Sunday

The morning after a concert is always a delight.

I can sleep late and then have a lazy lie in with a cuppa and a good book ( or browsing the blogs, of course ).

This morning I did just that, and then wandered into my workshop and saw my loom and thought...I have time, I could finish that blanket today.

So I did.

I have woven a twill using a blend of possum/merino and alpaca/merino. The little orange stripe that you see is tussah silk.

It is very soft and light and is destined to become a warm cot blanket, I think, or perhaps a lap rug for my Mum when she is out and about in her wheelchair in the winter.

I am thinking I might do a similar one using all the odd balls of handspun that have grown into quite a large stash. I was saving them for knitting projects , but I think another blanket might be a good idea, while I have the loom set up.

Tomorrow I am off to Wellington. I am setting my alarm clock to 5.00am and meeting my daughter in Wellington for breakfast.!

An Italian Symphony

On Saturday night our orchestra is playing The Italian Symphony by Mendelssohn, and this week my head is full of all things Italian...snippets of Italian conversation , images of Venice, and Florence and Rome, the sound of whispered voices and feet in churches, the church bells in Assisi, my own steps on the stone pathways in Orvieto, and many more.
.

Puccini statue in Lucca

It has been lovely to revisit all these memories again, almost as good as being there.

We are playing some Puccini, Verdi and Donizetti too and there will be a huge amount of energy released in the auditorium that night. It is going to be our last concert for the year and then we have a party and talk about the programme for 2010.

This year has flown so fast and the other day I discovered my amaryllis in the garden about to open up. I can hardly believe it has been a year since I saw her last in all her finery.

To help with the build up of pre-concert energy, I have found spinning to be wonderful. The rhythmic flow of hands and wheel is perfect to free up the mind to listen, and just be.

I dyed some corridale fleece in soft watercolours and then have spun it over the last couple of weeks. It is always a surprise to see the colours that appear after dyeing. This soft mint green and wisteria blue is one of my favorites. I am adding this to my shop this week.

Flower petals

One of my granddaughters was a little flowergirl at a wedding at the weekend.

Keira had her very own basket of rose petals to throw on the grassy pathway.

but,

these are the flowers I love the most........sweet peas, and they are the first out of my garden this year.

I have them growing beside the beans and the leeks and the reason for that is they don't get overlooked when it comes to having a drink of water.

Time spent

I have been oh, so busy this last week, running around doing all the usual stuff, grandparenting, washing huge loads of sheets and towels, cleaning house ( we have had several families staying at our holiday home) and it is always a mammoth task to get it ready for the next lot of guests.

However, I was very happy to have a couple of days catching up on the things I love to do the most.
I hand dyed some corriedale fleece, spun and then plied it the navojo way.

I made some small progress on Phoebe's quilt this week and I have made a start on this quilt. Very satisfying !

Some weeding was done amongst the flowers, not very energetically, but there are a few "weed free" gaps now.

I hope you have a great weekend, doing all the things you love the most.

Handspun Goodness

A very quick post today just to show some handspun yarn that is hot off the spinning wheel.

It is a blend of 50/50 merino/soy fibres and is extremely soft.

The colour is the inside of a warm rosy pink peach just plucked off the tree and it will knit up on the needles like a soft pound of butter.

A small leafy shadow

Noting the date today, I see I have been away from my blog for a week and I don't have any particular reason that I can think of, except that I have been feeling a little grumpy.

An "eeyore" sort of grumpy.

Not the irritable sort of grumpy, not a flurry of worries or anything like that, nor a disquieting conversation with someone that has left you feeling a little put out and misunderstood......no, definitely not that.....but the little feelings of unease and not being able to settle on any one thing satisfactorily.

You know what I mean, don't you...the sort of feeling you get when you find a box of roses chocolates in the cupboard, that you had completely forgotten about, left over from Mother's Day and placed at the back of some tins of savory tomatoes that you had overstocked on because they were "on special". You bring the box down from the cupboard and discover that someone else had made the discovery before you, and had consumed the lot and left the empty box behind without even a " ha,ha got you" note inside.

Then there is the $50.00 note that you thought you had hidden away in your purse, hidden behind the post office receipts for parcels sent, and ones that you have to keep just in case the parcel doesn't reach the receiver. You discover something special ( like a book that you have heard a good review of on the radio), delve in your purse for that $50.00 note and find that you must have already spent it, and the worst thing is that you can't remember doing it !

It's the same feeling you have when you buy tickets in advance for a concert or show, and make a note of the date in your calendar, then find out you missed it when you read the review in the local paper.

None of those things have happened to me in this last week, although I have experienced them all at other times, no it is just a vague feeling of unease.... hmmm,

I must be feeling unsettled because I haven't done any knitting or spent time in my workshop for a while, but here are some pics taken in the garden which is where I been spending rather a lot of time lately.

Spring Garden

I starting piecing this quilt exactly a year ago, when my garden was looking much the same as it is now.

I quilted it a few days ago and wondered why I had waited so long to finish it.

I think this could quite possibly turn into a favourite, for now anyway.

Stones and Flowers

I love dressing the stones I find with their own little crochet covering, and then placing them in the garden amongst the flowers.

You can read about their beginnings here.

I choose my stone carefully, then take a cup of chai tea to sip, and sit outside to play hooky for a while.

The garden looks it's best in the Spring and I am finding a sweet surprise every day.