Thursday, August 27, 2009

Still creative at 106 - my inspiration!


A couple months ago, I received an order for some rug warp from a woman in Illinois. She said it was for her mother, Ethel Christian, who made braided chair pads. She needed the strong string to lace the braiding together. Not too unusual ... until she told me her mother was 106 years old. I sent her the warp, free of charge, but asked for a chair pad in return ... they graciously sent two, along with the picture of Mom and her nice work.
Are you inspired, too?

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Stormy, the broad-winged hawk

Last Tuesday, we had a horrible storm here in parts of Indiana. At our place, it rained about 5 inches in 6 hours. Our driveway washed out, our water went out, tree limbs blew down across the drive, and then the power went out. And we had it better than a lot of people. In the town of Nashville, power was out for a day or more, restaurants and shops stayed closed, the main grocery store lost a lot of their inventory and on and on ...
But I was going to talk about a bird ...
So, I was sitting on the front porch, trying to finish up a custom spinning job while the power was out, and I kept hearing a bird squawking in the trees in front of the house. I couldn't see him, but I thought it sounded like a hawk's call. After a couple hours, I finally spotted him and grabbed the camera. I wasn't sure what kind of bird he was, but he was larger than I expected.
The next morning, I heard him again, out in front of the house. I took a walk into the woods and he was on the ground ... back for the camera and here are some pictures of this beautiful creature ...
Stormy is showing Pike, the studio cat, what you can do with WINGS!
I have no experience in caring for raptors, but there's a wonderful rescue organization here in Brown County called Return to the Wild and Patti graciously came and picked up Stormy and took him to be cared for until he's mature enough to live on his own (he's about 6 weeks old now) ... and then they will bring him back to be released here.

Three new rug weavers~

Three women came to the studio today for a "day weaving" class to make a rug. None of them had ever woven before but they all caught on very quickly.
Above is Emiko and Miho. Miho will start college in the fall and she and her roommate are doing their dorm room in pinks so she wanted her own special rug.
I was very pleased with their rugs and they were thrilled ... here's a picture of the finished projects:
Konomi, left, is Miho's mom.