I spent last weekend with the other Preachainees, celebrating Imbolc the best way we know how–with forges.  Imbolc is Brigid’s holiday, and Brigid is all about creation and transformation, poetry and smithcraft.  We keep Imbolc really casual, because it’s generally very cold outside, which makes planning a camping event tough.  We converge on someone’s house, make way too much food, try to share some valuable skills, and have a good time without fretting about keeping everything historically accurate.   John the Farrier brought a couple of coal forges over to Sig and Macha’s farm and we got to work on some iron and hang out with horses, dogs, and friends.

Our iron workers this time around spanned the generations, from six years old to 80-ish.    I’m now going to just toss pictures into the post, because I can’t bear to leave many out.  Metalurgy is magic, and horses are very very cool, and I love these people.

And, as if that weren’t wonderful enough, I came home to find flowers from my husband and beautifully-dyed yarn from a friend.

I am a  very, very lucky girl, and I know it.

I love snow.  Kayo loves snow.  Scott loves snow.  And we never get enough of it in these parts.  Finally, we got a few inches on Thursday.

I boogied out of the city just in time to miss the truly torturous aspect of snow in the DC area–the terrible traffic–and settled in to some great fun over a long weekend.

Blanket fun.  It’s finished.

And it’s fantastic.

The edge isn’t entirely tamed, but then again, neither am I.  I’m fine with it.   Still, I’ll show you  a  well-behaved square.  I don’t post photos of friends on bad hair days, so it makes sense to offer the same courtesy to this friend.  I’ve spent more than a year working on this blanket, and its made up of scraps from my friends’ knitting and mine.  It’s a woolly memory-book.

I still plan to embroider a few of the bland, solid squares, but that’ll be icing on the cake, and it doesn’t need to happen before this takes up a spot on our couch.  It’s washed, and quasi-blocked, and toasty on my feet.

In addition to blanket time, I put in some serious bag-making time.

A blue African block print with a gold pinwheel reverse.

A blue floral batik with a pale blue marble reverse covered in tiny spirals.

Probably the prettiest fish print I’ve seen (I’m not one for juvenile fabrics, but the leaf-work on this–yowza–it’s a retro dreamworld, man!) with a fuschia figured reverse.

A green and blue batik, with a lavender and blue script reverse.

A deep blue small-figured batik, with the same script reverse.

And a green mottled sprig print with a mauve nouveau-inspired geometric reverse.

I have a few more cut out and waiting to be sewn up, and more fabric waiting for cutting.  I can’t believe I’m still so enamored with these little bags.  Maybe I can keep the crush going long enough to save up the proceeds for a loom or a sock knitting machine.

Birch, from Indo-European bherja, or “bright.”  Shining, blazing, burning, shimmering.  The Lady of the Forest.  Cousin to Beech and Oak–the three trees I need most in my landscape.  Oak galls for ink,  beech and birch for paper, two for mast, and all three for inspiration.  The trio was seen as a family in Ireland: Father Oak, Mother Beech, and Birch their daughter.  Birches have eyes, and they seem to know so much.

We know the word is immensely old, because its name in so many languages is clearly descended from that Indo-European root: beith in Irish, bedwen in Welsh, bouleau in French, bjork in Icelandic, bhurja, or “paper” in Sanskrit,  betulla in Italian.

One of our oldest forms of paper, birch bark fights rot and mold, preserving both the tree and the words entrusted to its sloughed outer bark.  Birch products have long been used for leather-tanning in Russia, canoes and buckets in the Americas, as a fan or scourge in Finnish saunas, as an anti-inflammatory tea, as a self-shaping splint–wrap a broken arm in wet birch bark, and it will dry to a strong, reliable cast that releases its anti-inflammatory chemicals through the skin.  It’s the traditional May Pole tree, the haven and food for the larvae of many butterflies and moths, the flavoring to dozens of traditional, hallowed drinks.

My mother brought us this  betula nigra as a tiny sapling right after we bought our home, and watching it grow from a tiny twig to this strong, upright standard in our yard is a great source of joy to me.  It does practical things for us, like drink up some of the standing water that gathers in our yard, protecting our house and saving several of our other trees and plants from root rot.  It shades us.  It hosts birds and butterflies.  But it also seems to represent us so flatteringly–two trunks joined together, one a bit shorter, reaching upwards.

A is for antler.

Antler knife handles, and knitting needles, and spindles, and buttons, and baskets.  Most made by friends who have similar antler fixations.  I particularly love finding shed antlers in the woods, often obscured in the leaf litter.  The marks left by bucks scraping the fuzz off their growing antlers are surely the most elegant graffiti any adolescent males make on the planet.  If only we could be as gracious about our growing pains.

