Yarn bombing at the Feed & Grain!

I am in the process of planning a yarn bombing of the old truck in front of the Loveland Feed & Grain art studio.  It's sanctioned so I don't have to keep it a secret!  :-)

I don't know too much about the history of the truck, just that it is cool and iconic.

I am planning on inviting folks to come hang out and yarn bomb sometime this summer.  The first stage will be using yarn to fill in the parts of the truck that are missing.

Here is the front of the truck.  Missing the left half of the windscreen and both headlights.  Maybe also cover the bumper?  If there is enough hands to make it happen.

Such a lovely truck!

The truck bed, missing gas cap, missing back window.

On the street side, I am thinking of for sure the rear window, something to happen from the gas tank, and maybe a bigger piece along the truck bed.  I was thinking of filling the missing passenger window, but then it would be hard to see the wonderfulness that I hope we can make the interior of the truck cab.

The back end of the truck

I'd like to set up a very simple weaving station here for the end gate. Folks could come and be a part of the process even if they have no idea how to knit/crochet.  A weaving from side to side would be very cool.  I just realized this truck most likely never had a back gate.  Oh well.  Artistic licence.

Interior of the cab is missing some 

Inside is where most of the work will go.  I'd like to bomb most of it with just the dials and cool bits on the dashboard left undecorated.

The entire seat structure, the inside doors, I'd like to cover the steering wheel and maybe do some take on fuzzy dice from the missing rear view mirror which will also need to be created.

I've already got a lot of donated yarn including some really really crazy novelty yarn to work in with regular yarn.

I am so looking forward to getting the details of this project worked out!  We are all going to have such fun!

Natural dyes gone wild - silk scarves!

Too much going on in my brain to actually compose myself into words.  All I can think is "What a waste."  Prayers to all those suffering today in Boston and around.  I have had to limit my watching as it really makes my PTSD symptoms flare.

Wonders of the natural world!  Pictures today to soothe and bless.

We got about 2 feet of snow, I believe over about 3 days.
Picture take out our east door.

Henry in the snow rocking his fleece coat.
Best dog ever.

Kathy and I have jumped excitedly into making naturally dyed silk scarves of many types!  The silk dyes up so lovely!  

Scarves are very different to handle than skeins of yarn, it's fun to learn something new.  And much much less taxing on our bodies.  Skeins of wet yarn are heavy!

Scarves in silk, cut velvet, and Devore.  Ties!
On the drying rack just out of the dye pots.

 The green is a two step process:  first things are dyed yellow, this time with rabbit brush flowers harvested last fall, carefully dried, and stored.

Color is created by simmering the dried botanical material in water, removing the spent flowers, then adding the conditioned fiber things you want to dye.

Rabbit brush makes a terrific yellow color.
Madder root makes a crazy melon color.
This picture just makes me happy.  :-)

The plain silk scarves (not the Devore or the Cut Velvet) get a tie-up into one of many different Shibori-style patterns.  This takes a while to do and creates one-of-a-kind works of art.

Kathy in the process of tying up one of the yellow scarves before
it takes a swim in indigo to make it green with yellow accents.

The indigo pot in all it's glamour! 

 Indigo is temperature and oxygen sensitive.  It's been a learning process to become competent with indigo.  The first indigo dyed yarns we sold "crocked" like crazy.  The blue comes off on your hands and knitting needles.  Lots of experimentation and tons of research later, indigo still crocks but just a tiny bit.  Life lesson - Indigo crocks.  Deal with it.

Results of the shibori/tie dyeing on the drying rack.
On the far right is the rabbit brush yellow on one of the Devore scarves.
The neckties are the blue on the front and the green and yellow to the left of it.

Madder root pot - from whence came that
wicked melon color.

Here are a few of the colors we make in the Cut Velvet style scarf.

In the picture above the colors are created by: (from left to right)
homegrown coreopsis, indigo, gall nut, cochineal overdyed with indigo, gall nut, and cochineal.

Devore silk scarves.  Shiny rayon makes the patterns.

Here is a close-up on some of the colors in the Devore scarves.  These are light and floaty, just the thing.

Colors created by: (left to right)
homegrown coreopsis, rabbitbrush&indigo, rabbitbrush, madder, cochineal&indigo, indigo, cochineal.

It's too bad natural colors are all so dull.

P.S.  Check the Fox Ryde Gardens Facebook page for information about where to get these lovelies!

The Creative Process as a Flower

Again I woke up this morning with a scolding.  "You haven't written a blog in months!  Why not?  No excuses!"

My explanation is this - I got hit from behind last June 2012 in the driveway of a parking lot.  I've been spending much of my life getting better, again.

No whining.

So I am feeling better.  I still have a lot of exercises that I do that when I slack off, I hurt.  So am not healed but that just takes time.

