barn notes

Hoorah! The animals got out today. I was inside, sitting at my spinning wheel, minding my own business, when my mom ran into the room and announced we had a problem on our hands. The sheep were suddenly out in the north pasture gorging themselves on grass as fast as they could rip the tender roots out of the damp soil. 

A sheep in a fresh grass pasture is a curious sight. Usually skittish and shy, a determined sheep gorging is oblivious and immovable, focused on one thing only.  A UFO could land in front of them, and little green people could march out with stun guns, and they wouldn't bat an ear.

I jumped up, pulled on my mud boots, and hurried down to the barn. Our plan, hastily compiled, was to lure them back into the barn yard with an offering of grain. We got a small bucket, and walked out amongst the happy animals. 

The sound of the tearing and munching of grass was like the hum of a large factory machine. And the lambs weren't eating so much as tearing around, helter-skelter, from one end of the pasture to the other. Excitable, playful, completely uncatchable. 

My brother shook his bucket and I yelled things like: "come on, guys, let's go back inside!" and "do you want some grain? some GRAIN!" And, yeah, they completely ignored me. 

Finally my mom came out and we got an even bigger bucket of grain. Presently one of our original ewes, Nora, was coaxed back into the barn yard and after fifteen more minutes of frolicking in the grass, so were the others. So, it was a good day here on the farm. 

After the long winter who wouldn't love a chase through the green grass? (I sure did.)

n-o-t-o-r-i-o-u-s

I couldn't spell as a kid, in fact, with all these hi-tech gadgets on my computer, I'm not sure I'm that great of a speller now. For the last ten years word processing programs have given a person a head's up by an alarming red squiggle four letters into a misspelled word that something is off. (You made an error, back up quick.) So my fingers dash across the keyboard correcting and tweaking words before I even register or think I spelled something wrong. 

The fluidity of these programs, the ease with which entire templates are upgraded and switched around, allows for a lot of wiggle room. A word isn't spelled wrong until it's in black and white, sent off in an email, or printed up on some professor or editor's desk. (And then beware, you idiot, after you had so many chances to spell it right!)

So, notorious speller that I am, imagine my surprise and chagrin, that some former middle school teachers of mine would think that I'm a fit character to mediate a junior high spelling bee. My last spelling bee appearance was in the sixth grade where I spelled the word 'friend' wrong, thank you very much, and that was the end of me. I will forever be haunted by the rule i before e, except after c.

Spelling bees afford the opportunity for great notoriety amongst your peers. Either you choke on a word like bankruptcy, or soar right on through, past words like wreckage, battalion, or dromedary. (Dromedary, defined for the curious, is a camel of unusual speed, bred and trained especially for riding.) 

Knowing that would have thrilled me as a kid, if only I could have gotten that far. If only I knew then, what I know now. Oh well, my spelling bee doldrums made me the extra-particular reader that I am today: enthralled with words of mysterious origins. 

I will never forget one of my favorite scenes in one of my most beloved movies: Anne of Green Gables. When Anne shows everyone up in a spelling bee by spelling the word chrysanthemum correctly. Classic!

Image info: I couldn't resist the maple blossoms in the top photo. Nature's first hue is coral around here. The next two images are of some hand painted and hand spun CVM romeldale fiber. 

The finished single ply I'm calling far far away. I got the pale turquoise color by submerging the fiber in the left-over dregs of the dye bath from the finished fiber beneath the skeins of yarn in the bottom image. It's amazing what subtle hues you can get from the leftovers. 

what goes up

. . . must come down, down, down, baby. 

Let me tell you, I spent some time trying to come up with an idea for a photo shoot for these socks. This is Minnesota, nothing seemed to work with my underwater garden theme. All the ponds still have an edging of lacy ice, and the ground is still frozen in the shadows of the trees. 

My brother had the idea to climb a tree. Not very original, but there are a lot of them out here, and I thought it would look sorta bizarre with my feet sticking out into the blue nowhere. So I shoehorned myself into my summer blue jeans, rolled them up flood survivor-like, and followed my brother into the front yard. 

I'd climbed all these trees before, countless times while waiting for the school bus, or playing ghost around the house on summer nights. In theory, it should be easy to climb them today. I'm still limber, I'm still spry. 

I think my mistake was trying to climb them stocking-footed. I had to be careful, because I didn't want to snag the soles of my socks on the rough bark, and that threw my center of balance off. So anyway, I almost killed myself for the first photo. (Or at least sprained my thumb, I think, trying to hang on.)

But to no avail, my brother caught me on the way down. You know, in the movies, or on tv, people don't seem to fall hard, but I was coming down fast, let me tell you. Like a wool wrapped brick. Beneath the trees, as you can see, is a soft layer of moss. I love moss. I kept my feet firmly planted on it for the rest of the photos. 

