June 30, 2015: fiber arts Tuesday

In the past few days I've been spinning and plying some red and white wool. For a while I was working with lots of red: red, maroon, vermillion, fuchsia, scarlet and every shade in between. Then I noticed that I had very little red in my stash. Time for some red!

Once I've spun and plied a skein of yarn, I soak it in order to wash it and set the twist. Then I hang it out to dry on a hook that's right in the middle of our makeshift herb garden. We had a couple of sunny days, so it didn't take long for this wool to dry.

When the wool is dry and I'm ready to knit with it, I wind it into a ball using a yarn swift and ball winder.

After I've wound the skein into a ball, it's easy to knit from, and doesn't get all tangled. I have several balls of handspun yarn that I'm using in the afghan I'm working on now.

Tomorrow I'll be working with my friend Erin; we'll be using natural materials like red cabbage and walnuts to dye wool, cotton, and silk. Erin, an art professor at WCU, is very experienced at working with cotton and is learning about natural dyes for a class she'll be teaching. Tonight I need to prepare a pound of wool, using alum, cream of tartar, and soda ash. Once I've prepared the wool, it will be ready for the dyeing process we'll be using tomorrow.

June 29, 2015: outdoor adventure Monday

The past week has been unseasonably warm here, and we've had some severe thunder storms, so our outdoor adventures have been curtailed a bit. This limitation gave us an opportunity to do a bit of exploring on the mountainside where we live. There are fields full of wildflowers surrounding our house.

 

We're also fortunate to have raspberry and blackberry bushes right outside our door.

Every other day I go outside and pick enough berries for breakfast for the next two days.

There are so many berries now, we will probably have raspberries every day for the next month. A pretty good deal!

June 28, 2015: Sabbath Sunday

President Obama's eulogy last Thursday for Rev. Clementa Pinckney was so moving I wanted to share it here today. The prayer offered before the president spoke seemed special, somehow, and I sensed that Obama gained extraordinary strength and courage from that prayer.

June 27, 2015: pop music Saturday

Billy Davis, Jr. celebrated a birthday on June 26th. He and wife Marilyn McCoo were the first African American married couple to host a network television series back in 1977. That same year, they won a grammy for "You Don't Have to Be a Star."

And in celebration of yesterday's Supreme Court Decision, here is Kacey Musgraves singing "Follow Your Arrow" just for this special occasion.

June 26, 2015: vegan Friday

Thanks to an epidemic of bird flu, it seems that eggs are becoming more expensive these days. We won't notice this price increase at our house; I follow a vegan diet, and Bryan is vegetarian. The only eggs we eat come from our friend Ann's chickens. Ann takes care of Cookie on days when we both work all day. When Ann's chickens offer up a surplus of eggs, she leaves a dozen in our refrigerator. Bryan thoroughly enjoys them.

There are many ways to replace eggs in vegan cooking, depending on what it is you're cooking (I may address this matter more in another post). A couple of years ago I found this amazing recipe for sun-dried tomato, mushroom, and spinach quiche on the Oh She Glows website. This quiche is a favorite supper at our house, and it has received rave reviews at more than one church potluck. In addition to being vegan, it's gluten-free.  

June 25, 2015: practice Thursday

This week has been unusual as practicing goes: I've spent most of my time practicing music by British composers. If you're not a musician, it may come as a surprise to you that England does not figure very prominently into the history of music, at least, not what musicians refer to as "common-practice art music," the concert music composed  between roughly 1750 and 1900. As a student studying music history, I remember having the impression that the United Kingdom had nearly disappeared between the Renaissance and the early 1960s, when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.

As it turns out, there are some quite respectable British composers. The reason they don't get much attention in typical undergraduate music history classes is because for the most part, they weren't innovators; they didn't do anything particularly groundbreaking. Still, some of these composers left us with some solid, well-crafted, enjoyable music, and I'm pleased to have an opportunity to get to know some of it a bit better.

Here are performances (not my own!) of some of the music I've been working on.

