Suddenly its Spring

This year it felt sudden.  The winter didn't seem too long.  And now the green fields, the new lambs, the garden plots, the plans for summer.  I just can't believe it could be May.  I have been much more consistent on Instagram and allowed this blog to be dormant.
Meanwhile I've been making socks, reading and weaving and even made a sweater.  In painting I'm trying panoramas rather than journal pages, so we'll see what develops.

Slants of Sunlight

Our local library has recently been raising money for a new building and so we have been having numerous creative fundraisers.

The latest is handpainted chairs to be auctioned to the highest bidders.

I gave that a go and actually enjoyed painting a chair.

Cold cold days has meant that the sunlight has some special qualities: clarity and the resulting drama and the particular slant of winter.

In addition to painting the chair I went out painting again along the roadside.

I'm coming at reality at a slant these days: searching for relevance.

latest discovery: chicago poet, Adam Gottlieb, (Louder than a Bomb)

Painting Again

Ancient Treasures: the land and the sky

I'm trying to learn to appreciate anew the life all around me.  I take the land and the sky pretty much for granted everyday. 

And yet my life depends on the air, water and land surrounding me.  

Trying to live by buying local and appreciating the hands that are working to give me life is a task that seems to be achieved more easily when I go out and see and experience the light and textures of my local life. 

Brushes, paints and pencils help me do that.

view of
Vernon County Fairgrounds

Saugstad Rd North of Westby

Wefts of Wonder All Around

Do we live in a warped world?

The truth is that the world, seen as something woven, would be made up of both warp and weft.  But I have been seeking to view our 2014 world as more than a cynical warped place of wars and terrors and cruelty and out of whack priorities.  I have been weaving and watching.

I notice stripes of color and texture all around filled with light and life. 

The "warped"  aspect of life is certainly present but so is the "weft":  the wonderful color of nature, of community, of sustainability, of singing.........  the joy of being human and able to think creatively.......
Taking the metaphor just a bit further, another "stripe of weft" that gives me hope is the ingenuity of the young.  We certainly need new alternatives to the corporations dominating the planet's future.  We are all part of a complex system that needs balance.  

So weaving some balance, some complexity, yet finding simplicity...roads and paths to a new reality....and even sometimes going out on the water......
Wonderful Wefts  (the weft is the horizontal strips of fiber in a woven piece)

 I wish you all joy as we head into another new year.  May you find your balance.  Thanks for checking out this blog.

Crackle Weave sampler

Roads : One Day Tells its Tale to Another (psalm 19)

I am going back and forth on roads lately....not exactly making a new path.  A road is much more traveled, more worn, more predictable.  I am going back and forth over previous endeavors searching for new directions, unusual twists.  I feel on the verge of something but in the meantime its roads for me and lots of stopping to check maps:  to look again.  The weaving is from last winter.
More questions than answers..........What's my next destination??

Harvest of Rows and Rows of Harvest

I have been knitting rows and rows of yarn using a book called Pop Knitting by Britt-Marie Christofferson.

Meanwhile all around me the colors of Autumn are filling the fields and hickory nuts are dropping from the trees.

I have had visitors to my place here in Wisconsin and I am enjoying the rural life.

There is so much for me to learn everyday as I have spent most of my life in large cities.

The horror of mountain top removal mining

Now is a moment: Momentum is building You are needed NOW

I don't usually get political here but this is a moment for some action.
We get much of our electricity from coal and the people in the coal mountains are suffering and need us.

http://ilovemountains.org/take-action-for-appalachias-water-and-future