fell.  I don't think that this feeder is big enough for them.

Today I moved it over to one of the trees I can kind of get to with boots on, but I'm thinking I may just put it back on the barn again.  I don't know if where I have this feeder is just too close to the road and leaves them exposed, even though it is right in front of a big tree or they just never found it...who knows.
I was going to put a bigger one on the back for cardinals, but I know that they don't like to venture out into the open too often.
Any ideas?

On another note....I finished my big brown blob and I love it!  
I will have Ken take some pictures this weekend so you can see what a lovely design Elorie is.