So I’ve been having a good time making bags, like I do, but also being very frustrated by the difficulty of finding natural light to take pictures in.  So I broke down and bought a pop-up light tent.  Now I have to figure out how best to use it.  I started playing with it this afternoon.  In theory, you put the article inside on some background, and then light the whole white tent from the outside, and thus illuminate the item in diffuse light and avoid the problems associated with flash wash-out.  I’m not terribly likely to buy photo-specific lamps, so today I was trying to play with ambient light by positioning the tent around the place.

Ok, bored now. 

See, I made a bag in an oak-leaf print with a gold linen lining, and a red abstract petal design with a kooky olive and tan and maroon lining.

And I finally made a bag for myself: a green batik paired with the oak leaf print.

Sewing is more fun than lighting sewn things–that’s what I learned today.  Also, I learned that I hate removing really thick, old wallpaper paste from walls, and that no amount of vacuuming ever catches up with our pets. 

Now I have to think of something to photograph that starts with "A."

We have a wonderful regular visitor these days.  I took this photo through our living room window.  Our friend here has been spending a lot of time in a snag in our back yard. I wish I could put out a hawk feeder, but I don’t think it works that way.

The small linen quilt is nearly done, but I did a few things out of order, so I need to backtrack a bit.  The linen blocks are not quilted heavily enough.  I noticed this, of course, after I began binding  it.  Of course.

So I’m going back to quilt some more before finishing the binding.

Still, I’m pretty happy with the overall look of the thing.  I quilted the black squares pretty randomly–sometimes stitching down the stems of the leaves, and sometimes quilting around them in narrow zig-zags.  I used stitch in the ditch for the first pass on the linen blocks.

Now if only I can find more of the right green quilting thread . . .

I studiously ignored the sockyarn blanket for weeks (WEEKS!) while working away on gifts.  But now Christmas has past, and I can only spend so much time chained to the sewing machine making sock bags. 

Speaking of sock bags, I’m almost done with a big batch of sock bags.  I’ll try to post photos, but there is no sun at my house when I’m here these days, and I feel silly carrying my knitting and sewing to work to photograph them in the city.  But that may be my only option.

Where was I . . .  returning to personal knitting means I just finished round one of the blanket edging.  13,400 edge stitches done, only 13,400 knit stitches and a few scant hundred stitches with a darning needle between me and a finished blanket.  Ahhhhhh.  So close!

Also, I cast the second of the kilt hose back onto the needles and all seems to be going as planned.  Fingers crossed.

And, perhaps coolest of all,  I just signed a contract for Etaine, Anubh and I to perform again at the Pennsylvania Celtic Fling the last weekend of June 2008.  Woot!  We have twice as many sets as last year.  Which may freak me out just a little bit, because we can’t really double the amount of material we perform between now and June.  I’m going to go hide under my nearly-finished blanket now–excuse me.

You ever have one of those days, when your hair looks like a ragged doll’s, and things just don’t go well at work, and the subway is too hot so it’s sort of nauseating but too crowded to take off your coat, and the traffic is horrible, and you can’t find something you have to have to have to find in a store, but you can find a hairball by stepping in it after you’ve already taken your shoes off?  Yeah, me too. 

You know what fixes days like that?  This does.

That yarn!  That yarn has been spying on my closet.  Or Boogie and Purlewe have . . . hmmmmmm.  And there’s even a sheep inside the mug.

Purlewe is, as  usual, kind and  generous and wonderful.  And, quite possibly psychic.    

I have proof of knitting.  Normally I would fret over using a flash to photograph it, but not today.

Today I’m taking a picture so I can put on imperfect handknit socks–I finished the toe with some scrap yarn because I could not deal with being so-close-but-not-quite-done-and-out-of-flipping-yarn one second longer–and drink tea from a fantastic mug a friend gave me.  Ahhhhhhhhhh.

My friend Jayme went and finished making a whole person, and even kitted her out in a lovely hand-knitted ensemble. 

Welcome Laura, who just couldn’t wait any longer.   She came a bit early, but mother and baby are both healthy, and Laura is obviously adorable.  She was fawned over by many, many knitters tonight. 

I’m still trying to finish all of those things I’m trying to finish, which I can’t really say much about yet.  Though I can say that Carol, Mapgirl and I made a baby quilt for Laura, though I have no photographic evidence.  The quilt has been delivered, and while Laura was too busy being adored to comment on it, I think Jayme liked it.   

Right. Back to the grind.

I can’t tell you much about what I’ve been doing, but I can tell you that Jayme, our local wonder designer and knitting master is now a capital M Mother.  Jayme gave birth to her daughter this morning.  I’m waiting for additional specifics with a big old grin on my face.  Good going, Jayme. 

Apart from that, there’s nothing to see here.  Move along.  Don’t you have work to do, lazybones? 

I will admit to distributing a number of fun little bags to some friends.  Rachel has one, and Rho, as does Thorny.  And I actually sold one, which was exciting. 

Now leave me alone.  I’m busy, already.  Sheesh.