Yesterday's Meetings Report

I had a bunch of things I was going to do today including having lunch with Milady Daughter, but yesterday was long and I’m tired. Or maybe it’s just the pouring rain and chilly weather that’s dampening my spirits and convincing me that a long walk in it is a dumb idea? Whatever, we’ve rescheduled our lunch date for next week. Maybe the weather will improve, though the weatherman says otherwise. What happened to my lovely warm spring? Everything in my garden needs little wooly sweaters and lifejackets. Even the tomatoes in the greenhouse are getting wet from the dripping roof and the basil got what I call cold spots from the several extra-chilly nights they spent in there. Sigh. Everything was doing just fine before this. Oh well. You can rant about it but you can’t change the weather.

So what did I do yesterday that tuckered me out? Well first there was my Spectrum Study Group. We West-Side-Girls car-pooled over to Jo Anne’s where we ate yummy Aunt Bertha’s Apple Cake and drank copious amounts of tea and stitched and chatted. I gave Masami her tawashi as a thank you for bringing me the yarn all the way back from Japan. I also gave her the pattern and she immediately whipped out a crochet hook (an interesting double-ended wooden one from Japan) and some scrap yarn and started making her own Linked-Rings tawashi. She thought it was great fun to do! By the end of the day she had a couple more of them already finished.

After our usual impressive potluck lunch, we worked some more on our projects. Most of us were stitching on our Inspired-By-A-Word Bags. Mine is kind of ugly and stupid but it’s coming along. I put some beads and Indian metal sequins on it which helped. You aren’t going to see it yet though! I’m keeping it to myself for now.

I came home for dinner, worked some more on the Big Secret Project, and then later T-Man drove me to my fibre arts guild meeting, last one of the year and the first one I’ve managed to get to. The speaker was a woman who had moved to Mayne Island in the Gulf Islands to a farm that had once belonged to a Japanese family who had been interned to the BC Interior during WWII. Interestingly she has met the original family and they have become quite good friends. It seems they are happy to have someone who cares for the land and appreciates their sacrifice living there now. (Don’t get me started on that horrible stain on Canadian history. I wasn’t born yet so I plead innocence but I apologise anyway.) Anyhow she now has 7 angora goats and dyes the wool with natural dyes, both gathered from her environment and bought (from Maiwa of course). She gets some very muted but pretty colours. It must be the water, which is quite different from mine, that allows her to get purple from blackberries where I just get grey when it immediately fades! I was fascinated to see the mohair swatch made from yarn dyed with…are you ready for it? Tent caterpillars. Eewww! She figured they were pests and eating chlorophyll so there should be colour in them and there was! It was a slightly greenish yellow. Not pretty enough to inspire me to try it but at least she rid her trees of some of the nasty creatures. Must have been very satisfying for her. I wonder if squirrels make good dye? Nah. I’m scared to collect ‘em. They’re too nasty. How about sow bugs though?

I was having much trouble keeping my mouth shut while she was talking. (Actually I didn’t and misheard her at one point whereupon I said something stupid. It might have helped if I had remembered my hearing aids, huh?) I did hear several facts I would disagree with but then I’ve actually got more experience since she’s only been doing this for a few years compared to me. Plus some of it is really subjective or depends on your information source. Your mileage may vary, as they say.

Dear T picked me up again and we got to bed around 10pm, which for us is like midnight. It was nice that we could sleep in to 6am this morning! He decided to do his part for the environment and save some gas by working from home today. We’re hoping it will become a once a week thing, but frustrations with his phone system (ear piece, wire and cell phone plus a long convoluted dialing system) may need some tweaking. Plus he has to IM much more to keep in touch with people at work. Otherwise it’s really nice to have him home — even though I still haven’t vacuumed and can’t while he’s working! Heh. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

Off to continue with the Big Secret Project. It’s so dark I need the lights on to see what I’m doing. Kind of like the middle of winter? To dark for any photos today that’s for sure.