Art

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The combination of Garden Bathing — sitting in the backyard surrounded by greenery and the rustle of tomato, eggplant, pepper, lavendar and sage leaves — while reclining in the lawn chair with an inkle loom is unrivaled. The experience, enhanced by the rhythmic actions of snugging the weft, lifting the heddles and passing the shuttle through to the other side of the inkle loom are topped off with occasional sips of homebrewed Jun (like kombucha but using green tea and honey).

The recently acquired inkle loom makes weaving easy and a joy. About 8 years ago, I built an inkle loom with the idea of gifting it to my then young neice, who enjoyed learning new crafts. But a series of events prevented that from happening. I’d truncated the loom to make it more portable and the weaving area was too short making it difficult to sustain rhythmic weaving. So that loom was disassembled and the wood repurposed.

These colors were chosen to reflect the pentas and nasturtiums in the garden.

When I decided now was the time to learn inkle weaving — ostensibly to create a new mandolin strap among other things — rather than spend the time, money on wood and energy to make a loom anew, I ordered a Schacht’s inkle loom. For the effort it saved me, the Schacht loom is a good deal, arrived quickly (sooner than I could have made it) and wonderfully easy to use. I like it much better than the style I had made.

With the addition of Annie MacHale’s book “In Celebration of Plain Weave: Color and Design Inspiration for Inkle Weavers” I have been exploring making bookmarks, hat bands and mug rugs so far. The online resources Annie gives in her book are fun, easy and great to get you figuring out original patterns to weave. So far I am doing plain weave and love the fun of exploring with colors.

Best to use yarn that is same width throughout a project, as I learned with this set up.

The loom fits comfortably in my lap when my feet are up on the outdoor lounge chair or the indoor Lazy Girl. By June 8, 2024, the humidity makes the 94F feel like 104F outside, so admittedly there is a time to leave the garden for the indoors and air conditioning.

Most of my colors have been fun to figure out and Annie recommends referring to color patterns around you. In my case that’s the garden right now. The pentas, nasturtiums and tomatoes influence my use of reds and greens. I’m awaiting the arrival of some pinks, yellows and purple yarn (inspired by eggplant flowers and the fruit itself) from Creative Yarn Source, recommended by Annie.

I’m using this blog as a way to chronicle what I am up to creatively and it has been a few years since I’ve wanted to try weaving. Now is the time.

Mug Rug in orange, teal, white Key fob Bookmarks

Goodreads-currently reading

Once again I have started to keep up with my “for fun” (translates to mostly fiction, although not always) reading through Goodreads. I joined the yearly challenge and thought I might not make it to my goal of 45 this year, but after 3 months of reading, I think I’ll make it. I’d forgotten I can read fairly quickly once I get far enough into a book and the mystery and action are well along.

The sudden burst of reading fiction — I have always read a lot of non-fiction — comes about because I am not on “screens” for work so much now that I am retired; I have found Libby, the library borrowing app, thanks to friend Kay for telling me; and, I got a new Kindle paperwhite that has the orange tint to the page. That orange tint is warm, inviting and a world unto itself.

The Libby app is impressive. My library card lets me login on my iPad, put a hold on upt to 10 books (which after reading The NYT Book Review on Sundays is always maxed out) and borrow up to 20 ebooks or audio books. You can read a chapter to try the book out, just as you might if standing in the stacks of the library itself, and you can read further reviews for the book on Goodreads or Amazon. A world of books I want to read floods my screens. And having several on the Kindle at once, lets you read according to mood.

The last 5 books read

After 37 books this first quarter, there are some books that were supposed to be great that just didn’t speak to me and others that I might not have found had it not been for perusing online libraries or NYT reviews. After I read Margaret Atwood’s review for Steven King’s 50 years in the NYT last weekend, I ended up consuming King’s “Holly”. King is, I’ve always thought, a fantastic writer, but his subjects have been a little out of my interest range. I’m not sure I want to put his ideas in my head. I did like Holly as an investigator but it was a stretch to see the “bad guys” were so far gone in their approach to dehumanization.

The shocking read so far has been “Birnham Wood”. I don’t really write book reviews anymore afterall, why should I have to, I’m retired. “Birnham Wood” is long but memorable because of its shock value ending. Or was it cheating. At least she didn’t end with, “And then I woke up.”