Ralph Vaughan Williams, Six Studies in English Folksong for bassoon and piano

"The Salley Gardens," arranged by Benjamin Britten

C. Hubert Parry, Sonata for Piano and Cello, first movement

June 24, 2015: women's Wednesday

This morning I heard this interview with filmmaker Liz Garbus on her new Nina Simone documentary. Nina Simone is a North Carolina native; she was born and raised in Tryon. I gave a presentation on her life and work to the first-year Integral Arts class here at WCU last fall. Along with all the amazing things Simone accomplished in her life, I told students to remember that Nina Simone showed us how to use music (and the arts in general) to communicate anger in a constructive way. When she was introduced to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Simone told him, "I'm not nonviolent." "Not to worry," he reassured her. Thank you, Nina Simone, for showing us what it looks like to communicate creative, constructive, sincere anger. We can still learn quite a bit from your example.

June 23, 2015: fiber arts Tuesday

One of the many things I enjoy about spinning is that the tools are often as beautiful and artful as the yarn that's being spun. I have seen some amazing and creative wheels and drop spindles lovingly handmade by artists in this area and in other parts of the world. Like playing a beautifully made instrument, spinning with well crafted tools can be enjoyable and inspiring.

My own wheel (yes, I only have one spinning wheel!) is  Kromski Minstrel.

I chose this wheel because it's versatile in terms of the kinds of yarn I'm able to spin with it, and also because I like the way it looks. Our house is rather small, and I knew this wheel would often be sitting in the middle of the living room, so I wanted something that would look nice. When I do spinning demonstrations people often ask if it's an antique! It's a new wheel, though, made by Kromski, a Polish company which makes some very good spinning wheels.

I've seen some hand-carved spinning wheels that look more like museum pieces than functional devices, although I'm sure they are quite functional.

Golding Fiber Tools has a great selection of amazing work. I've also seen spinning wheels inspired by classic cars, which look nothing at all like great-grandma's spinning wheel.

Wheels can be very simple, too, made from inexpensive pvc pipe; there are collapsible wheels with carrying cases that can be easily taken along in a car or airplane. The basic components of a spinning wheel can be arranged in a few different formats; the diagram below is a good guide.

A - Drive Wheel
B - Drive Belt
C - Flyer
D - Mother of All
E - Front Bearing
F - Tension Screw
G - Treadle
H - Footman
I - Footman Connector
J - Treadle Bar
K - Sloped Bed
D - Distaff
Please keep in mind that above diagram is for reference only. Spinning Wheel types vary, so some wheel may not have all parts shown in this diagram, but will still spin yarn without them.

June 22: outdoor adventure Monday

First week of summer! It has been warmer than usual here in the Smoky Mountains, so we have scaled back our hiking a bit to avoid the heat and the afternoon thunderstorms. Cookie loves hiking, but she is not a warm-weather dog. Today we had a lovely early morning walk around the Western Carolina University campus. The campus is so beautiful, and there are lovely trails throughout the area, so we really don't need to venture too far for an enjoyable outing.

This morning we walked up to the older section of campus, which is the highest part of campus. We started outside Coulter building, and walked through the Cheokee garden, which is full of plants that the Cherokee people used for medicine.

We continued up the hill to Moore Building, which I believe is the oldest building on campus. Outside Moore we found a peach tree full of ripe peaches and this sign:

We climbed further up the hill to the most beautiful sight you'll ever find on a college campus: an empty parking lot!

Once we got to the top of campus, we wandered around a bit. The sun was just coming up, and the view of the surrounding mountains was breathtaking, even though we see it every day.

June 21, 2015: Sabbath Sunday

Last Wednesday's shootings at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC, have dominated my thoughts and conversations for the past few days. As is so often the case, when I turned to the Book of Common Prayer, I found that the daily lectionary readings for Wednesday, June 17 included words that seemed perfectly suited to the occasion. 

