Deflected doubleweave scarf on loom, 20 July 2022.
I received a Leclerc floor loom as an amazing gift from a woman I took a felting class with last summer. Thank you, Sarah K.! I really enjoy weaving, but I know I am still a novice, so I thought I’d enter some pieces into the Tanana Valley Fair to get some feedback and tips on how to improve.
I visited the Fair with a friend today to see her quilts (she won a blue ribbon and was awarded as division champion! Yay, Karen!). We walked through the newly blue Badger Hall to look at the knitting, spinning, weaving, and creative arts crafts, and I was excited to see my weaving items on display. I am very much looking forward to reading the critique when I pick up the items on August 8! The bonus is the ribbons hanging next to my works. (I realize that my pieces might be the only one in their divisions, but it’s still fun to see.)
Weaving submissions on display at the Tanana Valley Fair, 3 August 2022.
Close-up of the deflected double weave scarf and ‘Berea Sunflower’ pattern table runner on display at the Tanana Valley Fair, 3 August 2022.
Close-up of waffle weave blanket on display at the Tanana Valley Fair, 3 August 2022.
Helianthus Shifting in the Sun table runner prepped for the Fair, 20 July 2022.
Helianthus Shifting in the Sun: Table runner designed using the ‘Berea Sunflower’ pattern from Marguerite Porter Davidson’s “A Handweaver’s Pattern Book,” (another wonderful gift from Sarah!), with warp and weft of 2/2 worsted spun wool (warp colors: ‘daffodil’ and ‘marigold’; weft colors: ‘tangerine’ and ‘cayenne), hemstitched, fringed.
The large overshot weaving technique delineates the flowers, creating a design that is mirrored on the fabric’s reverse side. Graduating transitions between each red, orange, and yellow helps give the idyllic impression that living sunflowers are following the path of the sun.
Helianthus Shifting in the Sun table runner laid out on love seat, 14 July 2022.
The yellow, red, and orange table runner won the ‘Theme Award’ because I chose colors, fiber, and weaving pattern to fit this year’s Fair theme. Yay!
Deflected Doubleweave Scarf: I love how the deflected doubleweave technique creates a fabric with both a visual pattern and a 3-D-esque texture. The two similar sides of the scarf each have a distinctive look, making this a fun reversible scarf to wear.
Deflected Doubleweave Scarf: Pattern assigned by Elizabeth Springett, with warp and weft of 100% silk nail (‘denim’ and 100” cotton (‘licorice’), hemstitched, twisted fringe, 21 July 2022.
Purple Honeycomb Sparkle: The waffle weave technique blends with the two distinct fibers to give this blanket a delightfully cozy 3-dimensional look and feel.
Purple Honeycomb Sparkle: Blanket pattern designed by Sarah Resnick, with warp of 100% 4/8 Brassard cotton (‘natural’) and weft of Caron Crystal Cakes 64% acrylic, 24% polyester, 7% nylon, 5% metallic yarn (‘dusk’ and ‘amaranth’), hemstitched, fringed.
Purple Honeycomb Sparkle waffle weave blanket laid out on my love seat, 19 July 2022.
Heart Balloon prepped for the fair: Self-designed pattern, with a warp of 100% 4/8 Maysville cotton and weft of yarns pulled from my leftover knitting yarn stash, 20 July 2022.
Before receiving the generous gift of the table loom, I had already been interested in weaving. I had made a couple of small pieces on an Ashford lap loom as I dabbled with the process. I decided to enter one of these small pieces into the fair as well as the larger ones woven on the floor loom. This Heart Balloon was my first venture into tapestry weaving and I experimented with different weaving and binding-off techniques. Currently a decorative hanging, this piece may eventually become half of a cute over-the-shoulder bag for a young girl. Who knows!
The end of July is not typically when my friend Laurie and I have our first summer adventure together, but this is how it worked out this year. We wanted to go camping, or hiking, or something! We decided on canoeing since we had not done that in years.
Looking through a frame of leaves onto Harding Lake, Alaska. Photo by Laurie L., 28 July 2022.
“I saw a bald eagle in that tree there once, to the right.” I pointed left.
Laurie, wisely following my finger point instead of my words, turned to look left.
This was why we decided to use nautical terms when we got out onto the lake the next day. Sitting in front, I could not tell which side Laurie was looking, pointing, or paddling, so “starboard, please” and “paddle on the port side” made our communication more clear. We therefore did not confuse our directions at all out on the lake.
Dramatic sky above Harding Lake, Alaska. Note the red canoe partially hidden by foilage on the left. Photo by Laurie L., 29 July 2022.
Taking in Harding Lake from the deck later in the day. Photo by Laurie L., 29 July 2022.