Two books I highly recommend: “The Lost Year” by Katharine Marsh, a clever and informative YA novel about the 1930s famine in Russia and Ukraine; and Kristin Harmel’s “The Book of Lost Names” about the memory of Jewish people who were helped to escape to France during WWII.

The top disturbing book was Kate Brown’s “Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl guide to the future” with its ironic title. Oh the things we do not know. I wonder about Kate’s health as she visited highly radioactive sites (even though they were declared not so) like the red forest, or the sheep farm near Chernobyl. I wonder where wool from that sheep farm has been shipped. Is their wool clothing out in the world just like the radioactive food that was sent to help with the famine in Africa?

As for Sci Fi, I love John Wyndham books and thought I would re-read a few, but the library here (and Amazon) does not carry Wyndham books. Sigh, I will need to dig through the remaining boxes in storage to see if I kept any paperbacks. But I did find Blake Crouch and “Upgrade” was riveting.

It’s an interesting thing to think of which books will be my top 5 for the year. But you’ll have to wait, as will I, to find out.

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J’s bookshelf: read

  
      
        
      
      
        
      
      
        Unnatural Death
      
      
        by Patricia Cornwell
      
  
  
      
        
      
      
        
      
      
        Holly
      
      
        by Stephen King
      
  
  
      
        
      
      
        
      
      
        The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church
      
      
        by Sarah McCammon
      
  
  
      
        
      
      
        
      
      
        Postmortem
      
      
        by Patricia Daniels Cornwell
      
  
  
      
        
      
      
        
      
      
        Body of Evidence
      
      
        by Patricia Cornwell
      
  

Updated May, 2023

Art and craft have always been a great delight to me.

I am grateful to have been fortunate enough to explore and create in many media throughout my years.

Currently I am exploring plein oil air painting, watercolor urban sketching, needlefelting, black and white photography and nurturing the vegetable garden.

From early years when my father purchased a SLR camera for me to the pandemic when I took on painting with Cobra’s waterbased oil paints, I have enjoyed working with a range of media. Whether wood, oils, watercolors, acrylics, gelli printing, wool, music, darkroom paper or pixels in multimedia — there is much to create.

With wood it was cigarbox ukuleles, Native American style flutes, kanteles, fan birds, a harp, hand-carved wood spoons, and faerie doors. While I am no longer actively carving and creating musical instruments, I may return. Just not at this moment.

I appreciate your support and interest in my explorations and creations. If you would like an ebook or a painting from my collection, the Buy page lists the online places I am actively selling.

Blessings to you for being here.

Many uses for Spanish moss: a Carolina Wren’s nest made with Spanish moss.

I began my “Weaving with Spanish Moss” blog post series almost three years ago. I’m now writing the promised third part in the three-part series.

Weaving with Spanish Moss Part One tells the story of how I became aware of Spanish moss when I was a child as my family traveled to Florida for vacations. My mother would gather great armfuls of it to use in her flower arranging back home.  And then, as an adult  I decided to use Spanish moss to help bring the South to my high school students who may have never traveled to see Spanish moss.  My plan: to set a unique tone to the start of our studies of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Weaving with Spanish Moss Part Two tells the remainder of my unusual Spanish Moss teaching story.   And at the end of part two, you the reader are left to wait while I stir and rinse a large pail of Spanish moss that soaks in a bucket in my Florida backyard.

I’d been fascinated by Jeff Klinkenberg’s story from the Tampa Bay Times: “She spins Spanish moss into beautiful blankets”.  The story covers a woman who weaves her son a saddle blanket from Spanish moss for his horse.  He is a involved in reenactments of the Civil War.   Follow this link to view an interesting video of the story.  http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/she-spins-spanish-moss-into-beautiful-blankets/968162

Spanish moss is green when alive.

There are other articles  (https://www.ravenecho.com/articles/3/188/) about using Spanish moss pads in the civil war.

My own Spanish moss story didn’t turn out as I had anticipated … which accounts for the delay in Part Three for my blog.

This week, I was prompted to write Part Three by an email from a blog reader who is a volunteer at Fort Frederica National Monument on St. Simons Island. They do programs on how Spanish Moss was used in history. And, she said that she, too, was interested weaving with Spanish moss.

