The Elixir of Praise

Time flies by so fast on these glorious spring days, when there are more chores than daylight!  The garden is calling, our boat needs attention before it splashes into the Chesapeake for another sailing season, and like the maple trees, my sap is rising so that I’m drawn to work longer during the longer hours of light!

I finished the loose-fitting, comfy sweater in time to wear it on several occasions before it gets too unseasonal.  Soon I will put it away until fall….or perhaps bring it along to Maine for the chilly nights when I want to sit on deck looking at the stars. (Turns out is it a Martin Storey design from Classic Knits for Real Women)

Here is the medieval spinner.  I’m really on the home stretch now.  A little praise goes a long way, doesn’t it? Yesterday I got some wonderful praise from Archie.  I wonder if teachers ever truly realize how much their comments mean to us students.  His comments thrilled me so much that hours later, at midnight, I found I could not get to sleep due to the warm glow I still felt.  There’s a famous quote I used to know about how our words to others carry far more weight than we realize.  Archie can’t possibly know how much I will cherish his input from yesterday!

I’m also carrying wonderful images in my head from yesterday’s gathering of the Wednesday Group.  We were quite a large group, crowded in spite of Susan’s generous studio space.  The diversity of the work was incredible!  Everything from a young beginner’s strikingly good re-interpretation of some Coptic designs, to a moving piece of autumn leaves floating behind the Robert Frost quote, “Nothing gold can stay.”  There was a vibrantly happy scene of frogs on lily pads, a very graphic interpretation of a bridge deck from an engineer’s drawing, a delicate (although large!) interpretation of a pencil drawing of a loved one’s head. 

There was such a wide range of emotional content, creative vision, and wealth of weaving techniques to convey these images, that I left feeling powerfully stimulated!  That’s the real strength of weaving in community.  Most of us weave in solitude, and I relish these moments with others!

Unfortunately I have no photos to share of these amazing works in progress.  So, instead, a shot of new growth in the greenhouse and the endless parade of amaryllii!

Albutilon (flowering maple) in the greenhouse. This is our most prolific amaryllis with four flower stalks! To springify the house I’ve brought in cut branches of forsythia, quince and pussy willow.  Outside the first daffodils have opened, surrounded by their earlier pals, the crocus and winter aconite.  Hoping for new growth and full blossoms myself this spring!