It was a beautiful relaxing day. We stuck close to shore for most of the trip, and I would have been happy to glide leisurely near the reeds around the long curve of the shallow side of the lake, but Laurie was the coxswain, the person in charge of the navigation and steering of our little craft. So, we headed straight across one of the deepest parts of the lake to check out the buoys — red, hard plastic balloons, in two straight lines, perfect for a water-skier and/or motor boat to move through. Laurie steered us back and forth from one side of the aligned course to the other, around buoy after buoy.
I would have enjoyed this paddling challenge except for one thing: the dark water that quickly turned black beneath our boat. Who could tell what was down there?! Lurking…in a bottomless lake…reaching upwards towards us…to snatch us down and hold us captive there forever…!
Of course there is nothing in the lake but plants and fish. And while a swimmer might get slowed up for a bit in a thick clump of reeds, the plants will not reach out to trap them, nor me. Fish also are not a credible threat. They have no hands with which to grab, and even the toothy-mouthed pike are neither big enough, nor view humans as yummy, so they will not be dragging anyone under the water’s surface.
I stare down at the blackness, swaying silently back and forth, my breath getting tighter and faster. I can feel my fear drawing me into it. Laurie says something and I make myself force the panic downwards and focus on what she has said, and which direction I am supposed to be helping her direct the bow of the canoe.
We paddled through the obstacle course of our making, and floated around almost every buoyed we aimed for.
Getting the canoe back to the car was the next challenge. Carrying it up the long incline to the vehicle was not appealing at all.
The solution was that Laurie would drive drove her car to the boat ramp several cabins down, while I paddled the canoe all by myself. I took a deep breath and snugged my life vest. The plan was my idea too. Besides, how else am I going to get rid of the fear of the deep, opaque water if I don’t try to paddle atop blue, see-through water?
I paddled off.
It was fun guiding the canoe near the shore past the docks belonging to neighboring cabin owners. I glanced downwards at the soft, silty-looking lake bed merely a foot or so below the canoe. Even that view mesmerized me a bit, and the natural movement of the water’s flow pushed me closer to a metal dock jutting out into the lake.
“No, no, no! Argh!” I lifted up my paddle, trying to think, what can I do now?
The current continued to spin me around — and the starboard aft of the canoe bumped into the end of the metal dock. I eventually managed to direct the bow where I wanted and paddle away, looking towards the small cabin on the beach. Besides no owner rushing out toward the water, dark windows, absent deck furniture, and no vehicles of any kind clearly signaled that no one was home. I would have paddled ashore to apologize if there had been someone there.
Neighbors two houses away sat on their porch and watched me.
Sigh….
The brilliant sun looks over the blues of the water, sky, and opposite shore, 29 July 2022.
I kept paddling and made it to the boat ramp, where my friend was waiting for me. We hauled it up the deeply notched concrete ramp and saw a woman and her tall son pulling kayaks out of their vehicle. Yay! Laurie asked for their help and up the canoe popped! Easily and quickly upside down on the top of her car. I wish I had more upper body strength…
We thanked the kind neighbors, securely tied down the canoe and headed back home to Fairbanks.
With a walk, a canoe trip, and time to sit on the deck and stare at the light blue sky and the deeper hue of the water as it gently lapped the sandy shore: It was a wonderful day.
The colors of the view and the clouds reflecting in the open water of Little Harding Lake take my breath away. This lake would be its own obstacle course to canoe in! Photo by Laurie L., 28 July 2022.
Spring is gently here (I haven’t sneezed once yet), and pollen from birch and spruce trees make pictures on the hoods of every car I see.
A Jackson Pollack painting of lines and circles appears on my truck’s hood.
Pollen creates lines and small circles on the hood of my truck, 29 May 2022.
Pollen grains have rolled down the incline of this vehicle’s windshield, creating tire track-like paths, while the verdant green pollen-creating trees themselves are reflected under the shiny black Jeetah’s spots.
I could not see the beautiful reflection of the spruce and birch trees in the Jeep’s hood until I looked at it through my camera’s lens, 29 May 2022.
Sun, clouds, rain, snow, wind, and a combination of all but the first struck against my windshield on the drive home. The sunlight (had I really seen it?) was a glimmer of memory from the school parking lot only ten minutes ago. I kept expecting hail or even graupel to fall (just to round out the list of precipitation types). Slush was forming on the side of the front window where the wipers raced to push the falling aqua, both liquid and fluffily crystalline.
I had chuckled last night when I saw snow falling at midnight, and now I had to laugh out loud. Mother Nature still rules supreme. Us humans have no might in the greater scheme of it all. I push back the irritation of the needy parent, the one who is not letting his daughter grow up taller than the wall of his nest. I let the frustrating indolence and inefficiency of certain of my students evaporate. I forget about the vying workplace personalities and my enervating list of things to do. Instead I listen to the susurration of the snow on my sleeves, breathe deeply, and enjoy the unanticipated beauty of the large, fluffy white flakes falling unruffledly from the gentle gainsboro grey May sky.