Amaryllis in bloom

Once again this spring, my amaryllis bloomed.  First comes the leaves ever so slowly out of the bulb.  It takes weeks and weeks to grow up the flower stalk.  The bloom is tightly encased in a protective covering.

One day, it cracks open just a bit.

Then pow!  Great beauty for just about a week.  The flower fades and dies leaving only the stem and leaves.

From these resources, it spends another year preparing  for the next bloom.

I've been thinking about this.  When do any of us gather resources anymore?

It seems that most of us are just putting out our blooms and discarding them, then putting out another bloom, and another.

The connection to each other through FB and Pinterest is wonderful but overwhelming.  It's all flowers and no leaves.

I know that when I create a work of art, there is much time growing my leaves and flower stalk.  At times the actual creation is a burst of high energy much like the unfolding of my amaryllis.

I have made myself take some pictures of some of my works-in-progress.  I will post them here and talk about the process sometime soon.

I'd like to share the process of growing my leaves and my processes.

What do you do to gather your resources?

Welcome to folks coming from the Farming Fort Collins blog by Marci!

(For my regular readers, here is the link to her great blog:  Farming Fort Collins

We had a great afternoon together with her adorable kiddo.  Watching the hen and chicks, eating Sweet 100 tomatoes off the vine, and playing with weeds and wool.  It doesn't get much better than that.

Please visit our Facebook page:  Fox Ryde Gardens on Facebook

This is the place to see where we will be setting up and what is going on.  The Facebook page is a quick overview.

Here on the blog, it's more slow and thoughtful.  My goal is to go deep here.  To really connect with my subject matter and discuss what it is/how to do it and how it impacts.

We have a Kickstarter project that we would very much like you to consider backing.  You choose your level of backing based on what rewards you'd like to receive!  Take a look!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/705688311/ancient-metalsmithing-made-modern-or-perfecting-pr

I hope you visit again often and stay as long as you'd like.  Hang out.  Say hi to the pooches.

Henry and Boudy

Summer is always so crazy.

New location for my cooking herbs!  Hope they like it.

Lettuce cages to keep out the flock of baby bunnies.
Most adorable infestation of pests ever.

One bed on either side of the walkway up to the studio.

There is the garden.  Which has been very demanding.  The months of June and July broke records for heat and lack of rain.  Not good.

And the fires:

Most of you heard about the fires.  We were pretty close but not in danger.  We could see the fire at night and it was smoky most nights and a few days.  It was scary.  We know people who lost everything.

I was disappointed a bit when we bought our land here back in 1994.  I had dreamed of a cabin in the woods, but there were none we could afford so we got our 2 acres of foothills.  While the pine trees are lovely still, it's hard not to see them as standing bombs.  We have very low fire danger here due to the lack of trees which is reassuring.

And this:



Please consider backing our project!

It is an all or nothing endeavor.  Either we make the full amount (or more - I backed a project that is 435% backed!) or we get nothing.

You choose the reward you'd like, set up an Amazon payment account, back us, and then wait.  We will be sending out some updates from time to time, but not too many as we don't want to irritate you.

Look at those lovely rewards!  So pretty!

And finally:

Chicks!

Our banty roosters who really are tiny compared to the hens apparently got the bidness done as we now have Americana/Banty cross babies.  More pix to follow!

Accepted!!!!

Just got the notification that my Tree of Life piece was accepted into the Plight of the Pollinators show in CT!!!

I am so excited!!!  And honored!!!

Now I have to get it shipped out there - yikes!

There will be on on-line show that I will post links to for all of us who can't visit.

Swiping ideas

On Sunday I gathered with some of my favorite women and had a lovely breakfast out.  Our server was an adorable early 20 something man and was so earnest about doing a good job.  It warmed my grumpy heart.  To say nothing of Eggs Benedict, a fresh fruit salad and about 4 cups of lovely tea.

We walked a bit after breakfast and stopped to admire a yard.  It was so lovely.  I've lived with my wild and rocky 2 acres for long enough that an actual yard is charming and foreign.  A small bit of green grass yard, some trees, some patches of plants, and a very cool strawberry bed.  I admired the way the bed was protected from the birds mightily.  I decided to swipe the idea.

We jetted off to the Home Despot to get the few raw materials I needed (best laid plans...) and I was dropped off at home to get to work (thanks Mer!).

As I started to assemble the raw materials, I found the plastic bag that I thought was bird barrier was, in fact, actually a bag of Spanish moss.  I know.  I was looking for something else when I ran across the bag and it was in the place where I distinctly remembered the bird barrier being.  I set it in a new place and told myself that I had a bag of bird barrier that I might someday do something with.  But, alas, on closer inspection of potential use it was a bag of slightly mouse chewed Spanish moss.  Not at all what I needed.  I spend a few minutes tearing through the basement muttering to myself and not finding what I needed.  Poop.