Luke 20:36 ...for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 

June 20, 2015: pop music Saturday

Since tomorrow is the first day of summer I thought it would be nice to offer some appropriate music for the season. Here are five of my favorite summertime tunes ... plus one that's just a little bit weird, even for my rather eclectic tastes.

Carole King, It Might As Well Rain Until September

Petula Clark, Downtown

Melanie, Brand New Key

Martha and the Vandellas, Dancing in the Street

Chaka Khan and Rufus, Tell Me Something Good

The Pin-Ups, Looking For Boys 

June 19, 2015: vegan Friday

We've been making (and eating!) these black forest popsicles lately. They are so good! Just the right balance of cool, creamy, tangy, and refreshing on the hot afternoons we've been having lately. The coconut milk and agave mixture is a good base for improvisation. I added a quart of strawberries to the mixture and ran it through the blender, then poured it into these popsicle molds. (I especially like these popsicle molds because each mold is individual, so you can use, clean, and refill one popsicle at a time.) The results got rave reviews! Another favorite warm-weather treat at our house is frozen grapes. As soon as we bring grapes home from the store, we rinse them off, pick them off the stems, and put them in a plastic container in the freezer. After several hours, they're frozen and good for snacking on after a long walk in the warm summer sun.

June 18, 2015: practice Thursday

At the moment, Betty (our piano's name is Betty) is holding a large stack of music, all of it waiting to be prepared for rehearsals for upcoming gigs: recitals, church services, and the like. At the moment I have commitments scheduled into December, so Betty has plenty to keep me busy. 

This morning I spent some time practicing a Beethoven trio (opus eleven, if you're counting) for cello, clarinet, and piano. I'll be performing with colleagues in September, a slightly revised version involving bassoon in place of the cello, a substitution that's considered legal in most of North Carolina. 

The piece is mostly under my fingers except for one passage at the end of the final movement:

I would love to be able to play this passage at a very fast tempo, cleanly, with no mistakes, and without being aware of my thumbs. I'm hoping to accomplish my goal with a few more weeks of slow practice. 


You can listen to the piece here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5fSH9zj6J8

June 17, 2015: women's Wednesday

I spend more time reading about movies after the fact than I do attending new movies at the theater. Most of the time I'm not aware of what's playing at the local cinema. But I have heard about Jurassic World, and how it's a big international hit. In true form, I won't be shelling out money to see it. (How much does it cost to go to the movies these days? The last time I was in a theater was five years ago!) However, I do like to read reviews of movies to see if they pass The Bechdel Test. Here is a review of Jurassic World that addresses The Bechdel Test issue. Lady dinosaurs? Huh.

http://www.themarysue.com/guardian-reviewer-jurassic-world-bechdel/

June 16, 2015: Fiber Arts Tuesday

For the past several weeks I've been working on this stash-buster afghan, inspired by a similar pattern that appeared in the spring issue of SpinOff. The pattern in SpinOff had the same number of stitches cast on, changing colors after each row, and using the loose ends as fringe. I wanted the stripes to be a bit wider to I'd be able to see the colors of the yarn more clearly.  All of the yarn is my own hand-spun.

I didn't realize until I started knitting how much pink I had in my stash! Some of the pink looks more purple-ish in this photo. I still have quite a bit of yarn that needs to be added to this afghan; I hope to finish it in a couple of months.

June 15, 2015: Outdoor Adventure Monday

An unusually warm day here in Cullowhee. We decided to take Cookie for her morning walk in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Bryson City so we could walk along the Tuckaseegee River and see a waterfall. When we got to the trailhead we encountered this sign:

Major disappointment! Hopefully someday doggies will be judged by the content of their character and not just by the fact that they poop outdoors. We walked Cookie around the campground and let her put her paws in the water; she seemed satisfied.

Bryan and I still waned to do a bit more hiking, so we drove home, got some lunch, and returned to the park without Cookie.We made a short hike up to Juney Whank falls, which was beautiful!

We walked up past the falls for a while, but it was very warm, and we didn't have water with us, so we decided to turn around and come back another time. We'll do more exploring next time.