If you want me, I'll be in the garden.

I have not written a blog post because I have been spending all my time and energy on my vegetable garden. I have a real need to be outdoors and the better the weather the more time I spend out there. I sometimes think that I could just stay outside all summer. And gardens are never done; there is always something that could use a little attention. I did get away to do a couple of workshops this summer though. And I will be teaching a private landscape class this weekend, so I have not totally left my felting behind.
Here are some photos of my garden. This year besides building the remaining side of the fence aroung the garden I also rebuilt the arch that I had started last year. I now call it a folly. I love the work of Patrick Dougherty and had tried several years ago to make a 'structure' in a similar fashion. This time I had a bit more experience with how to use the sticks and I had my son help me make a firm frame to weave into and around. Here are a few shots of the folly as it changed from April to the present.

I also had some help from my father and son with building some trellises out of cattle panels. These now have squash and some cucumbers growing on them. 

I also tried my hand at making a pebble mosaic stepping stone. I found out that when mixing the mortar my interpretation of 'the consistency of stiff pudding' was a bit too watery. Are we taking the pudding that has been in the back of the fridge for days? I obviously needed better directions than that. It worked out in the end AND I learned. It is in the Folly and has not fallen apart yet.

I have been making sure to stop every once in a while to just look and appreciate, and occasionally photograph, some of the beauty that I find out in the garden.

I did leave the garden to go to a "Resist Dyeing on Hand Felted Wool with Fabulous

Wrapped Journal" workshop with Chad Alice Hagen that was sponsored by the Northeast Feltmakers Guild.  It was a wonderful class and Chad is a great teacher who is incredibly organized and her classes run very smoothly . We got to play with all of her wonderful resist objects, my favorites being the simple Popsicle sticks that released some dye from previous dyeing secessions and the lacy, intricate jewelry making metal pieces. The rotary telephone dial metal pieces were really cool and I just loved hearing about how she acquired some of the objects. It could be habit forming to be on the look out for objects that could be used as resists. Though I already had a collection I have a better understanding of what can work. Here are a few photos of the results of that dyeing.

 This is the work of Althea Bilodeau

 Althea has a lot of experience with dyeing and it showed in her pieces. The piece in the center shows how the wooden sticks, in this case tongue depressors, release the dye from previous use to give extra colors.The rust on some of the metal objects also added another color and interesting effects. After the dyeing Chad talked about our results so we got to see and understand how so many different patterns and colors were achieved. 

Here are my pieces.

Using one of the pieces we created book covers. I have done quite a bit of studying books, in fact my favorite class at Smith
was 'The Art and History of the Book' with Martin Antonetti
 but this was only the second or third time I have made a book. I really like it and loved the process.

I did not like the white edges of the pages showing with the dyed felt so I experimented with coloring the edges. I knew that I was not doing it the way it would normally be done but I actually liked the effect of the wavy and stained look to the pages. I want to actually use it. I have a bunch of journals but I don't use them because I have the misguided notion that if I put it in a book then it must be good work. I want this one to be 'freestyle', a book just for me that will hold some of  my ephemeral bits of inspiration and ideas. Kind of like a sketch book, except that I associate a sketch book with something that had to be good since it was getting graded! Yet another example of my needing to remember that most important part of creating is the doing not the result. It really is 'all about the process'!