So back to HD for bird barrier.  It was totally nuts in the garden department!  Minor riots in the aisle for those flatbed rolly carts!  Hazards of children brandishing bamboo trellising materials!  Frantic people pushing carts loaded with huge stacks of bags of soil/mulch/cow poop!  It is amazing how we garden here in Colorado.  I saw people ahead of me spend hundreds of dollars on annuals.  Not this girl. I am not so fond of the annual.  I managed to survive and picked up the bird barrier, some new hose washers (where do they go? I buy a new package of them every year and only use 3 or 4), some pinks which are actually white, and a packet of parsley seeds.

So back home and tools and raw materials staged:

Stuff to make strawberry cages!

Gathered: a roll of bird barrier, some 1" square boards of various lengths, staples, staple gun, stakes, and a hammer.  And the packs of pinks.

Here is what I had kluged together earlier in the spring of some little plastic sections of low fencing.  The chickens chortle at the lowness and hop into what ever I try to fence, so I added the top part.  But it was really ugly and not all that protective.

Strawberries caged!  Ready to RUMBLE!!!

Stakes pounded about 5" into the ground with the hammer.

I took out the fencing, weeded really well, cut back the tons of runners (focus on the berries for now!), moved a plant that needed it, and pounded in the stakes.

Then the wrestling of the bird barrier commenced.  This stuff is seriously hard to handle.  It tangled in everything and blew around.

But the gist of what I did was wrapped this very thin plastic netting around the 1" square boards and stapled it down.

Staple gun, netting, staples, 1" board - easy, right?

 This is the idea I swiped: the little boards hold the netting down.  But when you want to get in, you can lift up the little board and slip your hand under to harvest your bounties of berries.  I figure if the chickens do figure out how to get under the little boards, I can stake them down with the "U" wires I made of scrap fencing wire a couple of years ago.  And the stakes hold the netting up so the birds can't peck through.

3 sides done, now the end board.

It looks really good, much cleaner and airier that the black low fencing.  I am hoping it is also much more protective.   I even pretended for a few minutes that the holes of the bird barrier 

were small enough to keep the grasshoppers out.  I was somewhat delusional.  I'll blame the sun.

So pretty!

And functional! 

I've learned to hedge my bets gardening here in Colorado.  So when I planted these little plants I was gifted a couple of years ago, I planted them in 5 different places.  4 of the places are still alive.  The largest planting was totally torn apart by the chickens who savaged it brutally.  Here are 2 of the other beds all protected.  I think I'll most likely move all of these beds together next fall.  It will make it easier to protect them next year.

2 small beds of strawberries to the south of the other one.

This is what I call my snack bed.  I keep talking about it.  But this is the pretties end of the bed with all sorts of white and blue/purple flowers.  To the right is where I planted the Art Deco zinnias flanked by a rescued Russian sage and a spirea bush.  Should be spectacular in the fall!  Hot pink!  Purple!  Purple!  White!  Silver!

Gardening encourages you to look into the future.  My future garden grows in my head.  I squint at the tags that tell me the eventual height and spread of the little tiny 2" pot of plant and I imagine it at the apex of it's bounty.  I take loving pictures of the proto-garden and am always surprised by all the dirt when I look back at the picture.  What I see in my brain is what the garden will/should look like.

If it grows into it's potential.

Like so many of us, the potential is just an ideal.  

But I do enjoy this garden.  I think I've finally figured out how to garden here.  It's been a real struggle.  I've lost so many plants.  I see their ghosts everywhere.  I think that may increase my pleasure with things like the purple pansies that are on their third year of beauty.  That was about the best $20 I've ever spent.  Last year they even seeded.  I'm curious to see what color the babies bloom.

I am really tickled with my riff on the strawberry bird barriers.  It ended up looking about 80% like what we saw in the tidy yard and about 20% my variations because my beds weren't up against the foundation of a house.

And they made it through a day without being destroyed by my marauding chickens.

I'd love to get a berry or two.  I think I have a chance.  I see the potential berries in my mind and think about eating them.  My ideal strawberry.  It could happen....

I thought I might have something profound to say about swiping ideas.  I've written (and erased) some crap about how it was when I was a kid, all stubborn about not getting any help with anything.  Bah.  It's true but it bores me.  I refuse to inflict it on you.

I think the important thing for me now is to keep open to the innovations.  It's easy to get settled into doing as you have always done it.  To do things the way you know how to do them.  You've got all the tools, all the plans, you know how it works - it works like it's always worked.  The courage to embrace the change.  The change you can control.  To look at how someone else has solved a problem, and make it yours.  That's living.

So not so profound as I had hoped.  But I am happy and hopeful.  That's good.

How is your garden?  What have you learned/swiped recently?