The yarn, as I described in a previous post, is my own hand spun. CVM romeldale fiber is perfect to wear close to the skin. I know it's almost the end of April, but I may find use for them yet.

I was inspired to make these socks, by Lynn Vogel's wonderful book: The Twisted Sister's Sock Workbook. Check it out. 

a color fix

No calls today for subbing, but I was up bright and early just the same. Spring time means I walk around the house with one eye toward the sky all day long. I woke to a hazy morning sunrise, but the weather forecasters are promising a thunderstorm by late afternoon. 

I hope they're right. My garden needs rain, the dusty roads and my father's new planted oat seeds, they all need rain. This morning we were talking about rain, about lightning to be specific. I read recently that every time lightning strikes the earth it fixes nitrogen in the soil. That's why it looks so green and fresh after a rainstorm. Yes, all of the plants just got a big gulp of water, but at the same time they also just got a fresh batch of nitrogen to feed their hungry roots and leaves.

Lightning is one of the ways mother nature 'fixes' the color green, and here I thought I was pretty snazzy with my dye pot and bottle of white vinegar. The fiber above and to the side comes from my mother's CVM romeldale sheep. I dyed it with red oaks in mind. There's one red oak tree that sits at the end of my parents' driveway, every fall it turns the most fantastic shade of golden molten burgundy. 

I plan on spinning fingering weight singles and then combining them for a worsted weight double ply yarn. We'll see what I end up with. It's never quite what I had planned. 

Pray for lightning, everyone. (And have a nice weekend.)

Rhubarb Moon Snugs

We always had a garden when I was a kid. I can remember running through the rows of green beans, and tiptoeing through the asparagus beds looking for where the cat was hiding. The rhubarb patch always drew my eye. The plants, with their magenta stockings, always seemed to be plotting something more exciting than the dog days of summer. (A wild party down by the creek bed? A secret meeting in the strawberry patch?) 

Today the garden is an even more magical place for me. Last year for the first time I planted and really watched what I sowed. (Part of this experiment was inspired by Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle a wonderful memoir I read in the dead of winter 08.) The other part was because something just seemed missing from my summers. What was I supposed to be doing with my time, anyway? Trust me, a manageable garden is a far more exciting way to spend a summer evening than anything the networks have hatching on tv. 

So these snugs (based on Pick Up Sticks Big Snugs Pattern) grew out of my desire to be in my garden in the dead of this past winter. We really got walloped this year, with temperatures and wind chills way below zero. Using my own hand spun yarn, a rich chocolate brown and a creamy off white from my mother's CVM romeldale sheep, I followed the pattern as written. But after their spin/shrink through the washing machine I let my imagination take over. 

Using more of my cream-colored hand spun yarn, I needle-felted in vegetable, flower and insect shapes from my garden. Next, I filled the shapes with more pot dyed fiber of various colors and hues. I worked until my fingers cramped and my eyes were blurry. I added the summer moon, and friendly blue-black beetles. I just couldn't put them down. Finally, I sewed a soft leather pad on the bottom of each sole. 

And you can bet I wore the heck out the them these past few months--lucky for them I have my real garden to warm me now. 

clutch

Creative collapse, chaos, calamity Jane, remember to press down on the clutch as we careen into high gear here at tendril and twine and try out new things. 'New things' is a pretty tame way of putting it. Hours spent sweating over the keyboard perplexed and confused, trying to nail something down that pleases you amidst the ever changing realm of cyberspace. And I can claim I grew up around computers!

After several hours in front of the computer this weekend, I had to step back and remind myself what inspired me to hurtle myself online in the first place: my love of knitting and fiber. Thank goodness knitting and spinning seem to be as hi-tech as they will ever get. 

Above is a felted (technically fulled) clutch I made some months ago with odds and ends of worsted weight yarn. The pattern comes from Melanie Falick's Weekend Knitting. Knitting it was a breeze, the hardest part was finding the right zipper and sewing it in. 

I actually tried to sew my zipper in place on my sewing machine. (The sewing machine still works, but I did sew over my finger.) In the end I sewed the zipper on by hand. 

After the finger mended, of course. 

A Simple Plan

My afternoon started out with a simple plan to update the template on my blog. It quickly deteriorated into pure panic. As you can see things are a bit "up in the air" here at Tendril & Twine although, at least now this page looks vaguely familiar. Forty-five minutes ago my screen was filled top to bottom with black and white code. I'm hoping to find some semblance of order come evening, but can make no promises, save that I will not give up until I'm satisfied with a new layout. 

Hope your weekend is proving more relaxing.