Indeed I had started nobly to weave Spanish moss.  I read everything I could find which wasn’t much back then — a range of  online articles and of course, Wikipedia.

The remaining Spanish moss fits in a Chinese food takeout container and waits to be spun.

Spanish moss is plentiful in Florida, so I gathered a  garbage bag full of green Spanish moss.  I removed the twigs and leaves from the moss and placed it in a large bucket of water to soak. The soaking — for a long time — removes the green moss from the dark fibers beneath.

As the moss soaked in the bucket of water, an incredibly strong smell began to emanate from the bucket. Even with changing the water regularly and rinsing the moss, the smell persisted and made it difficult for me to embrace my task. I moved the bucket to the back corner of the yard but the smell of decomposing moss wafted through the backyard regularly.  The smell grew larger as the moss itself shrank in mass.

After several months, the green covering was gone, leaving a mass of dark brown fibers — about 1/5 of what I had started with. I rinsed and rinsed and rinsed the fibers.

Spanish moss on a spindle

The fibers took about three days to dry on the patio in the backyard under the hottest Florida sun.  In the meantime,  I turned a nice cherry spindle on my lathe and I planned on  leisurely spinning strands of  Spanish moss. I envisioned an idyllic and industrious afternoon sipping iced tea and spinning in a tempered Florida sun.

Once the moss was dry, I separated 5 – 10 strands of the wiry fiber at a time and twisted them together to start spinning on the spindle. It was hot outside. The wiry fibers scratched and stuck to my fingers. Although I had been sure I’d washed away all odor contained in the decomposing moss, frequent clouds of invisible aroma assaulted my nose.

I forget what distracted me from my spinning, but I set the tiny bag of dried moss aside — somewhere near my spindle that has the shortest of moss threads wound on it.

Yes, I do mean to return to it.  One day.

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October is National Rollerskating Month. You celebrate by rollerskating.

While I practice rollerskating by working on manuals, standing on one leg for balance exercises and work on bubbles up and down the hallway, I also decided it was worth oil painting a version of my skates.

What I really need to find is a freshly paved parking lot to practice skating where I have enough space to build up some speed. Much more interested in rollerskating around the block (once I can handle the rough pavement and pinecones) rather than visiting a roller rink with the crowds.

It’s incredibly hot outside. Too hot to ride bikes for 20 miles. Too hot to go for long walks. Too hot to garden! Most mornings temperatures range from 84F (with 74% humidity it feels like 96F). The afternoons are 96-98F (feels like 106F).

They fit! A first try on of the Lime Green Suregrips.

So… to add diversity and motivation to my indoor workouts, I purchased a pair of lime green roller skates. Not without first giving it much thought and planning.

My lime green suede Suregrip rollerskates with lime green wheels arrived on August 1.

I was like a kid waiting for them. Would they come today? Would they fit properly? Would I be able to do it – skate that is. I’m not 20, so this had a daunting element to it. But I had loved roller skating as a kid.

Replica of my key

As a young kid of 7 or 8, I was given a pair of metal roller skates that expanded to fit my feet as I grew. I wore the key to the skates on a shoelace around my neck a lot. Even when I wasn’t roller skating. At night I hid it in my jewelery box protected by swirling ballerina.

If there was snow or rain, I could be found skating around the basement ping pong table my dad built. The cement floor that was painted a mustard-color was smooth. The corners of the ping pong table not so much.

When the garage was empty I’d circled the cement floor, careful to avoid the bikes and sharp (I learned) garden implements hanging on the walls. Avoiding the oil dripped from the car in the middle of the floor, I would often stop abruptly (a skill in itself) to open the yellow milk box and look through to the outside. Like the spies that I read about in my elementary school books.

Just like my first pair of roller skates

We never ever used the milk box. No milkman ever came to our new house in the subdivision like he did at our old house. At the old house, the truck would stop at the end of the long (it seemed to me) gravel lane and the milkman (never a milkwoman) ran up to our rust-colored stoop. I’d hear the glass milk bottles rattle as he took them from the small wood carrier and put the milk at the foot of the stoop stairs. When there was only one bottle it was my job to go carefully get it.

My dad designed our new house. The whole thing. And I’ve always wondered why he had a milkbox put it in. He thought things would remain the same?

I digress. Back to joy of roller skating.

