The last day of the holiday. . . .

 

Jasper and his Christmas bow

Well. Tomorrow marks the beginning of the new work year. We were looking for no more than to survive the holidays, and we did better than that. A small victory. Our handsome boy wore his red velvet ribbon with no complaint, though maybe a little embarrassment. I'm hoping it wasn't just giving up. It seems not. He grows more comfortable with each day, and of course I'm not above rearranging furniture to help him feel less constrained. . . more able to move in and out; up and down. We had a major victory a week or so ago, when he let out a small "woof" in the middle of the night and went charging out the dog door. We didn't figure out who the intruder was, but he came back in smelling of rosemary, so that at least gave us his trajectory. Into the herb garden. Cat? Badger? Possum? Mountain lion? (the last is unlikely but not impossible). Still. He clearly saw the yard as his to protect. Another victory. Yay, Jasper. 

The daughters are safe, if not free from worry. The kind we all have these days. This multi-faceted illness/society/world sort of concern that isn't easily expressed in words. "How are your children? How are the kids?" is always my second question to friends not seen for a while. It is literal, but also something more. "How are all of the things that concern you most closely? How are you coping with this threat to all that you hold most dear?" 

Jasper. Unambiguously good.

How can we come together? How can we understand each other? How can we bear to be in the same room with those who would threaten this civilization? How can we help?

Tomorrow I will walk Jasper. I will make things. I will try to figure out other ways to make our small corner of the world a better place.

Christmas Past. . .

The Dogwood Wreath, closeup

 A friend of mine had said that this Christmas would be memorable. It was. We felt fortunate that everyone was healthy, and calm and bright; even if distant. We have spend Christmas's without any of our kids home before, but this one did feel distinctly different. Neither John or I were inclined to travel, or go skiing, as we have in the past. We did have a lovely day, brioche for breakfast, and a long hike with Jasper. Ha. As usual. And now I can post what I was working on for so long. . . porcelain candle wreaths for the Daughters: A four-candle advent wreath for Beth, and a 5-candle not-advent wreath for Sarah. I was so pleased with the outcomes. 

 

The Dogwood wreath

Two things to note, though. One is that I completely underestimated what it would take to pack and ship these puppies. I am still astonished that they made it to their cross country destinations in one piece. Kudos to Federal Express.The second is that their success may have made me a little overconfident with porcelain; possibly explaining the disaster in the previous post.

The Dogwood Wreath  with candles

Christmas has always been important to me, in spite of my devout agnosticism. I was raised Christian, of course, but even after my spiritual awakening, I have continued to appreciate the themes that Christmas celebrates. Generosity and a coming together being topmost.  The notion of lighting the dark is so strong for me that we never eat dinner during the dark months without candlelight. Nothing celebrates this quite as brightly as Christmas. Unless it's Hanukkah. 

The Poppy wreath with candles

This year, though, a new word kept coming into my mind and my annual End-of-year card writings. It was "hope". I realized the degree to which hope figured into a this now-famous baby being born into and embraced by a fraught world, representing hope for something kinder, gentler, more humane, and enlightened.

 

The Poppy Wreath

Honestly, it feels naively optimistic to hope these days. But there you find yourself on Christmas day, talking to friends and loved ones, and feeling hope in spite of yourself. You do so knowing that you're setting yourself up for disappointment, but you do it anyway.

The Poppy Wreath, closeup

Next?  The porcelain experiments (using white stoneware in tandem) will begin next week. . .when I get a little of the studio Christmas chaos under control. 

Wishing everyone in the world a promising and hopeful 2021.

Looks like monthly reports now. . .

So this seems a little bit sad. A month goes by and I don't seem to register it, let alone post. What's going on with that? And yet. Here we are. We have a neighbor who is a physician's assistant who works with Covid patients, and she told us yesterday (driveway conversations! so wonderful!) that she got her vaccine. One of the first in line. Hallelujah. One less essential soul to worry about. Sort of. 

Pottery has continued, but stutteringly. These bisque pieces were so wonderful, but collapsed during the glaze firing. I can't bring myself to photograph them in their misery. Porcelain is a harsh mistress. So the next project (after holiday baking indulgence, and Christmas cards) is to make the same square piece (roughly) from both porcelain and a cone 5 stoneware, and run them through the same paces. I suspect that the porcelain is to blame, but I must have had something to do with it. . .

The days have been full of the making of other things too. I am no medium snob. Knitted socks, crocheted collars on tiny velveteen dresses, procuring (wrapping and mailing) gifts. All good work, but not work I am good at. It all takes me so long. 

