Life Goes On

Wouldn't you know, with all the stress, I have fallen prey to a miserable chest cold. When I try to talk I croak. I'm on antibiotics because my sick lungs are susceptible to pneumonia. It's been a couple of years since I last had a cold and I had forgotten how rotten "the common cold" makes you feel.



I decided that today had to be a relaxing and resting day, and since it was a beautiful morning and early afternoon I rode with Joe to a nearby Penrose alpaca farm. I have a weakness for alpacas and their soft, luxurious wool. While Joe worked on Robin's dishwasher, Gary to me for a tour of his place and introduced me to his 60 alpacas. Their Australian shepherd, with one blue and one brown eye, and the white Great Pyrenees accompanied us, as did a sleek black and white cat (I never met a herd cat before). I am in love and am going to have to drive by occassionally to admire these wonderful animals.





After the tour, Robin showed me the treasures made from alpaca wool that she sells in her small store. Robin is an artist as well as alpaca farmer, and I was delighted to see a needle felted alpaca with blanket that she had made. They have their wool processed by a place in Kansas and have several natural colors of yarn, with photos of the alpaca who donated the wool on each label. I really admired the hand knitted socks and sweaters and the sheer woven scarves looked almost like silk. I hope one of the kids asks me what I want for Christmas, because I have my eye on a hand embroidered black scarf.



I also want to share my newest treasure with you. My 11 year old granddaughter Rachel, from Salt Lake City, gave me a drawing for a quilt design, and someday I hope to use it to make a quilt for her.
















Tomorrow we will start moving Mom to Canon City. Mom and Dad have lived in Fowler for 57 years, and in their home for around 40. It is so hard! I don't want to do this; I don't want to play this game anymore, it's not fun. I just want things to go back to the way they were. My reaction to losing Dad is nothing like what I expected. I don't feel sad, it hurts too bad to be just sad. I literally hurt physically, my whole body, with a hole in my middle. I feel like something is horribly wrong with my world, something like anxiety, but not just sadness. I told Joe that death isn't just the loss of someone, it is the loss of an entire lifestyle. "This too will pass." For the last 40 years this has been one of those common sayings that help me to keep putting one foot in front of the other, whatever happens. Thank God, humans are so adaptable.

Dyeing & Weaving

Around 30 years ago I took a class in Navajo spinning, dyeing, and weaving from a Navajo weaver at Henderson Museum, CU Boulder. I loved the colors that I could get from dyeing wool with natural dyes, but since I was a single mother of 4 working my way through college, I didn't continue doing it (it was very time consuming). Instead, I turned to needlepoint to satisfy my love of creating with colored wool (it was portable, I could carry it with me wherever I went). I spent many years designing and stitching needlepoint pieces. Then after I retired, I was able to take a class in quilting, that I had always wanted to do, because my Granny made quilts for all the members if our family, and she had handed her patterns and sample squares to me when she could no longer use them. There has always been something about the textile arts that drew me.

The natural dyeing has always remained in the back of my mind and I still have 2 of the small tapestry looms, that we were taught to make in the class, hanging on the wall of my sunporch, as well as a few samples of yarn that I spun with a drop spindle and dyed with natural items like black walnut hulls, onion skins and various lichens that I gathered in the mountains behind Boulder. The vegetable matter that is on the yarn is dried Wormwood, from my garden, that I put with them to keep the moths away.

I recently posted about visiting the home of our friend, Klee, who raises, spins, dyes, and weaves her own sheep and goat wool. Her bathrooms were full of hanks of newly dyed yarn drying over the tubs.

Our talented friend, Deb H, had a link in a recent post to one of her friends, Michigan Quilter, who dyes wool and I really enjoyed seeing what she was doing.

Then this morning, in the Pueblo Chieftain, I found an article about a traditional weaver from Chimayo, New Mexico, and the photo is so beautiful and the article interesting, so I decided I should share it with you all. Makes me wish I could drop everything, run down to Chimayo and study with this weaver. We are so fortunate to have the traditional Navajo, Hopi, and Hispanic weavers keeping these arts alive in New Mexico. And thanks to Klee and Kathy for continuing this tradition.

Thanks to these reminders, I find that my creative urges are beginning to stir again. I love the look of wool quilts. I may just have to try dying my own wool for a quilt and see what happens.