There were two summer time rinks at two beaches. One in a resort town on Lake Erie and one in a resort town on Lake Huron. As kids we would watch the roller skaters (inline skates had not been invented yet) after a day at the beach. Mom and Dad held my sisters up high so they could see over the wood wall barriers. If I stood on tiptoes, I could see. And sometimes we would see my teenage cousins roller skating. I was riveted.

My sisters each received a pair of white roller skates when they were in high school and would go almost weekly to the roller rink at the opposite end of the city. Sometimes they took a long bus ride to get to the rink. They were dedicated. By then I was in college and would drive them occasionally on a Saturday, renting skates and joining their people. They were daredevils and one of their favorite games was “snake” — of course my sisters favored being the tail of the snake and getting whipped mercilessly around corners of the rink. Until it it got outlawed at the rink.

Protective gear and the new red “key”

All that was not a digression. Not until I started researching online the whole of quad or roller skates, did I remember the extent that rollerskating had been part of my younger life.

These days there is a wealth of videos, podcasts, and tutorials online. I’ve watched thousands and learned that apparently during the pandemic lockdowns there was a surge in roller skating. To the extent that skates were scarce for those who wanted to buy. That is not the case now.

As well there are so many genres of roller skating. Several, such as dancing or rhythm skating, can be practiced in a room in one’s house. As well, the evolution of wheels and bearings can make bearable roller-skating on rough outside surfaces such as the roads near me. The need for a local rink is not as imperative. And I have no desire to master half pipes or bowl at the local skate parks.

Armored with lessons to practice from Asha at Fresh Skate, Dirty Deborah Harry (named after movie “Dirty Harry”), and Skatie I am enjoying my first two weeks with my lime greens. It helps to join communities online for beginning skaters and skaters of a certain age where we progress at our own speeds. I have learned that there are many people who skated in their youth who have “rediscovered” skating later in life. This is a great article about skaters in London.

Further armored with helmet, wrist guards, elbow pads, knee pads and a tailbone guard, I have begun relearning how to roller skate. When the weather cools, I aim to be ready to get outside and get a different kind of workout!

Did you know? Rollerskating is hot!

A basket of banana, pepperocini and marconi peppers picked July 19, 2023

Growing up skipping Double Dutch to tongue twisters like “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers” did not prepare me for pickling peppers.

First, I never quite get a peck (a 1/4 of a bushel) of peppers all at once from the 10 pepper plants in the backyard. At the most, I get a quart mason jars worth at one time.

Second, peppers aren’t picked pickled — pickling comes from a whole peck of decisions about what will be included in the pickling. Garlic? Onions? Tomatoes? Rosemary? Other herbs?

Today’s wee jar of pickled peppers cooling.

Third, would Peter rather ferment the peppers? I fermented about 4 jars of peppers in the Spring. It takes longer and they taste fine, but they don’t make you really sit up and take note. Not like my fermented Spartan cucumbers do.

Next I tried pickling peppers — water, vinegar, salt, garlic, honey and bay leaves. It only takes a day for them to be considered “pickles” although the longer you leave them in the fridge the better they taste. But they do taste wonderful!

Now in Florida’s mid-July when it is consistently humidly hot (think 93F but humidity makes it feel like 103F) and overwhelmingly subjected to surprise rainstorms, the plants are not producing like they were in April, May and June.

In fact the tomato, eggplant and watermelon plants cautiously produce fruit — meaning few and far between. The heat and abundance of rain stresses them.

Heat and water stressed marconi pepper

I hope I can keep the veggie plants safely in shade water until the cooler September arrives to soothe and encourage them to produce again.

I did learn last summer that July and August are not outdoor gardening months like they are in say, Michigan.

But I did gather a pickling’s worth of peppers today, July 19. And can’t wait to try them in a couple of days!

Least Bittern Chick barely a week old

We are fortunate to have a great birding area in our city.

The Sweetwater Wetlands Park has been a wonderful early morning destination for both walking and photographing.

A wide range of wading birds (and their chicks) from the purple gallinule to the wood stork and raptors such as the osprey keep this photographer busy.

With a 70-300 mm lens on my Fuji XT5, I am close enough to the alligators, wood storks and sandhill cranes.

