Hello to all of you, blog readers, email list subscribers, fellow natural wool and natural dyeing enthusiasts! What a very strange year this has been. No need for details there, suffice to say its been rough. And yet when my spouse creature and I found ourselves jumping into working as artists as regular work fell out from under us at the beginning of lock down you all were there to help. I can’t begin to express my gratitude, every comment on social media, every skein of yarn or knit good sent out to one of you, has kept our little woodland household going.
We're definitely in the waning time of year again. Here up in Northwestern Montana there's been a cold snap that's left us with a good layer of snow and temperatures down in the single digits. Brr! With the early onset of winter I've been appreciating my woolen wardrobe all the more, the socks in particular are key to my coziness when the weather turns.
Spinning in public will always draw a bit of a crowd, while I feel like our numbers are pretty strong it's still not a common art. There are two common comments I get that are both cute, and annoying at once. "Look! She's weaving!" - opps! Wrong craft and tool folks! - and mostly from men - "Look at that! I bet you could make yarn from your dog!
Our little cottage is right in the woods outside of Eureka Montana. When it comes to abundant and available dyestuff, Fir cones are at the top of the list. While our forest is a mixed mostly conifer forest, at our altitude sub-alpine fir reign supreme ( there are also the occasional lodgepole, tamarack, ponderosa, and cedar - my Dad was a dendrophile - what can I say? It rubbed off on me.) Each of these different species attract and interact with different lichens and fungi in beautiful symbiotic relationships - but that's a story for another blog.
Well. What is there really to say about it? The world has changed so much with the onset of the global pandemic, and not. I watch the news and grieve for the number of lives lost when I can. I play with the dogs and wander the woods when I cannot. This work that I do has been a calming and reliable anchor in these difficult times. To that end, I have been up to quite a bit of it, and I thought I'd try sharing one of my current projects.
Hello to all of you, blog readers, email list subscribers, fellow natural wool and natural dyeing enthusiasts! What a very strange year this has been. No need for details there, suffice to say its been rough. And yet when my spouse creature and I found ourselves jumping into working as artists as regular work fell out from under us at the beginning of lock down you all were there to help. I can’t begin to express my gratitude, every comment on social media, every skein of yarn or knit good sent out to one of you, has kept our little woodland household going.
We're definitely in the waning time of year again. Here up in Northwestern Montana there's been a cold snap that's left us with a good layer of snow and temperatures down in the single digits. Brr! With the early onset of winter I've been appreciating my woolen wardrobe all the more, the socks in particular are key to my coziness when the weather turns.
Spinning in public will always draw a bit of a crowd, while I feel like our numbers are pretty strong it's still not a common art. There are two common comments I get that are both cute, and annoying at once. "Look! She's weaving!" - opps! Wrong craft and tool folks! - and mostly from men - "Look at that! I bet you could make yarn from your dog!
Our little cottage is right in the woods outside of Eureka Montana. When it comes to abundant and available dyestuff, Fir cones are at the top of the list. While our forest is a mixed mostly conifer forest, at our altitude sub-alpine fir reign supreme ( there are also the occasional lodgepole, tamarack, ponderosa, and cedar - my Dad was a dendrophile - what can I say? It rubbed off on me.) Each of these different species attract and interact with different lichens and fungi in beautiful symbiotic relationships - but that's a story for another blog.
Well. What is there really to say about it? The world has changed so much with the onset of the global pandemic, and not. I watch the news and grieve for the number of lives lost when I can. I play with the dogs and wander the woods when I cannot. This work that I do has been a calming and reliable anchor in these difficult times. To that end, I have been up to quite a bit of it, and I thought I'd try sharing one of my current projects.
