Full Circle and a Little Rose

A market day generally takes me full circle in my making. It's like this. I like to sit and spin at the market. I find it  good way to pass the time; to demonstrate and discuss what I do and to be present without focussing too much on people's response to my work. Since it's such a busy and colourful environment and I could be interrupted at any time, I don't spin anything fancy: plain white wool tops are my favourite.

After the market the momentum has a tendency to slow down, but here I am with a partly spun bobbin of lovely white wool. So I have to finish it. Turns out that spinning is what I love--it's why I do this. When that's done I'll have a whole skein of lovely new yarn crying out for colour. Colour is also a strong motivator for me. And so the rhythm of making and offering what I've made for sale can go on. 

As for the tiny red rose, it was peaking out from among the weeds when I got home from my walk this morning. I love its courage and perfection--despite the spider's web and blackspot it was determined to bloom!

Another

I'm still nursing my irritated-irritating elbow, so here's another rose to serve as inspiration.

I don't know the name of this one. The bush was in the garden when I arrived here. The combination of soft pinks and yellow-golds complements the dutch gold which I featured a while ago, but this flower is much more delicate. And if you look at the leaves you will see that my rose garden needs more than just weeding! It's going to be hot today though, and I need to take it easy, so that will have to wait.

Today

Today I need to spend some more time in the garden. Those weeds are not going to go away on their own. Here's another one of my roses to remind me that it's worth the effort.

I don't know the name of this one. The flower is relatively small, but the variegated petals are so much fun.

Blue?

"Rhapsody in Blue" is the name of this climbing rose. I have two of them growing on my front fence.

The picture colour is fairly true to life this time--on my monitor at least. I often have trouble with purple shades. And it's not exactly what I would call "blue", but it's on the blue side for a rose anyway. Dead-heading these roses is about the only thing I got done yesterday. Apart from a bit of random knitting. It was rather a slow day for me.

Up Close

My cup day rose has taken up residence on my kitchen table. It's slowly opening. 

I decided to have a close look at the colours. The rose is called "dutch gold". I can see various shades of yellow from deep gold through to a pale lemon. And there are touches of red-pink there too. The gold deepens to a warm orange and some of the petals look just as if I'd dropped a couple of grains of my red dye on a wet patch of fabric--lovely! 

Spring Fashion

Where else in the world do they declare a public holiday for a horse race! Yesterday was Melbourne Cup day, "the celebration that stops a nation" is the slogan. My day wasn't filled with champagne and high fashion.

I chose muddy boots rather than strappy sandals since I needed to tackle the abundant weeds in my front garden. A couple of hours of serious digging got me through about half of that garden bed--and tired me out thoroughly. The rose is my touch of prettiness and a reward for my efforts. Hopefully all the rose bushes in that section will be happier once I complete the job. That will take several more days like yesterday to achieve. 

Another Reward

My epic struggle with the weeds continues. Yesterday was one of those days when I felt as though I was making some progress. I celebrated by trimming back the Lorraine Lee rosebush. She's such a generous rose and gives me flowers all year round. It's always hard to find a good time for pruning. This trim was prompted by my need to reach under the bush in pursuit of the never-ending Kikuyu grass.

 

So I went back to my knitting in the afternoon with the sight and sweet smell of a vase of roses in front of me. I finished the pretty pink wristies before it was time to get ready for my quilting class.

The Real Thing

After playing with woollen representations of this classic flower for the past few days, here's a real one to look at. 

I spent a couple of hours in the garden yesterday. I don't know what word to use to describe my activity. "Gardening" would imply that there's something of a collection of favoured plants. Well, there's this rose and my faithful Loraine Lee which always has a flower or two for me. Oh, and the grevilleas, but they're a bit overgrown at the moment. "Weeding" is more like it, but it doesn't seem a sufficient word for the magnitude of the challenge. Perhaps "digging" is a better word. Whatever word I use, there's plenty more to do. So I'd better get on with it. 

Breakfast View

My body clock is all out of wack, and it was well and truly dark when I had breakfast this morning. I did have this lovely rose to cheer my view: It's a Mr Lincoln rose from my front garden, and it has a delightful scent.

My breakfast was much more prosaic: rolled oats, oat bran and sultanas with skim milk--not quite fitting for the rose elegance, but much more in keeping with the rest of my table. The roses are my reward for a good hour spent weeding late yesterday afternoon. I also have roses on my design wall--I've pulled out an unfinished quilt from several years ago and it's on display to boost my inspiration and help me to decide how to finish it.

Meanwhile, I have some lovely fine kid mohair to prepare for spinning--I'm flicking it, and so far my fingers are OK. It's too fine and long to comb effectively. I tried carding it, but even on my new fine carders I was losing too much of it's character. I'll have plenty left to card later, since flicking removes a lot of lovely, useful, not quite as long fibre in preparation. I bought 100g and I need a 20g sample--plus a swatch, display skein, fibre sample etc etc--yep I'm back to working on my Spinning Certificate Folio. That will leave plenty to play with when the required work is done.

Unseasonal

I picked this rose when I got home from my walk yesterday. It's from my Lorraine Lee rose bush and its pretty pink perfection was irresistable.Lorraine Lee is an early flowering rose, but this bush hasn't actually stopped flowering since last season. We're now at the end of July and rose pruning is on the "to do" list. I keep waiting for the roses to finish flowering, but I don't think winter dormancy is on their agenda this year. I guess I'll just have to go out and give them a trim and see what happens.

On the textile front: I finished the camel-wool blend woollen sample yesterday. I'll need to go back and have a look at our requirements lists from previous sessions to see what to do next. I know I have gaps all over the place, but at least I've got one session completed.

. . . and I have a Castle Report: Town Planning gave me ticks on all of their main requirements for an upper storey extension! Now I just need a lot more zeros on the end of my bank balance, and we're away!

Colour Variations

Apart from an insatiable fascination with colour, one of the main reasons I started dyeing by hand was to try to reproduce the sort of colour variations I see around me in the natural world. I always try to have some flowers for the display table at my dyeing workshops to emphasise that point. Here's one from last weekend.

I have to do some more unpacking today. If I don't keep going in a determined way, I can imagine myself still surrounded by boxes in a couple of months time. I don't want that. But I'm going to have to break it up with some creative work, or I won't make it. So, I'll tantalise myself with the prospect of reproducing something like the colour of this rose today.

A Rose is a Rose

There's something about a rose . . . this one is living in a pot on my kitchen windowsill, waiting to be planted in my front garden. It may have to wait a while since the garden is over-run with weeds and long grass just now. Meanwhile it's rewarding me with flowers like this one: It's a tiny thing. This pic is about twice life size. The colour also seems to be twice life size.

In terms of my textile work, I am reminded that natural doesn't have to mean subtle. Bright punchy colours here I come!