In Florida you need to walk the paths in the early morning because by 10:30 a.m., it’s just too hot. The birds know this and have finished their morning dining. They seek and hide in dense foilage for its coolness. Aside from some tourists who think the heat is wonderful and don’t seem to wear hats or sunglasses, the sun really becomes intense for people too.

We were fortunate early in June to see the Least Bittern chicks who had hatched in a nest in tall bulrushes/cattails and reeds near the boardwalk. While I never saw the parent Least Bitterns, there were four chicks who were a delight to watch grow over the next few weeks. We hoped they would not be a snack for the many alligators in the area.

In the first week (June 2), they could barely navigate the tall grasses near the nest. They ranged from having very developed eyes, to one whose eyes were barely open. And it was hard to tell about the fourth chick because it remained in the nest. Their skin was so fresh it showed the blood beneath their fuzzy feathers that looked more like soft fur.

Least Bitterns are one of the smallest herons. Least Bitterns are listed as Endangered, Threatened or Special Concern in all states adjacent to New York except Vermont.

Born in a clutch of 2 to 7 eggs,  some leave their nest as soon as 6 days after hatching. This is an early departure as some will stay for 2 weeks in the nest. These little chicks looked very young with their long yellow legs and feet clutching awkwardly at leaves and stems.

Ultimately they will grow enough to climb adeptly on reeds and look into the water to hunt small fish and other crustaceans. But the wobbly wee chicks in the photos above would still likely be fed by the parent.

Below are photographs of the chicks on June 8, 2023. They were larger and wiggling their way through the reeds.

Their feathers had taken on the more distinctive colors and patterns of their future selves but they still had fuzzy little heads.

We did not see them feeding themselves yet, however they were learning to balance with each leg on two different reeds. One was confident enough to sit there and yawn. You could see a couple of the chicks practicing — slowly leaning toward the water as if to catch something. But still they were just practicing.

By the next visit on June 18, they were much much larger and more confident (as photos show below). A few remnants of the fuzzy heads were visible but they had much larger and more alert eyes. A couple of the chicks extended their wings and gave a flutter to indicate it might be only a short while before their first flight.

To learn more about Least Bitterns – Audubon

Making WrenSong flutes was a dream achieved. Making musical instruments from a branch or from kiln-dried wood was a wonderful journey for more than 12 years.

Currently I am taking a break from making and selling musical instruments and am engaged in painting in oils and watercolors.  Whether still lifes or plein air painting, I find the journey rewarding and inspiring.  As creating art can be.

About WrenSong Flutes:   The flutes were made in the Native American style of flute (the woodlands style),  from both kiln-dried wood and natural tree branches.  The tone of the two-chamber wood flute is one of the most relaxing tones.  My flutes are tuned to the pentatonic scale (mode 1-4) and are designed to be easy to learn to play and to play to “de-stress”.

As an award-winning flute maker, I’ve been making Native American style flutes I’ve made hundreds of flutes from many different woods.  My favorite woods are cherry, butternut, poplar and Eastern cedar.

Whether playing for meditation or for celebration, playing a WrenSong flute can lead you to better breathing, less stress and more gratitude.

You may also enjoy playing the flute with another instrument.  In particular, an instrument that is also easy-to-learn-to-play and an aid to meditation and de-stressing.  I also made kanteles and often play the flute with the kantele.  Here,  you can listen to flute and kantele duets.  The fact that WrenSong flutes can be played with other instruments such as ukulele, guitar, mandolin and harp tells you that they are concert-tuned.  This means they are tuned to pitch in  order to play well with other instruments.

Why WrenSong flutes? 

I play and test every flute I make.  I want the experience of playing one of my WrenSong flutes to be enjoyable.  I will play each of my flutes for as long as it takes to see how long before it “wets out.”  On some flutes, this will be more than an hour of continual playing.

When I play the flute outside, a Carolina wren will usually fly to a perch nearby.  It doesn’t take long before the wren starts to sing along with the flute.  I believe this is the wren giving its blessing to the notes that particular flute creates.  And of course, the WrenSong blessing is where I came up with the name for my flutes.  The Carolina wren is such a small bird yet has great volume.

As of January 2022, I still play my flutes outside for myself and the wrens.  But I am not currently selling any flutes. Thank you for your interest.  If you are interested in my paintings, they may be found at judyrobinson.art

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