Jasper continues to be my partner-in-crime. We had a long walk today in misty murky weather with M and B. Perfect for my mood. These Rocky Mountain foothills have their charms, though more and more I miss the wet eastern green.

And we sequester. Wine, dog, consort, not in that order. We wait, too. Patience is the hardest thing. For me. For most of us, I expect. Christmas is a thing to try to cherish, but mostly to survive. We're planning on a NY Christmas. We have to find some Chinese take-out. Smile. And hope that Christ can actually intervene, and make compassionate souls out of all of us.

Making stuff. . .and not

 

I am amazed at how long it's been since I posted anything. Over a month! It's hard to tell where the ebb and flow of time wanders off to these days. The pandemic is worsening, which keeps us closer to home. You would think that time would drag, and for certain hours it does. But mostly we've adapted to this new normal. I do worry that the coming winter will hurt our health care and other essential workers. The vaccine news seems good, but getting everyone vaccinated is still many months off. Maybe more.

My ceramic work has been mostly super secret until after Christmas. But I did make a few bisque stamps with dried vegetation I found on our visit to Hailey, and our Sweet Gum Tree leaves here, that are rapidly dropping. They will be very fun to use.

 Winter is coming.

Cluny the Border Collie

I also knit my lovely Grand Daughter a couple of friends. I used to whip these little stuffed animals up pretty quickly, but everything seems to take me a while now. Back and eyes can't do this fine stuff for more than an hour or so.

Jasper the Border Collie

Both of our families have Border Collies now, and I was going to buy and ship some little toys that she likes in the Border Collie group. It turned out that those were special editions, and while one can order them from Japan, shipment was going to be well after her birthday. So I said "Well, I guess I'll have to make a couple". This is an ongoing theme for me. I can't find what I want (am I really that picky?), so I have to make it. The results are Jasper and Cluny, knit with size one needles and a lot of love. They look big in the images, but in fact are only 4" tall.

Snow in early November

We are trying to continue to have friends over on our patio. That's entailed purchasing a new fire table, which doesn't seems as warming as it's 60,000 BTU's might suggest. We're tweaking the system. And we have a couple of warm days today and tomorrow. The weather has been a roller coaster all year with temperatures up and down even more than usual. I'll close with this image from last week. . . we had a lovely snow that lasted for a few days. It's all melted now, but more will come, I expect. And we finally are getting moisture dropping from the sky, which is always a huge relieve for me.

A Yarn

We visited New Zealand for a couple of months in 2018, and were able to connect with the owner of the factory that made my spinning wheel, purchased unfinished, in a kit, in the mid '80's.  I recently reconnected with the owner who had welcomed us in our visit, and I told her the story (in way too many words) of getting Jasper and making yarn out of the fleece and the dog that we so generously received from Jasper's former owner. She asked me if I'd be interested in writing an article about that incident for their newsletter. I was thrilled to do so. There has been so much generosity from so many folks in our lives. So I thought I'd share the article I wrote for her here.  It is necessarily many fewer words.

My Ashford Traveler Wheel and Jasper

 

A Yarn about a Dog and a Fleece

“If you take the dog, you can have the fleece”, the rancher said when I offered to buy the fleece. We had driven out of Boise to look at a working Border Collie, Jasper, who needed a new home because at age 9, he could no longer keep up with the younger dogs. I know the feeling. The fleece in question came to light when I mentioned that I was a hand-spinner. Of course, I would mention this to a guy who runs 1200 sheep. I hadn’t spun in years, but this fleece made my eyes light up. It was very deep brown, a merino cross (fine), long stapled, very greasy and full of vegetable matter. What potential.

Jasper, it turns out, has a very lush, fine undercoat. The sheep rancher, who also breeds his own Border Collies and Great Pyrenees dogs, said that one of the Great Pyrenees dogs may have slipped in unnoticed to visit Jasper’s Mom, and hence the undercoat. The rancher wouldn’t take our money for either treasure, so we sent him a complete set of the Walt Longmire books as a thank you. If you don't know Walt Longmire, he's a Western US icon.

The batt for spinning

After we gave Jasper the first bath of his life, I started brushing out his undercoat. It took a couple of weeks to get all of his undercoat released. It was a wonderful way to connect with a dog who had worked so hard all of his life. I have spun dog fur from previous dogs, so I knew his would be lovely. It’s very like spinning French Angora Rabbit fur. It adds softness, and eventually a halo to the items knitted from it.