Watching the snow fall and listening to its serene, halcyon susurration on this lovely May evening, at 17:52, 9 May 2022. Note the blister of snowplowed snowpack still unmelted in my yard.
Trail into the trees, beneath birch and black spruce, 29 July 2021.
Ever since a friend of mine showed me the Bee Field in the Koponen Homestead trail system, I’ve put it on my summer to-do list. Sometimes I walk down the trails to and from, at other times I bike up to it on the Pasture Path, a gentle enough slope for my fitness level, yet bumpy enough with exposed roots to be interesting. While overcast and cool, today was the first non-rainy day in a succession of downpours.
My friend, her granddaughter, and I were going on a picnic!
I packed up my bike and pulled on a neon-yellow vest for the intersections and the stretch of road where there was no bike path. It was on this road that a car slowed, and the driver and small passenger waved and called my name. I grinned and waved back cheerfully.
“See you there!”
Would I beat them to the Bee Field?
As my distance was the shorter one, I did, which gave me time to tug off my outer layers and walk about to cool off from the ride and stare about in astonishment. What had happened to the Bee Field? Alder saplings from as tall as my knee to my waist poked up intermittently through the ground cover of dogwood.
Alder saplings draw the eye up away from the carnelian-colored berries of the dwarf dogwood (Cornus canadensis).
It appears no one has mown the field this year, sadly. I hope there is someone in charge of doing so because it would be a shame to have the forest reclaim the area. The joy of this open space is the bees. When the dogwood blooms white, the air is full of humming, a delicious sound of focused productivity. The Bee Field was named for a reason. I wonder whose hives benefit from the nectar gathered here.
I really hope no one complained out of fear of a bee sting, prompting the neglect of the field’s care. The human does not have to encroach on the bees’ space and sustenance. Staying on the trail is enough to stay out of their way: even the curious bumblebee prefers blooms to skin. Or, the nervous human can stay off of this trail entirely. There are others just as beautiful.
Because of the obstructing slender trunks, we walked through the trees to the lower grassy field further down the hill. The ground rolled gently, the manicured grass verdant around the handful of solitary trees which would have thrown wonderfully cool shade on a hot sunny day.
The end of the smaller spruce’s branches bend upwards, marking it as a rare white spruce in Fairbanks, 29 July 2021.
Atop the adjacent gentle rise was the perfect backdrop to our picnic: a patch of tall fireweed all in the pink. We sunk onto the blankets we spread upon the grass and shared and nibbled our noonday meal. The little girl complained of crawling nature. We chatted and laughed. In moments of silent, we could hear the breeze in the treetops and the hum of the nearby bees. Eager for the blossoms’ ambrosial awards, the apian insects did not visit us, and we respected the margin of their angustifolium in turn.
Magenta fireweed, enticement for bees, 29 July 2021.
Rested and well fed, we gathered up our items, checked that nothing had been left behind, and headed back up the gentle slope. The dirt path curved between the tall stately trunks. In the midst of the trees appeared a wooden bench, and, delightfully, an old-fashioned lamppost.
Today I found peaceful balance from picnicking with friends in a beautiful purlieu.
I was curious about the Bee Field’s care, so I contacted the Friends of the Koponen Homestead and received a very nice reply to my email. I learned how I can volunteer to help keep the space beautiful. I would like to share my enjoyment of the green space with you, while respecting that the area remains privately owned. I am a guest in their neighborhood each time I walk the trails and breath in the space.
I inhaled breathlessly at the soft pink and blue of the sky. The colors were crisp behind the dark green silhouettes of the spruce trees. I had to stop and awe at the unusual pastels — and try to capture it with my point-and-shoot camera.
Ten minutes later on my way home, a russet four-legger with a white-tipped tail loped languidly across the road in front of me, expertly far enough away from metal danger. It flowed down the gentle incline and across the still verdant field.
Dusk continued to thicken, turning the landscape into a richer palette of velvety monochrome. The windchime on my porch klingled musically in the autumnal breeze. Mother Nature had soothed my soul once again, and I could sleep calmly, untouched by the worries of the day.
The rain was so thick that my wipers could barely keep up. Sunshine blinded, so I quickly pulled on my shades and squinted up at the blue sky. The rapid beat of plinks and plops delightfully drowned out the radio’s music. Sixteen wheels in the other lane threw up a cloud of spray like from a tumbling river waterfall. Mist washed the raindrops’ sillhouettes from the windshield, then immediately speckled with another shower of rain. Charcoal grey clouds threatened from the northeast, but the sunshine and azure heavens followed me all of the way home.
