Bee Hopeful

Day 281: I have good reason to "bee hopeful" that my milkweed plants will produce seed pods this year. They are absolutely covered with a large assortment of insects...stinging insects, mind you!...who visit one flower after another. Bees dominate the mix, but there are wasps of every size from miniscule to man-eating, so I stood well back and zoomed in for the photo. Can I identify them? No, although I think I can safely say that these two are honeybees, a species to which I am deadly allergic. Was I worried that I would get stung? Not at all, because they were firmly focused on the work at hand, gathering nectar from the sweet-scented flowers. Surely sombody's going to get pollinia caught on a leg!

Crocosmia Lucifer

Day 280: (Non sequitur: I love Bread Day! It finally cooled off enough that I felt like I could turn on the oven.) (Sidebar: that's not really a non sequitur because it doesn't follow anything, i.e., it's not SEQential. Wait, where was I going with this discussion?) Oh! Crocosmia "Lucifer!" (Hang on, I've got everything out of order here. The following sentence would be a "pre-sequitur" if any such word existed, but it doesn't.) It's cooled off! After almost a week of daytime highs in the upper 80s and low 90s, I was finally able to get out on my exercise bike again this morning, and in that amount of time, Crocosmia "Lucifer" had opened up and was fairly glowing in the early morning sun. Yes, I am fully aware that Crocosmia will take over your garden if you give it the opportunity, so I've relocated mine to several spots where it's welcome to spread. I'd love to get it started along the fence line where it would annoy my neighbours, but so far, I haven't been able to get it to "take," which is peculiar, given its aggressive nature. Nor have I had much luck with an orange-flowered variety which my botany partners gave me, possibly due to the fact that where I planted it is rather shady. Even so, Lucifer's bright red "dragons" perk up my yard quite nicely. (Boy, does that bread smell good!)

A Brilliant Invention

Day 279: I'd like to give a shout out to the unsung hero who invented the fringe twister. According to Google's AI, tools for twisting fringe date back to ancient China, and the modern versions (of which there are several different designs with varying numbers of clips) cannot be attributed to any one person. Okay, that will have to satisfy me, and suffice to say that in my opinion, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. No, wait...that idiom doesn't apply in my case since I make my own. That said, of all the gadgets I own, this one gets five stars, an A-plus in the categories of Clever, Functional and Time-Saving. I already have one end of the shawl done, and that's 128 little twisted fringes. If I was doing this with the "lick your fingers, roll one group 20 times, lick your fingers, roll the second group 20 times" method, I'd be here until Christmas. Even so, it's a lengthy process, and not one you'd sit down and complete all in one go.

A Proud McLeod

Day 278: My mother would be proud of me. I just took my McLeod of Lewis tartan shawl off the loom. This was a "bucket list" project for me: my family tartan made with authentic tartan wool (16/2) from Scotland. The fringe still needs twisting, and that will take a few days, what with 1024 threads to twist on each end in groups of eight (at least I think that's how I want to do it), but I have already filled out the paperwork to put this one in the Washington State Fair. It measures 32" wide by 78" long, and if I decide to wet-finish and waulk it, there will be some small amount of shrinkage. That said, I don't plan to do either. I have enough left to make a long scarf if I use the thrums as warp and the remainder on the cones for weft, but that will be a project for another time.

Zanshiori, Round Two

Day 277: Sometimes an idea works out better than imagined. When I first decided to use thrums to create zanshiori (what I call "something from nothing" projects), I expected to use the finished project to make purely functional and probably not particularly attractive bags. My Scottish genetics won't allow me to throw thrums away unless they're under a foot long, and the gallon jar I keep them in was getting pretty full. I used my 16" rigid heddle loom (12.5 dent) with a natural-coloured warp for the first batch, and liked the effect, although I didn't think it was the best use of the colours. "Maybe they'd be more dramatic if I used a dark warp," I thought, and I pulled out a cocoa-brown cone for the purpose. As before, I doubled the warp threads, but only a single thread for the weft. I am so happy with the way this turned out that I am not going to turn it into bags, no. I'm going to use it as a runner. This piece measures 48" x 11". And as a footnote, I'm still less than halfway through my stash of thrums.

Resigned To It

Day 276: Ideally, you start them off with the concept while they're kittens. You introduce them to it by first putting a little warm water in the sink, and then add the cat. Don't force the issue, and do not make eye contact (closing your eyes is even better). Eye contact is perceived as a threat. Speak softly (even if you're being eaten alive!). Only leave them in the shallow water for a minute or two before drying their paws and letting them go. The next time you're feeling brave, make the water a little deeper and the encounter a little longer. Follow the same procedure: no eye contact, speaking softly. Over the next few months or a year, work your way up to using shampoo and the sprayer for rinsing. Eventually, you will be rewarded with a cat who actually enjoys having a thorough ten-minute bath as Merry did this morning. No fuss, no scratching, no biting, no plaintive meowing...just a nice, warm wash with kitty shampoo and getting dried off with fluffy towels. Tropicana Cat Wash has another satisfied customer!

Harvesting Jellybeans

Day 275: I braved 94-degree heat to bring in my first harvest of jellybeans for this year. "Jellybean" is a miniature blueberry variety, miniature only insofar as the size of the bush is concerned. The berries are on the large end of the scale, and this year, I have a bumper crop. The first picking yielded a little more than a cup which got dashed with a little sugar and gobbled for dessert. I could have put them in the freezer to save until I had enough for a batch of muffins, but the temptation was too great. They are so juicy and sweet! I also brought in another two cups of gooseberries, which almost cleaned the bushes. I usually leave the smallest gooseberries for the juncoes. They love them, and since they were kind enough not to pick off all the blueberry flowers to get the nectar this year, I think they deserve a reward.