 

2 and 3 ply yarn

 

 

 

 

 

There was an “Oh Dear” (maybe something stronger) when I realized what I had taken on. After skirting and sorting the wool, I washed it, and couldn’t help noticing how much vegetable matter (VM) it had in it. Oh. Dear. First the teasing, and removal of VM, mostly grass seeds. Then it was 4 times through the drum carder, removing VM during and between each run through. With each run through I also spread out the resulting batt and you guessed it; removed VM. On the last run through, I mixed in about ¼ Jasper fur by volume, by making 4 strips from the batt, spreading them out, spreading Jasper fur on top, and then folding the whole thing like an envelope. This is to avoid losing all the fur on the waste wheel of the carder. Each strip was treated the same way, building onto the first ones until I ended up with a mouthwatering thick batt. 

Jasper. The way home.

 

It’s not a perfect system, and I’m still picking out the occasional grass head while spinning. Still. There is pleasure in doing it, and the yarn is lovely; slightly unrefined, but well-structured with a lot of potential. Like Jasper.

Patio spinning and other stuff

Patio spinning with Jasper

It's been way too long since a post. I've been busy doing things I love, so it's not such a bad thing. Jasper and I have been engaging in that most sublime activity, patio spinning, every day since the last post. The weather today was 77F and clear. It's been mostly clear since the last post. However, the high pressure system that's been holding the smoke in place (unfortunately over the west coast) is shifting, and we'll see smoke again tonight or tomorrow. I've become very attached to my Air Quality app.

I love sitting outside to spin. Jasper is excellent company. It is meditative, and sweet to listen to the sounds. . .some natural, some normal human activity.  The fleece still has some vegetable matter that needs to be shaken or picked out as I spin, but it's also softer than soft.

We went out for a meal on a patio (at a Restaurant) this past week. We haven't done so since the first week in March, and it felt other worldly, though of course it's not exactly normal. Still. It does feel safe. We had two drinks to drive up our bill, and triple tipped. Afterwards, we wandered around downtown, masks on, and it really felt odd and normal at the same time. Something we used to do all the time, but newly unfamiliar.

Freak Alley

Freak Alley used to be a rebellious bit of illegal artwork on the buildings in an alley, but it's been codified by the city now. This painting is an inside joke. . .Aaron Paul (left on the painting) is a local boy made good in the series Breaking Bad. 

I want to go downtown and patronize some of the businesses someday soon, but it is amazing how quickly our habits change. I don't wander around shops or drop by a coffee shop at all any more. I only go to them for groceries and home repair stuff.

View from the top, Shaffer Butte

We also took a wonderful hike at Shaffer Butte over the weekend. This is how clear it was. . .the clouds looked like they had been hung. The American West is wonderful in it's clarity of color when it isn't burning.

Clay. Right. I should talk a little bit about clay. I have several pieces in the kiln ready to bisque, but have been busy with other stuff, so I've been woefully unproductive in that arena.

Harvest continues here for likely another month, and I have run out of canning lids. Who knew we could run out of those? It is odd to see which shelves are empty at various times. It makes me realize how completely we have taken the supply chain for granted. For everything. The good news is that I need canning lids because a friend gave me 20 pounds of beautiful plums. Now, if I can just get them preserved. . . .

Blue skies. . .nothin' but. . .

The sky at Saturday Dinner

Well. Ok. That's a bit of a lie. There are lots of skies that aren't blue, but we got a break today in the air quality. As we had dinner on the patio, this is what I saw. And just this evening, the Air Quality Index went into the "good" range. . .42. This is very good. It's not likely to last, but still. Now is now.

A haunted hike: yesterday

I 

 

 

 

I was walking Jasper on Friday, and the only word I could think of for the atmosphere was "haunted". Jasper doesn't seem to mind beyond my distress (which I try to hide), but eventually the sore throat and accompanying raspy voice and the watering eyes are hard to ignore. The other "haunted" aspect is that the trails are uncharacteristic unpopulated. I would normally be pretty pleased with this, but it's only because most folks have better sense then to hike outdoors when there is a health risk involved with breathing.

The garden is noticeably slowing down. I think the plants key onto the shortening days. . .especially the tomatoes, who like heat and light so much. I picked a couple that had barely broken from green to red just because I felt like I should have something to show. I also picked the eggplant that has just been sitting there waiting for something to happen. Kentucky wonder green beans continue to give me 8-12 a harvest, which showed up on the dinner table tonight, along with a Heritage Tomato pie. A quiche, if you're French, but of course these are good old Early Girls, not heritage tomatoes, which have too long of a growing season to work for us. I stand by my Early Girls, though. They are super delicious, always. Smallish, but that's ok. Size matters not. 

Wool processing continues; pottery making continues. . .a new dress may be in the offing.